rhuesmann35

I understand the reason for the rebuild and I think you trade whomever if it is a quality return. My concern is more if these prospects will be prepped and directed in the best manner possible to reach their potential and make the majors. My concern is if the major league coaching staff is up to the task of getting the best out of these players once they make the club. It was just 2-3 years ago we looked like a very talented, young cost controlled group and saw very weak results. I think our coaching staff did a very poor job of getting the best out of the group of men they had available. Thoughts?

QUOTE (Pants Rowland @ Feb 2, 2016 -> 04:51 PM) I like this post. I just hope the defense is improved enough to support the strength of the pitching staff. I think I am liking the thought of Eithier over Fowler. I think we could get the Dodgers to pick up some of the cost even if it was on the low side and you have him for 2/3 years. Fowler is going to want to get paid and is likely looking for as many if not more years. So the years and cost will likely be close to each other. Both have good OBP capabilities, but Fowler doesn't play RF and neither do the 2 guys we will likely put out there. Eithier has played RF so you're not affecting Eaton and Cabrera by positioning them where they are not comfortable. Eithier has a better DWAR than Fowler as well.

QUOTE (Saufley @ Jan 24, 2016 -> 05:49 PM) In what publication was the story? http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2016/01/23/lev...ries_vph-sports I attached the article. I may be new but I have been around reading plenty of thoughts, ideas, comments, etc for years. I don't post many things because I don't have the time to get into petty little arguments that seem to happen quite often within topics. I realize there are many OF discussions and I posted because I had not seen any comments regarding Ryan Braun. My bad for missing but I don't have the time to religiously read every statement. I'll leave this for follow up comments if you like. I do enjoy others thoughts, because many have very good information and it is White Sox related. Thanks

I've heard a lot of outfield options for some time now and I read a story today where the Sox maybe exploring trading top prospects to get the power outfielder they want (pictured Carlos Gonzalez). I'm not interested in needing to give up top talent for an outfielder so I wanted to ask a question. Do the Sox look at Ryan Braun as an option? He has power, OBP, still some speed and can play RF. His contract is not the best as it is 20M next 3 seasons and a 5 yr commit before opt out. My thought is he might be able to be had for lower level talent. Milwaukee has an overload of OF's and he is talked about as a trade possibility. I'm not promoting this, just asking the question to see what others think. Thanks

QUOTE (AlSoxfan @ Jan 31, 2015 -> 09:56 AM) I'm with you on our bullpen woes, but I think (or hope) we've pretty much solved them this yr. We seem to have some depth in the minors as well. To be honest I liked our bullpen going into the season last yr. I really liked Beli...lol but...Also I think one of our biggest problems last yr. was almost none of our starters could make it past 5 innings. Which means we had to go to the bullpen much more often. If we had a bullpen like KC, no problem but we didn't. We've also added a bonafide closer this yr. which will shorten our games an inning. I'd still like to see us get a long man/spot starter to add to the bullpen, otherwise our bullpen looks as good as we'll get at this time. Starting pitching worries me, but other than Shields (who would cost to much) there's really nobody left on the FA list I'd be interested in and a trade's not something we have the depth to do. I'm hoping by mid season we'll know more what our needs will be and we can act then in one way or the other. I wonder how much our bullpen issues hurt the rest of the team. I'm sure our starting pitchers felt like they had to go deeper into games and added pressure to themselves to be make up for bullpen issues. Our offense could never feel comfortable even with 5-6 run leads late in games. I'm sure management went longer with starters than they wanted at times which could have contributed to fatigue issues. You also wonder if Chris Sale could have won the CY Young award with a better bullpen to add a few more wins and keep ERA down lower. May have cost him some bonus money. I'm not saying the Sox have these issues but I could easily see locker room issues with starters getting on bullpen guys for blowing games they should have won.

QUOTE (Sox Fan In Husker Land @ Jan 28, 2015 -> 06:57 PM) Thank you for that stat. Do you know how many games the Sox won last year in that same situation? I went thru and looked at all games we won where we had a 2 run lead or less going into the 7th inning. Here is our win breakdown by division: AL East - 7 AL Central - 15 AL West - 6 NL East - 0 NL Central - 2 NL West - 2 What I would say is many of these games I would give more credit to our offense for these wins than I would our pitching. Think of it like KC last year. They have a 3-1 lead going into the 7th and the final would end up 3-1 or 4-1. The game was locked down by the bullpen. What I see many times from our bullpen was lead 2-0 going into the 7th, have the game tied in the 9th and win in the 10th 3-2. There were many games where we would have 6-2 or 7-2 leads going into the 7th and win 6-5 or 7-6. To many runs given up in the 7th, 8th and 9th innings regardless of wins or losses.

Long time follower.....1st time poster. I think the best improvement for this team was improving the bullpen with back end talent and getting added depth. I saw a comment earlier that "Cleto sucks". Early last season I would agree but when he was brought back late last season when rosters expanded he pitched much better with the addition of the change up. He had a 13-15mph difference between his fastball and change. Pretty devastating.....hopefully he can continue that. I looked last year at how the White Sox were in late inning situations and this is what I found. We lost 28 games last year where we lead or were tied going into the 7th inning. Here is the breakdown of those games by division: AL East - 8 games AL Central - 15 games AL West - 3 games NL East - 0 games NL Central - 0 games NL West 2 games That is a lot of games and if you take half of those games and produce wins that gives the Sox a 87-75 record. There were numerous games where we gave up more than 3 runs in one inning in those losses. If we clean that up in late game situations we can improve significantly.