hogan873

QUOTE (CanOfCorn @ Aug 18, 2010 -> 10:48 AM) I'm not content...but this is a marathon, not a sprint. I'm too old to live and die with each and every game of a 162 game season. I love watching this team, win or lose, although it's more fun when they win. My point is, why are we talking about blowing up a team and an organization when the 2010 White Sox are OVERACHIEVING! Of course, I want to see them win every year...but that doesn't happen to any team. Ever. I come into every season hoping that the Sox will win the World Series. And at the end of the season, there are always games that you can point to and say, "That was a big win/loss." But to praise and/or rip this team daily is just going to give you unneeded stress. It's a game. It's fun. It's icing on the cake of life. 2005 was a fantastic year. I'll never forget it. But so was '85, '91-'93, '96-'98 and '09-'10. But in the grand scheme...I'll take my wedding and birth of my two kids over any of those. I'm not Kenny Williams, Ozzie Guillen or any member of the White Sox organization...so I have nothing invested in this other than to enjoy the ride. So keep your insults about being a Cub fan. Good points. Imagine being a Pirates fan, when you know before the season starts that your team will not make the playoffs. However, I think a lot of the frustration we're seeing here is because the Sox playing miserably against the Twins is an annual event. And, the Sox having a bad second half is damn near an annual event. The folks you see on here getting angry about this stuff are fans. We have a right to be pissed off about the poor performance of this team. We're passionate about this team, and we want them to win. We don't want them to give us a bunch of up and down thrills only to have them just miss the playoffs. I for one couldn't shrug my shoulders and say "oh well" if this team ends up 2 games out at the end of the season.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Aug 18, 2010 -> 09:24 AM) Ah. That's a good thing then. We won;t wind up wasting a bunch of money for nothing. You don't think he'll clear waivers in the NL?

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Aug 18, 2010 -> 08:49 AM) I'm really trying to stay positive. It's hard knowing we have Ozzie making lineup decisions each day and continually putting us behind the 8 ball. You've inspired me. I will try to remain positive. And you're right, this team does fight back. What they need to work on is not putting themselves in that position so often. Without the 4 run spot in the first, last night's game was a different story.

Is that you Greg? Kidding aside, I agree that the bullpen has been struggling with some of the guys pitching outside of their comfort zones. But the issues with this team of late go deeper than just not having Jenks to close games. He was struggling, too, and that's why he was lifted from the role...a couple times. This team is not good right now, and unless they can right the ship against the Twins right now it won't matter if Jenks is the closer or not.

Whether or not the Sox can get their s*** together and win another World Series has little or nothing to do with the fans. The team has to start playing better (now!) for them to even have a chance. Us fans here on SoxTalk improving our attitudes and reducing our negativity will do nothing to make the team play better. Do we really think that Alex Rios will go running into the locker room saying, "Hey, the guys on SoxTalk are really pulling for us! Let's win some games, man!"

Ozzie is extremely stubborn and falls in love with players that have no business being starters. His lineups often make me scratch my head. And I think you're right, Sqwert, a lot of players don't want to play for him. His latest embarrassing rant about Latin vs. Asian players was even shunned by the Sox. Unless the Sox win the division, I think Ozzie has to go. Regardless, I would hope that KW doesn't let Ozzie have as much power again.

QUOTE (G&T @ Aug 16, 2010 -> 02:30 PM) I don't know about you, but people should give me some space if I'm drinking lambics. But now I want to go find those. I don't know that they are sold up here (never heard of it). BTW, Dogfish Head Indian Brown Ale is yummy. Dogfish Head makes a lot of interesting and great beers. I agree with you on the Indian Head Brown. Also, Midas Touch, Festina Peche, and Raisson D'Etra are very nice.

QUOTE (lord chas @ Aug 16, 2010 -> 11:48 AM) tuesdays game a must win? I would say so.

QUOTE (WCSox @ Aug 16, 2010 -> 11:25 AM) Ozzie/Wise/Nix are no more responsible for the Sox tanking last season than Ozzie/Kotsay/Jones are for the Sox playing poorly over the past week. In both cases, a bad bullpen hurt the team a lot more. Not saying anything about last year, but some of Ozzie's decision making has been responsible for losses this year. Certainly an imploding bullpen was responsible for the ugliness of the past few games. But I think that the Sox would be in a better position right now if they didn't have to rely on the likes of Kotsay and/or Jones in the lineup so often.

QUOTE (WCSox @ Aug 16, 2010 -> 10:53 AM) People need to stop playing this card. The Sox have been bad over the past week because the same players that dominated the league for the past two months haven't been executing. It's as simple as that. I disagree, but that's what the board is all about...discussions. I believe that the DH position has been an issue, and Ozzie has made some bad decisions when it comes to lineups because of that. Mark Kotsay getting as many at bats as he has (and in the 5 hole quite often) is not a recipe for a lot of wins. Look at the batting averages of the two guys (Jones and Kotsay) that were supposed to be our DH's. Not good.

QUOTE (Greg Hibbard @ Aug 16, 2010 -> 08:58 AM) We are 3-7 in the last 10. Prior to that stretch, we had gone 38-13 over the previous 51. I realize the past two weeks have been tough to swallow, but every team has a 3-7 stretch in the last two months of the season. So many things went wrong over the last ten games. I'd say the book is still out on whether this is a real august-september fade or just a tough ten games. If we can somehow win the series in minnesota, the season still has life. If we lose two out of three, we're probably out of it, but have a chance if the Twins fade a bit after playing us. If we get swept, we're definitely out of it. These are good points. Every team has bad spells, and the Sox are going through one right now. Their bad spell is amplified by the fact that they lost to a bad Baltimore team and the fact that the Twins are playing good baseball right now. It seems to me that the Sox are a fragile team and a lot of things have to go right for them to have a good run. Let's hope things start clicking soon because the Twins are for real.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Aug 15, 2010 -> 08:19 PM) I know baseball's a long season and you don't want to get too high or too long, but the organization needs to figure a way to have more success against teams in the division. Sox have been average to s***ty against Central teams two years in a row now haven't they? Yes, they have. I can almost accept a hard time against the Twins, but playing like s*** against Cleveland and KC is ridiculous.

QUOTE (Iwritecode @ Aug 12, 2010 -> 10:02 AM) Pet Semetary where 3-year-old Gage gets hit by the truck and all they show is a bloody shoe rolling across the road. Then at the end of the movie where the father had to stick him with a needle to "kill" him again. As a parent, these were especially disturbing, although the desriptions in the book were much worse. Oh yeah. The movie is bad enough, but the book is very disturbing.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Aug 15, 2010 -> 08:01 PM) Yeah, but how in the hell are we gonna win two? They routed us in two of the three at the Cell and found every which way to beat us 3 of 4 last time in Minnie. It will take three amazing starting pitching performances, Oz making the right calls with the bullpen late, and whomever he calls upon in the pen doing the job. All with our past history against the Twins suggesting failure. I haven't felt more fatalistic about a series than that horrible road trip to Boston, NY and Minnie last September. Greg, I actually agree with you. The offense needs to take the game out of Ozzie's hands by scoring a lot of runs.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Aug 15, 2010 -> 08:11 PM) What about Putz? If he's not hurt, he'll probably be closing if we somehow have a lead in the ninth. And based on hit perfomance as of late, he may blow another save. The offense needs to make sure the Sox are up by 4 or so going into the ninth.

QUOTE (sin city sox fan @ Aug 15, 2010 -> 06:36 PM) No one else besides me thinks we sweep this series? Trust me...Ozzie will have this team ready to play! I laughed out loud here. Ozzie hasn't had this team ready to play much this season. He's been too busy trying to get Kotsay as many at bats as possible.

I can't figure it out. This year it seems like the lack of a real DH and the sometimes baffling managing decisions by Ozzie are finally catching up with them. The long run of great baseball was probably a lot of over acheiving. THe team is good, but I'm not sure they are good enough to be playing beyond the first week of October.

Gotta love a good hooror movie or a good action flick. What about those scenes in movies that make you cringe? - Tom Hanks busting out his own infected tooth in Castaway - Ed Norton curbing that guy outside his house in American History X - When Shauna McDonald got stuck in the cave tunnel in The Descent Post the scenes that really disturbed you...

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 11, 2010 -> 02:36 PM) Really, he can't be less effective than Kotsay. The problem with JD is that he had no interest in being a low paid part time player. And now he's a no paid no time player. I wonder if he regrets not signing somewhere.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Aug 11, 2010 -> 01:11 PM) Freddy pitched last night. I got that. Nice.

QUOTE (elrockinMT @ Aug 11, 2010 -> 02:03 PM) Let's see if Jermaine Dye is available for September He's more than available, but as far as I know he doesn't want to just DH. You'd think by now he would have changed his mind?

QUOTE (whitesoxfan101 @ Aug 11, 2010 -> 09:37 AM) Watching Jim Thome put up a .972 OPS for the Twins because we couldn't promise him enough at bats, while watching his replacement get probably more than 350 at bats and put up an OPS about .3 lower is going to be hard to top on the annoying list. I think the topper would be if we finish only 1-3 game out of first, since such a scenario means we can put losing the division almost directly on that idiotic decision. That's what I've been thinking. If the Sox lose the divsion by 6 games or more we can shake our heads and say the team wasn't good enough. But if they lose it by 1 game or so, we can easily pin enough loses on the lack of a real DH to have made the difference.

I thought this was going to a poll about whether it would hurt more to lose the division by 1 game or 6 games. But, I do like the choices. I voted for the last one, even though we all seem to know that the dome wasn't the real cause for the Sox to play so badly against the Twins.

QUOTE (Chet Kincaid @ Aug 11, 2010 -> 06:50 AM) You know what would cheer me up? A serious ass whuppin put on the twins tonight in our ballpark in front of our fans, followed by another serious ass whuppin put on the twins Thursday night in our ballpark in front of our fans. That will get the job done. 'Nuff said.

Constantly losing to the twins is getting very old. What makes last night's loss even worse is the fact that they played poorly in Baltimore. Now this series against the Twins is that much bigger. I'm sick of not having a legitimate DH, and I'm tired of hearing Ozzie defend his rotating DH idea. If KW takes one note about this season it should be, "Don't listen to Ozzie." Winning the next two against the Twins is very important. Winning only one will put the Sox 1 game back, which wouldn't be horrendous, but still inexusable because of what happened in Baltimore.