bubba phillips

Throwing only 13 pitches is also an excellent start.

I can't think of one. But that fact alone should not dismiss drafting a kid out of high school, as opposed to a college junior. The Atlanta Braves have had a long history of going the high school route, the most notable being Chipper Jones. Their philosophy is to train the raw talent in the Braves Way. Oh, I forgot. There is no such thing as the White Sox Way. Never mind.

Surely, you jest. (and don't call me Shirley ). (Airplane, circa 1980) Remember, over the winter, when the Phillies owner said he would spend "stupid money" to build a championship team? Reinsdorf said something similar: "I will spend money stupidly" . They both delivered.

Christmas Eve. Alonso is still in the lineup and still batting cleanup. Boy, that Renteria is a stubborn bastard.

There are tons of examples of pitchers coming back stronger and better than they were before the TJ surgery. I wonder if they had to change anything in their mechanics, pitch selection, etc. to prevent a recurrence of the injury that caused their problems in the first place. Or do they go back to what they were doing before? I draw the analogy of a person needing heart bypass surgery because of years of eating greasy foods. That person obviously can't continue with that type of diet after his surgery or he'll be right back on the table.

couldn't do that---the lifelong hatred is too ingrained.

Wasn't Frank Thomas a franchise figure? And with much better future HOF stats. Williams got rid of him anyway.

That brings up an interesting point. If the Sox move out of Chicago, would everyone on this board still be a Sox fan? I don't know if I would. I grew up in Chicago but have moved several times. I have remained a Sox fan rather than become a fan of the team in the city I lived in (currently Atlanta). They're my hometown team. If that's no longer the case, I don't know if my loyalties would change.

Thanks for that information. But that wasn't the question. What is the most strikeouts by a player AT THE START OF HIS CAREER?

Of the hundreds of topics that have been beaten to death on this board, you take exception to this one? Really? Must be a shareholder (or a Reinsdorf relative)

And an error.

Reinsdorf is the worst possible type of owner, from a fan's standpoint. His absolute #1 goal is "return on investment for his shareholders". Nothing else matters. Winning would be nice, but not mandatory. The Sox need an owner like Mark Cuban---a billionaire who would own a team for the sole purpose of winning a championship.

Latest example, also from the Braves: Austin Riley. First 10 games in the bigs: batting .350 with 5 HR's and 12 RBI's. The Braves have this rebuild thing down to a science. Won their division last year in Year 3 of their rebuild and they're still cranking out stars. The Sox have no clue how this should be done.

So, Lopez and his nasty 6.03 ERA is a solid member of the Big Two? And Covey at 5.31 is brutal?

Our players aren't exactly the sharpest knives in the cutlery drawer. It's been proven many times that sliding head first into 1B takes longer than going over the bag in an upright position--- many times it's the difference between being safe or out. A lot of the blame for this lies with the coaches for not teaching this to the players.

OR he could pitch like he did his start, when he went 5 2/3 innings.

I'll take the over. For the 7 games of the road trip---50 runs total.

Veeck's idiotic trades probably cost the Sox a pennant or two in the early '60's.

If I remember correctly, Score (then with Cleveland) was an excellent pitcher. One day he was hit in the head by a batted ball off the bat of Gil McDougald of the Yankees. Scared the crap out of him and he was never the same after that.

On this 7-game road trip to Houston and Minnesota, I'll go with 2 wins and 50 runs given up by our pitchers.

And thus ends the easy portion of our program. In the first 45 games of the season, the Sox played the 4 worst hitting teams a total of 26 times, going 14-12. The last 13 games were exclusively against those teams. While the record of 21-24 thus far is a lot better than expected by most of us here, it was against the weakest of competition. Let's see what we do now that we play some teams that can hit the baseball a little bit.

Either that or Renteria is the official Tank Manager of Major League Baseball. How else do you explain 2 guys "hitting" .180 batting 4th and 5th and 2 guys hitting over .300 batting 7th and 9th?

We're only 3 games out of the 2nd wildcard spot.

Or maybe the reason Alonso was hitting 6th was that maybe Renteria finally wised up and realized that maybe a .180 hitter should not be batting cleanup, that maybe another spot in the order would take some of the pressure off of him and would let him relax a little.