greg775

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Oct 21, 2011 -> 06:23 PM) Why dont you go poll everyone in St Louis and let us know. Or send Motte an email. How are we supposed to know if LaRussa stripped his closer of all of his confidence? the point remains, LaRussa consistently has his team in position for the playoffs. 10.5 games out, and his team came back and got into the world series. now, name for me a manager that could not get his team to come back from the same deficit in the same amount of time in an equally up for grabs division. btw, your consistently questioning other managers decisions and trying to relate them to Ozzie really is lame. The guy got traded for a lot of reasons, and not all of them were on the field. Thanks, fathom for the answer. Reasonable discussion. I just think it may be hard to bunt a ball thrown that hard. Even if he bunts it, it coulda been right to the pitcher. Kylie IMO you should know better as a mod than to start your post by blasting me like that. How does that add to discussion on a website by blasting me? Then I respond and it's a war that you started, not me. Your first paragraph is an invitation to a fight. Sad. I am assuming u are referring to my polling my friends in KC a few times about WhiteSox matters. If not, my bad. For what it's worth, perhaps LaRussa never would refer to him as his "closer" for that reason. That he knew there might come a time the former catcher might not have it and he might have to yank him. I am not a LaRussa hater. I think he's good baseball mind.

QUOTE (kjshoe04 @ Oct 21, 2011 -> 06:38 PM) I'm sure greg has his plane ticket already purchased for it. No, I'm a Sox fan first and foremost. I love Ozzie but I can't control his leaving. I also loved Chet Lemon, but he went to Detroit and then I moved on. Too bad we haven't had a good center fielder (hitting/defense combined) since he was here.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Oct 21, 2011 -> 06:28 PM) Regardless of the people's opinion on this board, Walker is respected in the MLB community. Good luck in Atlanta! As usual, I agree with Badger. Good luck to Walker. Sounds like he is totally committed to his job.

If Sox have worst farm system in baseball, there's only one way to retool. Free agency, baby.

Well then leave my favorite manager out of it. Did LaRussa strip his closer of all confidence by yanking him last night? Did he f*** up going for the bunt against a guy throwing 100. Punto couldn't lay it down and tony basically gave up that at bat. The board has few threads in the offseason and the World Series is pretty compelling when decisions fail.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 21, 2011 -> 02:02 PM) AmyKNelson Amy K. Nelson by robneyer looks like pujols, berkman, Molina and Holliday all left without speaking to media tonight. meanwhile, motte is STILL answering ?s... #leadership You gotta be kidding me? Those guys didnt' talk to the media?? In the World Series? Most major sports make guys available in the biggest of settings. Weak.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 21, 2011 -> 02:04 PM) There is actual reasons to question LaRussa last night. For one, he took his "Closer" (in everything but name) out when he didn't need to. But then again...LaRussa also has his team into the WS, tied 1-1, in a clearly competitive series. Exactly. Why can't anybody except Balta be willing to discuss this. He f***ed up badly and nobody wants to talk about it cause I mention Ozz in the same context? Why the venom? I'm trying to make points. Everybody wants me to cite examples. I do and get nailed hard. Watching the game with friends, you could tell Motte didn't have it. I was impressed and amazed he took him out and said, 'If this move works, he's a genius, replacing the closer.' It failed, they lost and one guy watching with us said: 'Now the story is LaRussa took out his closer. You can't take out the closer. It will kill his confidence the rest of the series.' Managers often cannot win. ALL MANAGERS even ones named Ozzeroo.

QUOTE (MEANS @ Oct 20, 2011 -> 05:32 PM) Hilarious!!!!! Hmmm by the definition of objective, Oz haters aren't objective either.

QUOTE (kitekrazy @ Oct 20, 2011 -> 06:06 AM) Baseball owners aren't much different in spending than the officials in D.C. A salary cap would save them from their bad spending or eliminate guaranteed contracts. The Yankees seem to put more resources on offense and it's proving to be a failure in the post season. Exactly. These owners need to be protected from themselves. At least in football teams can cut the player and no more money. Of course those football players get all that bonus money up front. It's crazy. Almost all these long term deals looks s***ty at some point. Great story there by Posnanski.

QUOTE (MexSoxFan#1 @ Oct 20, 2011 -> 03:56 PM) Tony LaRussa made all the right moves last night, Washington didn't. Low scoring games, huge aadvantage for St. Louis because it comes down to manager moves, LaRussa all day over Washington. Umm. So tonight Tony gets owned by Washington? LaRussa makes THE WRONG choices in the pen late. LaRussa calls for bunt in ninth; Punto can't get it down and whiffs. Managing is overrated. Players win games; Rangers won this one late. The godlike Tony got schooled by Washington. Why? Cause Texas won. I won't mention what the reax on this board woulda been if our manager called for a ninth-inning bunt and we couldn't get it down like Punto.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Oct 18, 2011 -> 11:54 PM) Ignoring this truth is now an art, apparently. Please. This is where we disagree. Ozzie "quit" cause he couldn't get the extension. You read that last Cowley story where he addressed the quitting issue with that colorful obscene quote. Cmon. We are all smart people here (resist the temptation to rip me here). We know KW won the battle. Ozzie "quit?" Cmon. Please stop saying that. If the Marlins' offer hadn't been looming, he'd have been replaced or bought out or whatever you want to call it. Or KW would have quit. Reasonable adult fans on here know it was Oz or Ken and Ken won. As an Oz backer I admit that. KW won. He faceplanted Ozzie. He cold cocked him harder than Mayweather floored poor Victor.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 18, 2011 -> 07:39 PM) Stewart needs to start the season at AAA. He's never had a full season above AA and only had about 6 AAA innings before we called him up. He's raw, and not unexpectedly so, since he was only recently converted from relieving to starting by the Blue Jays. He's a good candidate to be the "6th starter" next year, the guy we stash at AAA as a starter to use if Peavy gets hurt or to give Sale some time off in late July when the innings load comes back to hurt him. He has a better set of offspeed stuff than I expected but he doesn't have good control on it yet, that means sometimes he has games like the one against the Twins where he's locating it, and some days he gets shelled because no one swings at anything other than his fastball. I wasn't really impressed with the sink on his 2 seamer just yet either. I'd really like to see that ball become "Heavier" in the forcing ground balls sense. Altogether though, the stuff is possibly there long term but needs some improvement. Philip Humber...I'm genuinely excited about. He might pull a 2004 Loaiza on me, but this is a classic Coop Fixed him case. Suddenly goes from having no confidence in his stuff to throwing strikes, making people look silly, and winning ballgames. His 2nd half was entirely predictable and any manager who wasn't drunk off his tail for the first half could have seen his problem...he never threw more than 140 innings and wasn't stretched out at all, so he'd get past 4-5 innings and his arm would tire out. Then, later in the season, he was genuinely tired until the Sox gave him a rest, then he came back and threw some solid games afterwards. Intelligent use of Humber and realizing where he could/coudln't have been pushed would have made his season look a lot better. But otherwise, there's reason to be excited about him especially since we pushed him to 163 big league innings this year. Sounds good to me.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Oct 18, 2011 -> 07:33 PM) Again, don't understand the Cowley hatred. Would you prefer him not to report what Guillen thinks of Cooper or Williams? Cowley's reports are one-sided, but KW and Jerry won't talk to him, so hey, he gets to fire away with one side of the story. I can't believe people aren't a bit concerned about Coop after it was alleged he was a rat and snitch. Who's gonna want to pitch for him if that's true?

That article made it sound like Mark's return would screw things up in part because of Humber and Stewart who both reeked the last half. Mark's return isn't making anything inconvenient IMO. What do you guys think of the two of them? Are they just average or 2 guys to get excited about?

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Oct 18, 2011 -> 09:59 AM) There are over 9000 quotes better. QUOTE (Marty34 @ Oct 18, 2011 -> 03:51 PM) Now it makes sense why Coop wasn't given serious consideration for the manager's job. Kenny didn't have a spy to take his place. 9,000 comments better than this one? “Since last year, this was about integrity, it was about loyalty, it was about do they want me here. Let me say it my way: The Sox were saying, ‘Yes, we want to f--- you, but we don’t want to marry you.’ ’’ I doubt that.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Oct 18, 2011 -> 12:14 PM) And who put that team together??? I've given KW his props for that. But if the Sox are discarding Ozzie and fans are turning on him, well I think the blame should be shared and KW should be outta here. And this stuff with Coop is troubling too.

Couple things. 1.) I wish I could go on a 16-day vacation right now. Ah to be rich like Ozzie. 2.) Coop may be a rat. Should get interesting to see if anybody else supports Ozzie on this. Nobody likes a suck up rat and in Ozzie's opinion Coop is a rat. Hmmmm. That last quote from Ozzie may be the best quote in sports history.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Oct 18, 2011 -> 06:21 AM) It's awesome that your posts have driven people who are merely guests to register just so they can put you on ignore... Nothing against you personally, Greg, but perhaps it's time to disconnect your head from Ozzie's anus now. What can I say? I support Ozzie all the way. He gave me the only title of my lifetime and probably the only title of my lifetime. Odds are very slim we'll win one again.

Flowers will be 26 on Opening Day. He's not that young. He's ready. If the Sox can get anybody to take AJ's contract, I'd think they will deal him. AJ is not the kind of guy who is going to respond to limited duty. Should be interesting to see how Robin will handle a militant AJ and u better believe he'll make waves if he isn't playing eight or nine of every 10 games.

Rios as we all know is a dog, and Quentin actually can hit and produce. The outfield should be CQ in left, DeAza in center and Tank in right. Let Rios be the sub and/or take over if CQ gets hurt. That actually might be a winning outfield if Tank can hit like he did in the minors. Rios, DeAza and Tank is much more risky because Rios can't hit. If DeAza is streaky and Tank isn't the Tank we expect, then we need CQ's bat even more. If we actually want to try to compete, we have NO CHANCE with the Rios, DeAza, Tank outfield IMO. Presumably Ventura will take KW up on his offer to not play Rios because that was such an obvious move to the Oz haters.

QUOTE (Greyone @ Oct 16, 2011 -> 09:06 PM) I am so tired of this same old spiel from you, you should just move on from it. A lot of other people seem to have. Kenny will get his as there are many who want him gone, time and time again a bunch of folks have pointed this out to you. Kenny is not loved on this board, and many want him gone. It is apparent that JR will not get rid of him at this point in time so there is no reason to keep up that same old song and dance about him. It harder to build a team than manage it. People will no doubt come with torches a blazing when the season is over. You do realize that games are still being played right now. The World Series hasn't even begun, Kenny hasn't even made a decision yet with the team other than the Ventura signing. Yeah, Oz gave him a huge head start. What venom, the board didn't make the decision, JR did. We don't have a single say in what goes on with the team. Kenny didn't win jack, do you truly think he is happy sitting at home and not still playing games. Btw, I've been a long long long time lurker, really love the actual baseball talk and White Sox banter that goes on around here (from time to time). Basically just signed up to ignore a few folks. When you lurk you have to read everything that folks say, or just skim a bunch. It really became laughable to read some people. I told myself I'd never join a sports board just because of the amount of silliness that some folks say but I just couldn't take it anymore. So I hope to be a good member here, I probably won't post a bunch on a regular basis, but maybe I'll add my two pennies from time to time. =) Larry. I probably should be above the fray, but I repeat my stance on Kenny a lot I know. It's probably because I got anti Oz crap shoved in my face every single day for months. So occasionally I point out that I'm ready for the anti Kenny stuff to start a comin. Again, I should be above that. You post pointed that out well.

What's Texas' secret? The amazing hitting coupled with nice bullpen? What has made them the blueprint for a WS team? No coincidence 2 years in row.

QUOTE (sunofgold @ Oct 15, 2011 -> 02:40 AM) They didn't want to wait and at least see what LaRussa was going to do with St. Louis. I know...most likely going back ..but he doesn't have a deal with them yet. Who know what St. Louis wants to do? There were some rumors that he would be back in 2012 and that is why the White Sox didn't just trade Jackson to St. Louis for Colby Rasmus and not involve Toronto. It is not like somebody was going to swoop up Ventura and steal him from us as a manager. And if LaRussa was our new manager then he could have taken Ventura aboard as a coach. Maybe LaRussa would have to bring Duncan as pitching coach. If that was the case, I would say move Cooper over to bench coach. Just sayin'. lol! LaRussa would cost a lot more especially after the run that he is on this year. Talk of LaRussa coming back is almost like an urban myth thing. I was surprised even the media wrote about it like it could happen. You don't go from St. Looie to the White Sox. You just don't.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Oct 16, 2011 -> 02:10 AM) You are on some good drugs or a movie director, because the level of overanalysis and depth to a fictional story is incredible. damn autocorrect Now that the Oz haters got their way, I'm surprised this board isn't more anti Kenny. He's put together a very s***ty team and yet there's not the daily railing about Kenny. I don't get it, Oz haters. Kenny won the initial battle. Now the venom should be toward getting rid of him as well. The only thing good about kenny right now IMO is he hasn't gloated about his winning the war with Ozzie. He's been humble after his victory.

Tony LaRussa is one win from being a lock for the Hall of Fame. Wow. This Cardinals team is possibly headed to the WS? It does give the Sox hope in the Ventura era even with a horrible roster. GO SOX!