greg775

Face of White Sox organization: Mark, Paulie, Ozzie. Nobody else is on that list right now. AJ is close.

I think Ozzie's only problem is he thinks too much about his lineups. I'm sure when he was a player he liked the lineups being relatively the same every day. We shall see if his plan works this year. I really don't see a need for Paulie having a day off yet.

Beckham

I don't think anybody is freaking out, but nobody was thinking he would have two unproductive starts to open the season. s*** happens, I guess.

The reason Ozzie will never get fired is that great picture in the dugout when he hugged Mark Buehrle after his second win, the game in which Buehrle gutted out the victory w/out his best stuff. Players appear to love Ozzie; Ozzie is great. A lot of people second guess this pitching move or that pinch hit move or this bunt or whatever. His decisions you may not agree with in hindsight but they are the decisions of a good baseball mind. You watch a baseball game, any game, and you can find s*** to second guess if your team loses. That's a fact. This year, Oz can't win, cause if the team sucks on a given night, the critics will simply say, 'Those are the players Oz wanted. It's his fault if the team didn't score enough to win.' That's a copout. KW puts the team together with input from Ozzie. It's his team. I think Oz's rotating DH idea is stupid, and I think we are a big bat short, but I still love Ozzie.

I haven't been to the Cell in a while, but those parking lots that stretch forever to the south (i think it's the south) and the neighborhood to the north ... aren't there still a zillion homes in those areas? I mean couldn't all those be sold to giant hotel companies and restaurants and bars, etc? if the neighborhood was destined to be a destination neighborhood? The Cell basically sits there and to the West is beautiful Bridgeport, but to the north and south there is nothing but homes and to the East is a neighborhood that really could be thriving but isn't? Couldn't the college and the east of the park really be the area that could boom if somebody had a plan??? Who lives in all those homes to the north and south of the park? That's not considered Bridgeport is it?

Ah, I get it. But some of us remember Old Comiskey before they had the massive parking lots. There were houses in the neighborhood right by the park and it was a dangerous situation. You had to pay thugs on the street money to "watch your car" during the game. To the thugs' credit, if you paid the thugs 10 bucks, you would come out to find your car still had its tires inflated If you didn't pay, good chance your tires would be flat. The argument would be, if the Sox didn't buy out all those homes, would it still be a dangerous area? Bridgeport may be several blocks away, but it's still pretty close by. The homes by the old Comiskey parking lots were shacks with many roving gangs hanging around the park.

Until we make some moves to improve the lineup, I've lowered my expectations for this team. I will be pleasantly surprised by anything good that we do. It's been said a million times by people way smarter than me. We have a pretty horses*** lineup, especially if as you say, Beckham has to keep bunting all the time. I would agree, move Beckham to fifth or something and let somebody else do the bunting. Beckham actually has some pop in his bat. I digress. Our lineup is very bad and there's no reason to think we can contend for anything meaningful with this lineup. I didn't think the Tigers would get off to a good start like this, but they may be better than we are, as well. With all due respect to Ranger, my cop out is I am expecting little, hoping for a lot. And yes, our pitching is fantastic.

How do you do that? Isn't Bridgeport just a nice old neighborhood with very narrow streets, schools, parks, churches, etc? It's just an old neighborhood. What do you mean integrate the park into Bridgeport?

Anybody who thinks those "mows my lawn" Tshirts are funny is a moron. Who would buy one of those?

I didn't mean complete fail. I meant up and down years as well as the complete failures and wastes of money. I just think owners got way too greedy paying so much money for arms and it's shown up throughout the years in your ticket prices, so I hope you enjoy the starting pitching of all these guys in baseball, even the mediocre arms making 5-10 mill a year. Again this has nothing to do with Peavy. I like his attitude and approach; hope he can get it going.

This is not directed at Peavy; I like him. Baseball as a whole, though, really blew it by giving pitchers astronomical deals. With few exceptions, most of these starters are fairly brittle and not worth the kind of jack they receive. I won't list all the examples, but you have to admit, baseball as a business blew it by giving pitchers huge multi year deals considering how quickly some of them can fail like Zito, Meche, Lee is on the DL this year, etc.

Say what you want about Pods, he has done the smart thing in a new town, and has come up with some big multi hit games early. The fans here currently love him. They like Getz too.

I've based my Jones dislike on a rabid Rangers fan I know very well who told me he was a stiff and Rangers fans despised him. Also the fact I figured he was actually worse than the Dye we'd still have this year if we signed Dye.

Congratulations to Jones, Rios and Teahen.

Yeah I really deserve to be slapped around after tonight. If Jones and Teahen build on this I may never live it down. I could never imagine Jones blasting two home runs in a game. We shall see what happens. Obviously the offense has awakened. But I am glad to be exposed as a fraud. First and foremost I am a Sox fan. I will admit it when I'm wrong and tonight I congratulate Jones/Teahen for doing something I didn't think they would ever do. What about Peavy? He can't be happy with his first two outings this season.

Was this a brutal game thread? I didn't see the game tonite.

I'm glad the fans in Toronto are all over Rios. Won't hurt in inspiring him to get two plus hits a game.

Not to be a dick, but Pods had another monster game today. Obviously he's not finished and it doesn't look like Thome is finished, either. We coulda had both on the cheap. Any regrets? I'll stop with the Pods talk if it's making anybody mad, but it's easy for me to notice him since I am in Royals country.

Not all of 'em. I wanted to keep either Dye or Thome. to go with Paulie. I agreed we shiould get rid of one of 'em.

We should have given Carrasco's 1 mill to a Mr. Jim Thome.

Truthfully, we need our starters to do what Mark did today in a vast majority of our games or we have no chance of doing anything. Our hitting is that bad we need our starters to dominate all season. They got to go at least deep into the seventh, preferably all the way through seven, maybe 7 1/3. Then Oz can pick and choose with the lefty, ritey bulls*** leading up to Jenks.

That's what I was thinking. Man he was flowing at that point.

That's true. I felt a lot more calm watching the game today. For whatever reason, my expectations for the team have been lowered greatly with our play in that first homestand.

I wanted Mark to stay in, just because I sensed another late inning loss coming had he left the mound. If our reliever walks the first batter, all bets are off in another close game.