greg775

QUOTE (Deadpool @ May 18, 2016 -> 01:12 PM) If I'm baseball, I want the Cubs to win the World Series ASAP while their guys are young. The media surrounding that franchise would be huge for the sport. If the Cubs had a "dynasty", it would be like the Blackhawks in the NHL magnified tenfold. Good comparison to the Blackhawks. I would think with the $$$ they are spending and willing to spend and the current talent assembled, Cubs probably are going to win three WS in the next 5-6 years. If they don't win it this year, then there truly is a jinx. Team is head and shoulders better than anybody. I was hopeful the Sox would have this dynamite pitching staff all year and stifle Cubs in WS. However it's all come down to earth like a boulder thrown off a 10 story building. Our pitching ain't anything special after all.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ May 19, 2016 -> 12:47 AM) Baylor is proving your point I wish college sports presidents weren't puppets and would clean up college sports. A good start would be to take away all athletic scholarships for four years and just see what athletes want to play for what schools. I know ... too late to do something like that. ESPN and the other networks would cry bloody murder; fatcat alums who build the practice gyms and renovate the football stadiums and build the luxury dorms would cry bloody murder. I'd do it like the Ivy League ... no athletic scholarships, none. Let the pros be the pros. As far as scandals go, I would say the Penn State situation was the worst one of all time by far. Those poor victims of the defensive coordinator. Sick and sad. I'm sure he's paying the price in prison.

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ May 18, 2016 -> 07:20 PM) They are getting Ben Simmons though, who I believe is a superstar. So they'll have 1 more superstar than the Bulls currently have giving them a better chance going forward. Bulls are in basketball hell. I'd like to see the Bulls trade up to get Jamal Murray. Don't know what it would take but aside form Ben Simmons, he is the guy I'd want for the Bulls. You can have Brandon Ingram. It's Murray who is the gem (along with Simmons). I still like the Thunder in five or six. Good job by the Warriors tonight, though, but as the Spurs proved in Game One vs. OKC, margin of victory means nothing. The OKC fans are crazy; GS in deep trouble still. Bet.The.House. Thunder to cover for sure in Game Three.

I wouldn't mind him stirring it up vs. KC if we get off to a bad start on Friday. If it's 4-0 Royals and that stiff, Gee, is mowing us down, I wouldn't mind Lawrie starting a fight or something. Anything but Royals sweeping us in the Cell.

QUOTE (SoCalSox @ May 19, 2016 -> 04:10 AM) The Royals is going to rip this team to shreds this weekend. You know it. The Moustakas return game Saturday is gonna piss me off beyond belief. He has a flair and pencil him in for two homers and five ribbies on Sat minimum. Why can't he sit a few more games?? QUOTE (caulfield12 @ May 19, 2016 -> 04:22 AM) Putnam isn't close to being a "prospect" anymore...he's more of a journeyman veteran who seemingly has found a home in our bullpen but hasn't been AS effective as he was in 2014. He's fine for a "second unit" in the pen, but he's not currently the guy who can blow away guys (see Giles yesterday) and tends to pitch to more contact...which is fine as long as those sinkers and forkballs are hit at fielders and not elevated. Btw, your OKC obliteration of the Warriors isn't working out so well. I chose the wrong word on prospect. Sorry. I kinda meant (in my mind anyway) the candidate to be our best eighth inning guy now that Albers is throwing meat up there screaming "hit me." Not prospect but our best choice. I think he has more talent than Albers POTENTIALLY this season is what I was going to say. QUOTE (caulfield12 @ May 19, 2016 -> 04:26 AM) To add insult to injury, it was Rajai Davis who tied the game for CLE, yikes...Kipnis just made a highlight reel play, 2 outs for the Reds and nobody on base. At any rate, Quintana vs. Dillon Gee strongly favors the Sox, Gonzalez vs. Duffy (on a pitch count) is a toss-up and then Rodon/Ventura could go either way. We miss Volquez/Kennedy entirely, so there's no excuse for not taking 2/3 against KC this weekend. KC is going to be on a bit of a high since they're back to .500, playing much better defense and Moustakas is returning on SAT. Damn the Moustakas game bothers me.

QUOTE (fathom @ May 19, 2016 -> 04:25 AM) They cared way too much about saving the comp pick this past offseason Great point. QUOTE (fathom @ May 19, 2016 -> 04:34 AM) Rodon will be fine. It's the 4-5 that are scary bad We can't win with those 4-5, that's for sure. Only way we're going to make the playoffs is if our starters DOMINATE. Remember when we were dominating 1 through 4 with only Danks lousy? Sox are in big trouble. Like I said, what about the LaRoche haters? When are they gonna kick some clubhouse ass and get the team going? Sox look like patsies right now. Royals smelling blood this weekend. Only hope for us is their starters suck as well, but you know how the Sox generally look against lousy starters?

QUOTE (flavum @ May 19, 2016 -> 04:18 AM) There's something the Sox can do in the next week to prevent that. This is where the new blood, the LaRoche haters, have to do what it looked like they were gonna do: Be bad-asses and stir something up. I heard today the players in major league baseball have more to do with attitude of teams than the manager. Lawrie, Frazier, Rollins need to get these corpseballers (of late) fired up!!!! Just.Do.It.Leaders

Sox doing a poor job of bouncing back after tough losses. Bad game tonight. A pessimist might say our starting pitching suddenly stinks with just two excellent starters and three so-so starters (at best). Obviously Rodon will be excellent some day. Bullpen, as has happened ever since Joe Morgan said it was the best in baseball, gets off to a red-hot start now looks average (cept for the lockdown closer). I'm hoping Putnam will continue putting up zeros cause in theory he's a better prospect than Albers IMO. Sox are catching the Royals at a bad time. This team blows right now.

Central Division is very very weak this year. I'd expect 5-10 over .500 will win it.

QUOTE (fathom @ May 18, 2016 -> 03:45 PM) Albers is getting in trouble because every pitch is on the same plane. Needs to do a better job of changing the eye level of the hitter It's time to quit using him so much. He's pitched himself out of that role for now. Gulp, use the other guys more.

QUOTE (Middle Buffalo @ May 17, 2016 -> 01:38 PM) It's hilarious that there's even a controversy about traveling in the NBA. Yes, Westbrook traveled and dragged his pivot foot on that play. And he and everyone else does it the entire game. The traveling and dragging/moving/changing pivot foot makes the NBA borderline unwatchable for me. I don't even understand how you can play organized basketball your whole life and feel (in a physical-muscle memory way) like it's ok to travel. It feels so odd to me when I play to take an extra step. And pickling up or changing my pivot foot - out of the question. That's what the people I was with said immediately. A traveling controversy in NBA??? WTF. OKC is healthy; Adams has become a player; Kanter is useable. OKC in four, five no more than six! Bank it.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ May 18, 2016 -> 07:39 AM) Well, since we don't have any great internal candidates to replace him, Albers would probably be pushed back to the "second unit" with Petricka, Putnam and Jennings. Of course, that would leave the question of who can hold the lead in the 7th inning an open question. In all likelihood, they're going to have to trade for someone if it continues to linger as an issue. Personally, I think Albers is just a bit gassed. He doesn't seem to be in the greatest physical condition, he's an older/veteran player and he's been utilized a LOT by Ventura in the first quarter of the season. He SHOULD bounce back. It does seem his stuff isn't as crisp, not as much movement as before. They're unlikely to just DFA him at this point when he's been one of the major strengths of the team until the last 10 days or so. Our big three starters are going to need to go 7 consistently or we aren't winning anything. No playoffs again. Amazing that it's almost June already. My god the calendar flies by. It was just spring training.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ May 18, 2016 -> 06:49 AM) Greg, I advise you to look at the board of a collapsing unicorn start-up called THERANOS. If you look all around the world, there are former politicians working as hugely paid K Street lobbyists, on the "prestige" list for the most famous law firms in the world even though they haven't practiced since leaving office, making speeches, serving on corporate boards, tv/radio shows like Mike Huckabee/Alan Keyes/Ben Carson, etc. It was a good night for Bernie in the sense that winning KY doesn't mean anything because delegates were split 25/25, he ran away with Oregon and most already expected Clinton to win KY because she contested it the last two weeks, it was a closed primary (no independents or Republicans could cross over to vote for Sanders), etc. The results tonight pushed the campaign at least to California and potentially to some type of movement/disruption/protest at the Democratic Convention. The lead in ACTUAL delegates is still a spread of something like 300. That's not counting all the superdelegates where the Clintons control 90%+ of them, with only 40 something for Sanders. There's no way he can win at this point. However, Clinton now has to fight a "two front" war with Trump and Sanders at least through June 7th (California) and things are getting increasingly nasty and rancorous on the Democratic side after all the events in Nevada at the convention and the resulting letter from Sanders which showed he's not backing down (you should read that if you want something to cheer you up). And, Trump's actually polling ahead of or within the margin of error in states like WV, KY, Indiana, PA, Ohio and Michigan. The survey results show he's leading Clinton by 10-15% across all those states in terms of potential trust for dealing with the economy. Thank u Caulfield. It does make me feel better. ... You are on fire with your posts this year. You have become an intelligent poster. I think last year you were a C or B-. This year you are an A- or A.

QUOTE (ronkark @ May 18, 2016 -> 05:50 AM) We are officially slumping. DEFENSE: Saladino error, mental mistake. Jackson, 2nd dropped fly ball of year. PITCHIN: Albers is like a cat. If that cat was bad at pitching. Rodon: Still no command. Still can't tighten it up with runners on. Stop getting behind hitter. So we've lost 3 in a row heading into a Mat Latos start. I don't like it. Baseball is such a crazy game. Albers was king of the world, a probable all-star in April. Now he has to be considered as a possible DL candidate if he gets rocked in another appearance or two. I mean he's been THAT BAD he may have to sit. Right?? If this keeps up, he's killing the team after being a godsend.

Tough tough night for me. Bernie blistered Hillary in Oregon but lost by a meager .5 in Kentucky. The sweep might finally have gotten the pundits to admit momentum. You realize how close that was to a sweep?? P.S. In a CNN article tonight: "In total, Bill and Hillary Clinton gave 28 speeches in 2015 for $6,725,500." Hot damn that's a lot of money. I wish CNN would go to all the speech organizers and see if Hillary gave 'em hell at any of those speech sites, as in was she difficult? The Clintons can thank America for putting them in a lap of luxury since Bill left office. My gawd, just for giving speeches they earned that kind of jack. Hillary has to be nuts to want to be president instead of just continuing to rake in the $$$ giving speeches in her latter years. If Bill keeps giving speeches though, the $$$ will continue to roll in the Clinton coffers. WOnder what Chelsea gets and will get the next eight years??? Wow Chelsea is gonna have so much $$$. It can't be illegal for her to go off on her own and give speeches. I wonder if anybody is gonna ask Bill, Hillary or Chelsea if they admit their privilege? Talk about easy money compared to the hard working 99 percenters! I know I know ... they earned that speech money by gosh and it's Hillary's turn. She deserves to be queen, oops I mean President.

QUOTE (Deadpool @ May 18, 2016 -> 05:21 AM) 162 game season. No reason to dwell on 1 Not one, but two. That loss in Texas ....

I think we add Anderson during the season and Markaikis would look good as an option.

Could we talk Torii Hunter out of retiring? What about a trade with the Braves who are going nowhere. Get AJP back and dump Avila. Acquire Francouer for some Class A non prospect. Or what about acquiring Markakis for a Class A stiff.

QUOTE (fathom @ May 18, 2016 -> 05:10 AM) Really Albers has just completely collapsed the last week. Even the rest of the pen hasn't been awful. He's simply lost the Sox three games. That gopher ball was inexcusable. Anybody could have ripped that pitch out. Pisses me off. Note the difference in that last pitch to Avila. Slop. He waved at it. QUOTE (Lip Man 1 @ May 18, 2016 -> 05:13 AM) maybe one game can make that big of a difference. I've seen it happen before to the Sox. Mark It happens all the time to the Sox. You usually can point to one game as starting the collapse. What makes me mad is tonight we could have reversed all the bad karma. We had the game in the ninth. Abreu finishes it off and the Sox would have been jumping up and down and all that. Instead a horrible loss and now we have to worry about losing this series, too.

QUOTE (fathom @ May 18, 2016 -> 05:06 AM) Horrible lose. Umpiring and pitching a joke Also some miserable individual at bats. Bullpen is a major concern suddenly except for closer. Albers was looking automatic until the last 3-4 appearances where he's blown chunks. Now we need to get our starters to go 7 strong innings, and they go lefty, righty matchups in the eighth, paving the way for Robertson. Sorry for the brainfart question about Hawk. It is such a weird decision to not do home games I was thinking for a moment there he didn't do ROAD games. The Royals legend Denny Matthews skips most road trips (not to bring the Royals into this). p.s. If I were Robin I'd alert the media that we can't protest the game but MLB will be alerted to that play. It's like the game was fixed. The batter steps right in the way of the catcher and not one umpire rules him OUT????

That's what you want a lefty reliever to do, throw slop past the lefty hitter. That was a BAD loss as it turned out. We're starting to drop games in bunches like the Royals were doing. Sucks.

Just a single, Avila. I've never liked you. Prove me wrong.

Way to go, Adam. You, sir, are a good man.

QUOTE (StrykerSox @ May 18, 2016 -> 04:59 AM) Enough about the umps. We lost this game. Albers can't finish innings anymore, Abreu has consistently failed to be a dangerous run producer, we played an absurdly weak lineup against a tough pitcher and we failed to use Frazier. Should have used him in the ninth, where he could have ended it or continued the threat, which Saladino's much celebrated SF did not do. This is on us. Not an ump. True ... but .... If they make the easy call, the right call, we get a chance to win it in the bottom of the inning. Never know. Sox mighta won it there. Good post, though.

What was Saladino f***ing around with the bunt? Just concentrate on stroking a hit, you dummy. Two out.