greg775

QUOTE (Tex @ Jul 19, 2015 -> 11:54 PM) I've been coaching kids in various venues for 25 years. Parents are the greatest help and the worst nightmares, sometimes at the same time. Great youth coaches get the parents buy in. Awesome, Tex. As coach do you have the authority to get mad at the kids if they are late or disruptive or do you have to let the little precious kiddies do whatever they want nowadays cause you have no right to bench them or make them run laps, etc? I would assume parents don't take kindly to coaches yelling at their kids.

I wanted to drill a Royal as well. I think it was Saturday and I think they hit Abreu. I think that's what got me fired up. It was an obvious situation where you don't want to pitch to Abreu and he got hit on the first pitch. I was hoping to plunk a Royal hard after that. But again, aside from opening day, Sox really don't come to compete IMO. They win their share of games but rarely have that eye of the tiger any more.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Jul 19, 2015 -> 10:20 PM) Congrats greg, you were off by a single run Thanks for the props. I take no joy in my prediction, however, since the Sox got owned again by a divisional foe. I knew this series was lost - 3 of 4 or 4 of 4 - before the series started when Robin made the ridiculous call to wait until Sunday to pitch Sale. I knew Sox weren't coming to compete again, but were looking down the line with no urgency as they always do. Give Sale the extended break, blah blah blah. Again ... someday we will have a team that comes out to battle every day. But right now Sox are just a patsy in their own division. The front office will continue to wait for the 13 game winning streak that might put us in position to grab the wild card. Problem is that streak never comes, but we know that rotten 1-9 or 2-8 stretch on the road sure is coming again at some point the second half as it always does. Sox will probably continue to play decent baseball the rest of the way, looking good on occasion and winning some games, but losing pretty much every series against divisional teams and also suffering that abovementioned stretch. I'd say 12 to 20 below .500 will be the ultimate record.

QUOTE (BigHurt3515 @ Jul 19, 2015 -> 08:50 PM) If he is hurt put him on the damn DL That's what I was thinking. Or just assume he's a singles hitter til the hand improves. QUOTE (GreenSox @ Jul 19, 2015 -> 08:50 PM) Calling for a bunt in that situation is reason enough to fire ventura. 2 on no out; heat of the order coming up, and Robbie plays for 1 or 2. managing scared. You kind of had to bunt there. Down 2-0 nobody out. Pretty much had to do it.

Melky is hot. Maybe this is the tying single.

Hudler said Ventura told him today Abreu has hurt index finger of his top hand and it's hurting him at the plate.

Good guy to have up here. I'd walk him if I were Ned, but I'm nuts.

Good things happen when you hit the ball where it's pitched. Nice hit by Eaton to left on 3-2 offering.

Sox have been taking advantage of opponents mistakes a bit lately. Could be key inning.

Conor's defense reminded me of a bad college player. You never know when he simply was going to kick one or wave at a grounder or throw it away. He was OK last season as a hitter but not a big leaguer. I doubt anybody will pick him up except for AAA ball.

QUOTE (Bigsoxhurt35 @ Jul 19, 2015 -> 04:42 PM) What's the difference between pitching Sale the DH and today? Robin is completely different than Ozzie. We all know that. It doesn't mean he doesn't care. He isn't going to embarrass himself the way Ozzie did at times. You can bash Robin for pitching Danks in the DH but he won. He pitches well against the Royals. We have Sale today, and if Shark pitched like he should have and won Friday then we'd be talking about taking 3 of 4 today with Sale pitching. I preferred sending a rested Sale out there in Game One of the series to maybe shut them out and show the Royals we finally came to play some ball against a team that owns us. Not saying it 100 percent would have worked. For competition sake I wanted Sale/Shark. QUOTE (scs787 @ Jul 19, 2015 -> 05:05 PM) Lol remember when you went on a tangent about Robin running out of pitchers? What would your response have been had Robertson came in and the Sox failed to score for an inning or 2?.You would have b****ed about that too. And Lol at complaining about the order of the rotation. What does it matter if Sale pitches Friday or Sunday? He still pitches against the Royals. I'd have been furious if he ran out of pitchers of course. But I feel like he conceded the game anyway leaving Jennings in there a fourth inning.

QUOTE (pettie4sox @ Jul 19, 2015 -> 04:02 PM) greg you're a bloody closet Royal's fan. I've turned down free Royals tickets 3 times this year cause they weren't playing the Sox. Don't like 'em or their fans or announcers except Denny Mathews. QUOTE (harkness @ Jul 19, 2015 -> 07:48 PM) Just don't blame Ventura for this little league level mental team... Over and over again they make these dumb plays. Melky should have hit the bench after that play. Royals announcers were just ripping Melky for all his hand signals to the dugout and how he hugged not only Hosmer at first base but Escobar when he got to second. They ripped him for doing that during a game. Hudler said "take it to lunch don't disrespect the game like that. It's about competition not hugging but to each his own." QUOTE (SoxPride18 @ Jul 19, 2015 -> 08:12 PM) Escobar wasn't even looking when he picked that. The Royals are so ****ing lucky It's called picking 'em with good hands. QUOTE (fathom @ Jul 19, 2015 -> 08:13 PM) He looks nowhere near 100 pct running Royals announcers said he shouldn't be playing cause of his hand injury.

Sox had been playing well before the break, winning series after series. As expected, they are back to their Sox ways post AS break. I predict the inevitable 3 of 4 losses to KC. Today's game 5-1 Royals.

QUOTE (Jake @ Jul 19, 2015 -> 03:14 AM) In my town, Little League worked like this (wasn't formally associated with LL, just called itself that): -There was a brief, one-day tryout in which every player who signed up was graded by each of the league's coaches. The combined scores were used to create a player ranking (only available to coaches and commissioner). -A draft was conducted, with each coach taking his or her own son in the round he was slotted. -Each team had 11-13 players, but rarely would a team both have 13 players and have 13 players present at any game. -Every player batted throughout the entire game. You'd have a 1-11 or 12 or 13 batting order, so no pinch hitting and all that. -Every player needed to play the field at least 3 innings of every 6 inning game. There may have been special exceptions for when you had 13 players there. The worst players got the least playing time, but usually the amount of kids not coming to games for whatever reason meant everyone got well above the minimum. I think most of the coaches also felt that it wasn't right to stash a kid on the bench, especially when the talent wasn't deep anyway. The worst player and the 6th worst player were both probably going to botch anything hit to left field. The time my dad coached me he had a brilliant strategy for those horribad players: teach them to bunt. First of all, even decent LL teams screw up bunts defensively. This also gave those kids a legitimate chance to contribute in important situations. And more often than not, for the kids who really did want to do well, this was a big confidence booster. If they bunted a "triple" they were suddenly taking big hacks in their next plate appearance instead of running out of the box or whatever they would normally do. The trick obviously is to make sure you don't send these poor kids up there with the instruction to bunt every single time because you want to give them the chance to get better. That all makes sense. Did any parents get mad if their kids had to bunt, though? I like your league's rule of letting everybody bat, but man in a six inning game nobody bats more than twice I bet. I do wanna say this about our Little League back in the day in Mt. Greenwood. It's funny you talk about kids missing games like it's expected and routine. In our LL, our serious coaches would discipline you if you missed a game or were late for a game. Yes disciplined Little Leaguers. Back in the day parents rarely went to our games and if they did go, they yelled at umps but not at coaches for some reason. I remember one year when I was 12, my final year of LL and third year of playing for the same coaches, my grandfather took me to two Cubs games in Chicago (my grandfather was a Cub fan and I preferred the Sox but agreed to go with him; hey it was MLB) the same week we had LL games. The first day Cub game, my grandfather got me to my LL game just in the nick of time to take fielding practice, etc. The coach was not pleased I was at a day Cubs game before our LL game instead of resting, but all was OK cause we won and I did OK. But then our next game we hit traffic and I was late for infield practice because of my grandfather taking me to the Cubs game again. The coach benched me but seeing a had a good attitude about it let me pinch hit and I scored the winning run. He yelled at me after the game and said if I was late again that was it. I'd be on the bench forever. Nowadays the coach would not be allowed to yell at me like that.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 19, 2015 -> 12:16 AM) Congrats on supporting a guy for telling it like it is, Greg. Well done. Good choice and I strongly support you guys nominating him. He said in his followup that McCain was a hero. He is denying saying anything bad. I already told u who was gonna win: HILLARY in a landslide.

I'm really down on Robin after today's game and this series. You guys that despise Ozzie ... he never would be this laid back in search of getting back in the race. Robin doesn't pitch Robertson. WTF with that? Four innings to Jennings? Robin basically conceded ANOTHER game. No urgency with this guy or this team. Letting Jennings pitch another inning was suicide for the White Sox team on Saturday. Robin also pitches Danks and Shark in the DH instead of Sale/Shark. No sense of urgency to tell the Royals "for once we are going to f***ing kick your ass." They save Sale for "another day." Very sad. This team has no competitiveness and it starts with Robin. You guys asked to get rid of one guy who would go down screaming/fighting/clawing if the Royals came to town and he was in charge: Ozwald Guillen!!!!

QUOTE (Tex @ Jul 18, 2015 -> 02:26 PM) My first wife worked in radiology and I spent a lot of time around the ER. They had a unique, for internal consumption only, sense of humor. The first one I remember was perhaps the worst. "Pass the Bible, he's studying for the final". But when you are faced with serious cases all day long, grim reaper humor is perhaps one of the healthiest ways to cope. I don't think it ever affected the level of care a person received. They were so well trained and practiced that things kjust sort of kicked in and away they went. While non medical people would find this appalling, is it really much different than any other profession? Salespeople mock their customers at times. We mock each other at jobs. It's a part of many work places cultures. While your colon may be a special place to you, to the rest of the people in the room, you're just another asshole they have to deal with. Yeah, but when somebody is splitting you open you don't want them saying, "Can you believe this fatass? He needs to get on the treadmill" etc.

QUOTE (Jake @ Jul 18, 2015 -> 03:15 PM) In my hometown I was playing ball at the Boys & Girls Club (the main host for this sort of thing in that area) when they decided to quit keeping score in basketball. Had nothing to do with hurting kids' feelings. It was the parents losing their god damned minds about every little thing when the games were played to win. That's actually a pretty good idea. Have the kids, at least the ones in leagues under the age of 12, just play what amounts to pick up games. You have officials but don't keep score. Play for two hours. The worst players could get in and no parent blames the poor kids who blow the lead. The parents then wouldn't be able to blame the coaches for anything cause there's no winner/loser. Do fun stuff like stop the game and have a couple kids do a layup drill and free throw extended drill. It really would shut up the parents. Some dopey dad would probably try to keep score and yell out which team was winning, but nobody would listen to that loudmouth. As long as there's no scoreboard, nobody will listen to any kook demanding there be a score. I like it at least until the kids hit their teen years. then u can turn on the scoreboard at 13. p.s.: Like you said, kids are smart though. When I was in Mt Greenwood Little League (ages 10-12), all the teams played their best players. There was no rule everybody had to play a certain amount of innings. If you stunk you might never get in a game. Just one team in the league, the Larks, let all the kids play equal innings/at bats, etc. That team routinely got blown out by ridiculous scores and their players (they had some good players who had to sit) were pitied more than laughed at by the kids on the other teams. The smart kids on our team wanted the best players to play. Our coaches did have a rule that in your final year, when u were 12, you played every game. The coaches trusted themselves to draft the right players (yes there were tryouts and a draft) and teach them the game to where they wouldn't embarrass themselves in their final year of LL (12).

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Jul 18, 2015 -> 11:33 PM) I'd start rotating him. Probably a good idea. Let him take some of Eaton and Avi's at bats. I may despise Melky, but at least he has had some multi hit games of late. Shuck is at least as good as Eaton IMO so he might as well take some of Eaton's at bats.

How can you not love Saladino? Great start in a Sox jersey. Keep it up, sir!

QUOTE (BigFinn @ Jul 19, 2015 -> 12:37 AM) Time to sell. The Sox needed to sweep the Royals. Now, the best they can do is 2–2. At best they'll be 11 back in the AL Central race. The Sox are 6 1/2 back in the wild card race. Amen, Finn. Just think if we make GOOD trades for Lexi, Shark, Robertson and LaRoche and Melky in the next 2 weeks. We're talking a very very nice re-tooling of our team. Go ahead and sign Shark this offseason if u like, but deal him now and get some bodies back for him! Saladino can play short as we wait for Anderson.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jul 18, 2015 -> 11:17 PM) Horrible managing not having Dyson playing deeper Hey Fathom, I definitely hear what yu are saying and respect you. Here was Ned on the post game with his explanation however: He said the Royals never play "doubles depth" with their big three relievers in the 7th, 8th and 9th because they are so good. He says they always play shallow or normal depth. Now you could blast him for that and point to Ned being a clown, but he said it's an absolute. Now he might have to adjust if these relievers are becoming hittable in 2015, but that was his reasoning. He said they flat out have never played doubles depth with their star relievers on the mound because they are so filthy. Even if you disagree, pls answer: Do you think Gordon would have caught it regardless? QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Jul 18, 2015 -> 11:34 PM) Holland threw 0/8 pitches in the strike zone during that AB. Has anybody else noticed Holland does what Nate Jones does? He has that funky delivery where his arm is away from the body? The thing I always b**** about with Nate? QUOTE (pettie4sox @ Jul 19, 2015 -> 12:17 AM) Jennings is not a long reliever, what the f*** is Robin doing? No offense to Robin, but he's overmatched. I feel like he conceded another game today. Jennings with the longest outing of his career. Great outing but eventually he's gonna give up a run. Not pitching Robertson is a fireable offense (again). QUOTE (pettie4sox @ Jul 19, 2015 -> 12:20 AM) Well s***. How do you run out of pensmen? No offense, but we're talking about Robin here. QUOTE (BigHurt3515 @ Jul 19, 2015 -> 12:22 AM) You can blame management for this loss for having Emilio, Beckham, Gillaspie, Sanchez, Alexei, and Saladino all on the roster keeping one less pitcher in the bullpen. Excellent post! QUOTE (fathom @ Jul 19, 2015 -> 12:30 AM) Good effort by the team today, tomorrow is just about the biggest game of the season if they want to avoid being broken up. I said we'd lose 3 or 4. There's no reason to believe otherwise. We're lucky we got one. Nice crisp 2-0 win by my boy, Danks! QUOTE (fathom @ Jul 19, 2015 -> 01:00 AM) Sounds like Robertson is healthy, so no clue why he wasn't used. Our manager's name is Robin Ventura. Sorry to be a dick but he's not very good. QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 19, 2015 -> 01:36 AM) I think Robin didn't want to be in the situation where Robertson wasn't available tomorrow. If the Sox tied it again, I am sure he would have come in, he was loosening up when Cain homered, and then he sat down, It seems they are trying to get through this weekend so Carroll and/or Jones can be put on the roster. I think Hahn needs to do something for tomorrow's game. And that folks is our White Sox. Always playing for "tomorrow" or the next series or the next week. No sense of urgency. Greg wanted Sale/Shark in the DH to send a message, to sweep and kick some ass second half on to the WC. Instead ... gotta look down the line and rest Sale for Sunday and the second half. Well after Sunday, 3 of 4 losses, the second half is off to a rousingly bad start! Let's keep playing for the future though, not the present.

i wonder if Alex Gordon catches that liner. He probably is playing deeper. Maybe not. Shuck stroked a beautiful hit.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jul 18, 2015 -> 10:10 PM) The great Ned Yost strikes again Nice two out rally. Shuck destroys Holland. What did I miss on Yost? What did he do wrong there? Holland always gets the ninth though Davis is probably the better pitcher now.

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Jul 18, 2015 -> 10:50 PM) Who would he go to there? Webb? Robertson? They only have 6 guys in the pen for this series. Petricka didn't get the job done. That was the real problem. Webb. I'm really surprised Perez didn't gap one and end the game there.