nrockway

Really thoughtful and love when athletes do this kind of thing, I just think he should rename his initiative to "Going, Going, Caught at the Warning Track". somehow I'm actually excited for opening day. Excited to see what Crochet can do, mostly. and just happy baseball is back. I'll try not to think about whether or not our players are intentionally throwing games because we already expect nothing out of them.

I think there is a question about ethics when it comes to funding a criminal, vice-peddling enterprise. I think there are questions about whether or not Mizuhara's "access" to Ohtani influenced the betting market or that Mizuhara was extended that line of credit because he could provide information on the Angels that would influence bets. That being said, I think Ohtani's involvement is the least interesting component of this story, I'm just glad it has to do with him because it shines a brighter light on a major problem developing in this country than if it was Shintaro Fujinami's interpreter. Maybe you guys heard about Jontay Porter in the NBA, he allegedly took the "under" on himself in two games and faked injuries so that he would be pulled early on. He (allegedly) placed an $80,000 bet on himself which paid out $1.2million or something thereabout. It's amusing because, although he's a "two-way" player (minor league call up basically), he's skilled enough that he would've probably gotten offered a multi-year, multi-million AAV contract this coming offseason. So if a guy who has a proper NBA future ahead of him is throwing games, why wouldn't other, less-talented players be doing this? It calls into question the entire legitimacy of the NBA. Who is throwing games and who isn't? If this is happening in a league where players are paid very handsomely, why wouldn't it be happening in college or the WNBA or what have you? Why should we think this isn't already happening in minor league baseball or god forbid the big leagues? It frankly seems easier to do this in baseball than any other sport and not get caught. Just throw a meatball pitch or "get fooled" by a pitch in the dirt and strike out. It's especially egregious that you can bet on every single player's stat line rather than just the outcome of a game. I'm prepared for every professional sport to go the way of horse racing. What a shame. Again, I don't think Ohtani is betting, I think he was negligent and naïve. This is wholly a result of Murphy v NCAA and the leagues' collective greed and lack of morals, I don't really care who's getting caught for it, the system is corrupt and this will obviously happen.

Oh that's interesting, thanks. Hadn't heard the song before. I would imagine a homage, I suppose Hank was dead by the time this song was written and I would imagine country music writers in the 1950s would have respected him deeply. I was joking about the plagiarism comment, everyone just says that about him these days. also love how you've formatted this post?

then he plagiarized it but I don't think you're correct. anyway...

sort of amusing how many ways JR has figured out how to lose. oh, we're actually good this year? better create a work stoppage.

right, I just think it's a funny way to write the article, like the Sox made this incredible gambit to "sacrifice offense" when realistically Elvis and Tim just sucked at everything last year and probably deserved to be replaced. still think I'd rather see Shewmake than Lopez personally. as someone named Nick, I think it reflects poorly on him that he still goes by Nicky and I think that has something to do with his relative lack of baseball talent. I could see Nick Lopez hitting 1.000 OPS and winning a gold glove. oh yeah, that would've been a proper reference instead of the Hank Williams song he performed once.

I have not but I'll keep this in mind. I am near Fountain Hills on the far east side of the metro area just before you reach the mountains and there's not much of anything over here. Yet. They're building it as we speak. There's a community over here that doesn't have any water and refuses to strike a deal with the city of Scottsdale because paying for public services is communism. Paying a private business 10 times the amount to drive it to you is freedom. Nonetheless, they're building some giant subdivision across the highway from it despite, you know, not actually having a water source for the residents. Somehow they have water for several golf courses though. I can't judge that too harshly because I really want to play at the Troon North Golf Club. The PGA came here a couple months ago and it's reasonably affordable too once all the snowbirds go home. An incredibly beautiful course, it just seems wrong to be building golf courses in the desert. but I digress... There is a Rosati's over here, however, which is actually pretty good. at least it's better than the one in the South Loop I would order from sometimes. I think what worries me about going out to a brewery/bar in Arizona is that I have to drive there and back and I'm not well known for limiting my alcohol consumption. DUIs out west are a regional pastime (just ask TLR) but one that I don't want to partake in. I have some sympathy for the act because I blame it on the infrastructure (I think I wrote a post about this a month ago on this forum for some reason). Something I miss about Chicago is being able to just walk over to my favorite bar, the Falcon Inn on 53rd Street, order a pitcher or two and watch sports all day and not worry about getting home. I can't do that here but I can take a walk and see horses and owls and hawks and roadrunners and javelinas and every so often a rattlesnake; which is also a pretty cool thing and probably better for my liver. So I guess that's all to say I don't really have any recommendations, just that the McDowell Mountain foothills are very beautiful, the climate is much better than you'd expect out of Phoenix. And if you're a golfer, you might enjoy the Troon North course.

Thanks! I used to "pre-game" at home then take the 55 bus to the red line; or if I was with a woman, take a cab to the ballpark. And now I live in Arizona and have very little interest in driving an hour to watch the Sox play spring training, though I did watch a NASCAR race nearby Camelback Ranch a couple weeks ago and felt guilty throughout that I wasn't a couple miles north watching the Sox lose. Despite earplugs, the good baseball Lord took away my hearing for several days for this transgression. Irrelevant to baseball, but it's interesting how much the spring training facilities in the Phoenix metro have changed in my relatively short lifetime. My dad used to take us out when we were kids and now 20some years later, the area has completely grown up, it's no longer a little suburb of Phoenix, all of the untouched land has been turned into apartments and now they're converting agricultural land into apartments. One wonders how the metro area can supply water to all these people and the hundreds of thousands more people they're building for but I guess that's for my kids to worry about. On tailgaiting, none of my friends have ever liked baseball, let alone the White Sox, so I've never really thought about tailgaiting at Comiskey; when I attend games it's usually by myself and I'll just chit-chat with surrounding fans. It's sort of amusing how standoffish fans have been lately, I don't know if it's because the Sox suck or if it's because everyone in Chicago is depressed. Even one of the employees yelled at me for no good reason (I opened my beer can myself instead of handing it to him to open and that apparently bothered him). I used to live in a building in Lakeview and our floor would get together every so often for a party. Some of these guys worked for the Cubs and everyone else was a Cubs fan, except for this one woman who was a Sox fan and would always talk in a thick accent about how great the Sox tailgaiting was. I kept quiet because I don't like the idea of acres of parking lots and think the Cubs actually have a better set up in that way, I think I'd rather drink in a bar than a parking lot, though I'd rather be surrounded by like minds and I don't think I could be caught in a Wrigleyville bar ever again in my life.

oh right, the incredible bats of Tim Anderson (.582 OPS) and Elvis Andrus (.662 OPS). oh yeah, Elvis is a free agent again by the way, I bet he's so lonesome he could cry (I don't think that was an Elvis song....whoa mama). I'm not exactly optimistic about this team, I just don't see any way it could be worse than it was last year.

personally, I just want a hot dog and a beer. That's a lie, I want 7 beers.

I get the feeling that Grossman will see action pretty quick if Fletcher can't hit. If Fletcher, DeLoach, Colas figure out how to play baseball, then I don't care all that much about the Pilars or Phillips's of the world asking to be let out of their contract. Grossman seems better than most of the bums we signed to minor league deals in the outfield (Phillips, Ortega, Payton, etc.) and I bet would see major league time before the rest of them. I also wonder how likely these guys are to ask for a release because if a minor league deal with our Sox is the best they can do, they probably don't have a ton of options stateside. I imagine with Grossman, he was asking for a major league deal with actual money attached and didn't get it. And so the White Sox offer him the best opportunity to earn a major league role. In that sense, you're probably right that he asks for a release if he doesn't join the major league team early in the year. Although, if he doesn't get called up it probably means Fletcher or whoever is actually performing. Still, I don't see it as terrible to give the young outfielders some actual competition. Oscar is probably fuming, but maybe he should play better baseball if he doesn't want his boss to keep signing 30something scrubs at his position.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/player/_/id/4414518 https://www.espn.com/mlb/player/_/id/5207812 uh, what? Matt and Matthew Hogan were born on the same day one town apart. amazing that the Sox managed to sign these guys.

wasn't one of the biggest complaints about last season that there was no minor league depth? every major league team will deal with injuries and the White Sox were historically bad last season in terms of their call-ups. I'm reminded of this fangraphs article which shows that the Sox opening day roster compiled over 100% of the team's total WAR. as in, the call-ups and trade acquisitions produced negative WAR. with that in mind, I don't see how it could be viewed as a bad thing for a team to sign a player to a minor league deal who hit .730ish OPS and 10 homers last season. it's sort of like, why wouldn't you do that?

totally bizarre. "better at the ministry of truth". every sox math segment from here on out will be "2+2=5"

the hypocrisy was blatant from the very beginning. for most of this sport's history, gambling was pretty much the only thing that would actually get you blackballed from the sport. now the commentators cheerfully teach children about parleys and betting lines while grown men sob and scream in the stands because they've just lost their house over a ball game. have to hope that new laws are actually created to reign this in. on the federal level I mean.

I think for baseball's sake and its future longevity, he is a gambler and gets banned for life and the league completely reassesses its vice-peddling policies before something Black Sox esque happens. maybe the Supreme Court realizes it made a mistake with Murphy v NCAA and gambling in its entirety moves back to the reservation. This is the tip of the iceberg, I'm convinced non-NIL college athletes are already throwing games. you're a 19-year-old and all you have to do is miss a three pointer or walk the guy and you win 500 bucks, why wouldn't you? ethics? right now it's the Puigs and Ippeis of the world, next it will be a minor league pitcher with a small signing bonus or an umpire throwing a game. however, I don't think he was actually gambling I think he just paid off his buddy's debt and didn't consider the legal ramifications of it because "hey gambling is legal now!" and it seems reasonable to assume he's not going to tell his lawyers or accountants that he's going to pay a bookie millions of dollars. the conflicting "stories" is what's perhaps most interesting. one thinks this story isn't going away and the truth will eventually come out, but I get the impression that Ohtani was trying to do right by his buddy who essentially wipes his ass for him and did everything for him not relate to baseball.

the best decision I've made in the last month, and continue to make on a daily basis, is not attending a White Sox spring training game.

yowza. love to see it. makes me think Crochet and Kopech's powers combined could actually make for a good pitcher that regularly throws 6 innings and only walks 5 batters. the glass half full fan in me says that the pitching staff is actually in pretty good shape. a lot of talented pitchers who cost nothing and have many years of control left. one hopes that the Feddes and Flexens of the team play at least well enough to be traded for someone under the age of 25. and that the Sox spend that money they've saved on the bullpen in free agency on an actual useful position player like Ha-Seong Kim.

Yeah I don't know what the expectation is for a coach or an executive. I had/have optimism about the Bannister hiring because of the systems he put in place at his previous job (or at least took credit for). Hopefully the Sox can institute developmental systems that allow players to reach their potential. That's a little different than teaching a 27-year-old fifth year veteran how to throw the ball over the plate in a month. Especially when it probably has little to do with pitching mechanics and is almost certainly mental. I echo the other poster's sentiment that a bullpen role is lower pressure and maybe Kopech can develop some confidence and work his way back into the starting rotation. I don't think the team's given up on him.

post 6 more times then leave. let the number of the beast brand your s%*# posts.

C. it's not a D because I think Zavala is better than his ranking.

my gut tells me it's ha seong kim and some nobody prospect.

correct, it was a joke, it's never going to happen.

Bummer. At least he got paid first and it’s the red sux who are stuck with him.

True. Hopefully someone like Kim or Torres or even Alonso and not 3 or 4 35-year-old relievers