Chisoxfn

QUOTE(DBAH0 @ Jul 21, 2006 -> 07:51 AM) I don't think they're in that bad shape SP wise now, if Tomko can show he's over his injury problems (coming back out of the pen now anyways). At least for the Dodgers, Billingsley looks like he's settling down and really starting to produce. Bill can't go deep into games though. Really good arm and he's making some definite strides though. In fact he added a cutter to his arsenal and is already throwing it pretty well (first started to practice with it about 12 days ago).

QUOTE(aboz56 @ Jul 21, 2006 -> 10:25 AM) Hopefully you meant Ebert, not Egbert. By the way, for those of you who don't know what he is talking about (which is probably most of you), you can view the new skin by adjusting your settings in the bottom left part of the page (drop down box) to Soxtalk Elite. Its set to default so I think most people will see it. And ya, I meant Ebert...but didn't want to get sued for falsley using his name so I added the G.

QUOTE(Hangar18 @ Jul 21, 2006 -> 07:17 AM) One things for sure ............... is the SOX playoff hopes arent in their hands anymore. Now were stuck hoping other teams can help us out. We are the wild card leaders. The Tigers could win every game from here on out and it wouldn't matter, as long as the Sox went out and played up to there capabilities because if they do that they'd be the wild card team. If we were behind a few teams, than you may need a little help, but with this many games left, every single team thats relatively close can control its own destiny (maybe not for sure) but if they go out and play some ridiculous level of baseball they'll find a way. Take the Twins...they got a 9 game stretch that will say a lot about them. @ Cle and Chi and than at home vs the Tigers. During that stretch they could make this a 3 team race for the division (if they go like 8-1) or they could bow out (if they did horrible) or it could stay similar to how it is now.

Thats right, Soxtalk.com continues to go out and try to consistently do what it can to make this the best site for Sox fans on the web. From original content, to recaps on the front page (even if we don't write em) to as good of a fan board on the web, we do it all. Well now we do it all and in STYLE thanks to Kalapse, Goldy, Heads and myself (stealing Heads work and doing some quick replacement commands). So hopefully you all enjoy the new skin

I still don't think the Dodgers are about to deal Baez unless they get some help in return. They are in the race and while they have some solid young arms in the pen, they are going to need a vet like Baez to get things straightened out down the stretch.

QUOTE(stretchstretch @ Jul 20, 2006 -> 09:29 PM) just looking at the two teams we're talking about, how many games are left, and how many we're out. Seems like a hot streak for us and a low streak for them can swing things, but just curious if people think we're hanging our hopes on a WC spot? We've been able to get to 1.5 games behind, and boom, after a dominant 7-1 win and 3.5 out, like that are 5.5 out, after going 2-7 against the very three teams involved in this race. Seeing how tough 1.5 games behind has been to leap, seems 5.5 is a mountain at this point. We need 6 games where we win and they lose to take a lead to put that in perspective. thoughts? Put it this way....we had a pretty comfortable wild card lead about 10 days ago and now thats gone. If we can do it so can other teams. No matter how good a team is your going to have a losing streak somewhere in the season (if not a couple) and what matters is how you respond and how you play between those streaks (assuming they aren't ridiciulously long). Sure we have turned things into a race (well the wild card, maybe distanced the division a bit) but as we saw how quickly a lead can go, so can the Tigers or anyone elses lead. All it will take is our pitching to start feeding off eachother and putting up quality start after quality start and they are VERY capable of doing so and for every guy on this staff I could give you a few reasons why they could do it starting now (of course I could also give a few why not). Bottom line the abilities are there and we can close this thing ASAP (obviously you need help from the Tigers too or the teams that are playing them) and even if the Tigs don't fall, if we take care of business we can still control our destiny for the WC.

QUOTE(dasox24 @ Jul 20, 2006 -> 11:20 PM) Yeah, he is the youngest player on the team, and well aware of it, lol. He's always been the youngest (or one of the youngest) on his on his team everywhere he's been, from Bristol to Kanny to Winston-Salem to Bham. Find out that sort of info and much, much more on Monday in our interview with the man, himself, Lucas Harrell. Ya, I thought thats what I read in the interview but wasn't 100%. And its an awesome interview, really gets you into the mind of Lucas Harrell

QUOTE(DBAH0 @ Jul 20, 2006 -> 08:03 PM) Yeah not good for Harrell at all, 4BB's and 1K. Stll had a 10-2 GB/FB ratio though. Bull had 2 scoreless innings for Mobile as well. Good to see McCullough had a good outing, ERA down to 2.08 now. When did Bull join Mobile? I know he had been pitching somewhere else. He get traded or released? Harrel seemed to calm down a bit after a rough first two innings in AA. He's one of the younger guys in the league and the youngest on the team (IIRC) so I'm not too concerned. This is a guy who has really impressive sinking movement and a pretty darn good arm.

I didn't realize we had Lorraine, former Cubs starter and at one time I thought he was a decently thought of pitching prospect (i'm talking a long time ago too).

QUOTE(chisox2334 @ Jul 20, 2006 -> 11:54 AM) per rotoworld Cliff Pollite has been released Apparently no team was interested in giving up any sort of prospect for him. That said I wouldn't be shocked if some contender picked him up and tried to see if they could get any magic out of him. However, I think the best thing for Cliff is to undergo surgery and get his arm cleaned up so he'll be good to go for next season.

If he slides past the AL teams, you know the Pads would love to get him.

Now onto the interview. Enuco seems like a solid all around player. He was drafted in the lower rounds because he isn't flashy and teams know they can wait on 4 year seniors like this because they'll sign much easier and quicker due to leverage. We nabbed a few guys on the 2nd day that were 4 years seniors that slid and those are major coups since they are pretty much forced to sign, unless of course they want to play someplace else. I'll be looking forward to seeing if he can be one of the rare late 2nd day picks to make an impact with the org (whether its by turning into a solid major leaguer or by turning himself into a solid enough prospect so that the team could deal him to another org)

Just an FYI for some upcoming FutureSox stuff: Monday: Lucas Harrell interview goes up (damn good piece) Next Week: 2002 Draft Review Piece Following that the crew is gonna sit down and work out a new top 20 mid-season list and you can bet that Lucas Harrell is going to find himself one of the big winners. We also have a few more interviews expected in the coming weeks and are putting more of an emphasis on landing interviews.

Lol, right as I'm making the post...haha Josh. By the way I just got it up as the main story. Monday Harrel's will go up

2006 FS Interview: Matt Enuco Interview Conducted by Josh Wolff FutureSox.com The White Sox selected Matt Enuco in the 36th round of the 2006 draft. In his senior season at Division III, Rowan University, Matt batted .363 with 16 doubles, 2 triples, 3 home runs, 39 RBIs and 21 stolen bases. The Following is a transcript of the Q&A conducted with Matt: Bold Font: Josh Wolff Regular Font: Matt Enuco What are your initial impressions of minor league baseball so far? Pretty much it’s kind of how I expected, a little more intense than I originally anticipated. But it’s really just getting here, learning the system of how the White Sox work and working on getting better so you can move up the system. I am excited about it. As a four year college player, do you feel you have an advantage over guys who have not been playing competitive baseball as long as you? Yeah, I think I do have a little bit of an advantage over high school players that come straight out of high school. I have found out that a lot of the philosophies and ways we play the situations here [bristol] are the same as the way I played them in college. And I think I also have learned a lot more about who I am, how to deal with situations in college and I think that really gives me a pretty good advantage here. In college, your numbers improved every season in just about every category, what do you attribute to that feat? I think I attribute it to becoming more of a complete player, more of a mature player and going away to good summer leagues. Progressively through college, I went to better summer leagues. I was in the NYCBL (New York Collegiate Baseball League) after my sophomore year and then I went to Coastal Plains League last year. I think you just learn how to adapt and adjust better. In High School, you were a three sport athlete, in football, baseball and swimming. Most baseball players don't have a swimming background, how do you think swimming has helped you in baseball? I think it’s actually really given me a good physical base with a good combination of strength and flexibility. I think I’m pretty flexible and it’s really given me a good strength base. You currently are playing second base, what other positions can you play and what position do you see yourself at in the future? Well, that’s another thing I learned in college, I am not a one position player. I hadn’t even played second base until I got here [bristol]. I can play short stop. I can play third. I like the outfield. Pretty much I don’t really see myself as a one position guy. If the organization sees me as a second baseman, that’s cool, but I pretty much feel I can play anywhere they want me to play. And I do feel pretty comfortable at second base right now. What do you feel your strengths are? I think I have good speed. I think I can hit for occasional power, surprising power. My arms, my hands, I guess I would say just the whole package. I’m not really great at anything, but I am good at everything. If I had to pick one thing, I’d say it was my hands. What do you feel like you need to improve upon? Everything really. I have a lot of the physical things down, but I think a lot of its going to be mental. Going out there everyday, having mental toughness to go to the plate if you’re in a 0 for 10 or 0 for 15 slump. Being able to come out the next day and mentally focus and get ready to play. Or come back from an error. So, I think the big adjustment where I really need to work on is maintaining my physical qualities and then gaining a mental toughness. What do you do in your down time? Sleep (chuckles,) really not much. Right after the game, we pretty much just get something to eat and it’s to bed. Really, we just hang. I hang out of with a lot of guys. I live with eight other players. We just kind of hang around, trade stories and find out things about where each other is from and that’s about it. We go out sometimes, but it’s usually nothing big at all. Favorite Sports Team (besides the White Sox): Philadelphia Phillies Favorite Athlete growing up: Darryl Strawberry Favorite TV show: 24 Favorite Movie: Man, that’s tough, probably That Thing You Do Favorite Food: Pasta Favorite Artist: Stereophonics Future Sox.com would like to thank Matt tremendously for taking part in the interview and we wish him the best of luck on the rest of the season and in the future.

Defensively Stewart is superior to anything we've had at the major league level in a few years (Olivo is the only guy with the defensive abilities similar to Stewart but obviously he struggled in the game calling area). Stewart is going to be a good backup but he's not much of a hitter, however, he has made some serious strides offensively.

QUOTE(Zoogz @ Jul 20, 2006 -> 02:15 PM) Quick note from the Tigers fan... You guys realize that the Sox outscored the Tigers through this series, right? That the final game, this one, was a one-run game that could have legitimately went either way as one-run games often do? I saw much the same talk from Tigers fans after the Tigers started 0-5 against the Sox who all said that the Tigers just could not compete. This is a small sample size. Even smaller than a playoff series. And anything can happen. While I understand that losing sucks, I am still petrified of your team far more than of the streaking Yankees or the Twins. In all seriousness, you guys should be proud of a team that is, in July, doing as well as the Sox are (and have proven themselves winners). As you may have noticed, the Tigers offense is horrid too. The Yankees have an outfield of stiffs and a pitching staff barely held together. The Twins consist of two great pitchers and two great position players. EVERY team has holes, and in all honesty the White Sox' holes are pretty miniscule compared to those teams. I have no clue which way this season will go, but I am still looking forward to an awesome stretch run and fully expecting the Sox to not only heat up but to make a major run. And hey, I hope it happens anyway, as the AL East has been in the playoffs far too long for my tastes anyway. Feel free to direct any additional flames you have my way, I don't mind. Awesome post and enjoy the ride. You guys deserve it and I know I'll be pulling for the Tigers to get into the playoffs (obviously not at the expense of the Sox) but both teams are well built and deserving and if they take care of business down the stretch I'll be looking forward to a nice matchup in October.

QUOTE(JimH @ Jul 20, 2006 -> 02:38 PM) Great news. I have always wanted to see a game there and see the city. Looks like I have a nice window of time to cross that off my to-do list. It's good to have stable affiliate relationships. I'm sure the Sox are always interested in moving closer to the other affiliates but they got too good of a thing going with the city of Birmingham and the team. And yep, its really nice to have stability. I know if I ever get in the area I definately want to check out the Met and also make a drive to the old stadium that they play in once a year (Rickwood or something).

By the way, I think enough's been discussed here and I'm going to close this thread before it gets ridiculous and people start calling people out. Lets just remember one thing..this is a message board, don't come here to be angry, don't come here to piss other people off...come here to have fun talking about the White Sox or anything else for that matter. Sure, we'll have the ocassional downer periods where the team is playing well and you can always get positive discussion out of talking about whats wrong and ways to make the taem better...but lets not ever get to the point where we need 5 threads saying how some guy is a piece of spiff. Instead say he needs to improve, what he needs to do or that we need to get someone else and this guy would help out. If we all are accountable for our own posts...this site will as amazing as ever and will be one of the premiere sites on the web because we truly have a whole lot of intelligent and creative people on this board.

Yep 4 year extension. The Barons and the Sox have a very good relationship so I would have been shocked had they parted ways.

QUOTE(SleepyWhiteSox @ Jul 20, 2006 -> 02:27 PM) I like realistic pessimists...just not the overly-negative pessimists spewing their hopeless doom-and-gloom bullspiff over and over and over again... Hell one of my favorite posters on this site is Fathom. He sees things a little differently than me but at the same time the posts he make are very intelligent and give you the other side of the spectrum.

QUOTE(Jordan4life_2006 @ Jul 20, 2006 -> 02:21 PM) Preach, Jason. And I think you make a damn good point in that we should be very encouraged by our starting pitching in this series. Other than one inning, we shut down a very good offense for 3 games. Will it continue? Will obviously find out. But it's something to build on. And its exactly whats needed, now we see if Garcia and Buehrle can strart to straighten things out because if the pitching can build off these first three starts and start to feed off each other we'll see this losing streak during into a huge stretch of winning baseball where we can close the gap with the Tigers or anyone else in a hurry. Is it a gaurantee that it will happen, no, but I think its something that you got to be encouraged with. Sure I'd have liked to win the series, but if two months from now we find out our rotation went gang busters from here on out I'd say this was a monumental series because it started the mojo. We could have played awful and won the series (we've done that a few times this year) instead we played pretty damn good, fell a bit short cause they played better, but appear to be heading in the right direction. People can call me an optimist, but I call things like I see em. When everyone was bashing the offense last year I continued to say it was an offense well built for the post-season and it turns out it really was. The way our guys would battle good pitchers and find ways to get things done. The offense does that and more this year and the pitching needs to pick things up for a stretch and we'll see what happens these next few weeks but I got a good feeling we are going to be seeing a serious run of strong starting pitching out of our guys.

QUOTE(JimH @ Jul 20, 2006 -> 02:20 PM) Personally I wish you'd stop speaking for Sox fans as a group, as if you have some sort of omniprescent knowledge. Sox fans are as diverse a group as fans of any team ... tuned negatively, tuned positively, and in the middle. So for you to say Sox fans are defined that way is, in your words, unrealistic, irresponsible, and ridiculous. And I agree with Ribbie about the large downturn in baseball discussion here. Points are beaten to death, how many more times do we need to read "Sox hitters are purposely trying to pull the outside pitch and hit a homer", I think we get it after the millionth time. The one poster got into the game thread and talked about how it was 65% Widger bashing. Talk about seeking attention, "let's see who can come up with the most clever Widger insult". This site has become "take out your frustrations here" instead of talking about baseball. And I get a big kick out of people calling themselves pessimists and walking around with it like it's a badge of honor. Nice. But that's certainly your right, I won't debate that. Just as it's other people's right to speak up about it. Oh well. I think in general when you have a site with as many posts per day as this one your going to get all kinds of discussion for all kinds of posters. Certain fans want one thing, others want another but our goal it create a happy medium that encourages intelligent discussion and all the different cursing, name calling, and use of one smilie was absolutley ruining that. We hope that by enforcing our new policies to a T that we'll be able to put an end to that drivel which in turn will put an emphasis on intelligent baseball discusion. Last nights game thread had some great discussion about Vazquez, you had people talking about the positives of his start and others talking about the negatives and some great counter points in between. Some of the trade threads have also had some outstanding discussion. One thread in particular involved you and Flash discussing some of the different things/ways you'd like to see the organization go about draft and developing players. As a whole this site is filled with all kinds of intelligent, bright posters and we are going to do what we can to encourage that type of discussion.

Since people are asking about it, this topic has now been pinned, but also locked. The logic behind the decisions are explained in this thread. If people are here just to curse profoundly than my recommendation is to find another site cause the great part about being a Sox fan is there are a couple other options out there. This place was built upon intelligent discussion and we are going to do what we can to ensure that we put together and enivornment that encourages exactly that.

QUOTE(Steff @ Jul 20, 2006 -> 02:15 PM) Oh God forbid the fans hold some faith.. the same thing we did. PS.. Where the hell is the rolleyes smiley??? Long gone...just like the profanity words. They've all been filtered out because too many people failed to show other posters respect. Its became too hard to possibly moderate every little thing on the site so the hope is that people will see this and realize if they want to keep trying to push the envelope they'll be doing it on another site (and the beauty of being a Sox fan on the net is that if you don't fit in at one site there are two others that have certain niche's that you could very well fit in on). I'm not about to say were the best site on the Web, but I'm confident in what teh site has to offer and I think it provides a great service to Sox fans. Hopefully that makes some sense Steff as to why some stuff has dissapeared and the same goes to anyone else thats wondering why you may have seen a few smilies go away or see some words that get typed in now becoming a new word.