Chisoxfn

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 8, 2014 -> 02:07 PM) Really, wait a second, didn't someone post in the NLDS thread that Mattingly was fired? D'Oh. And anyway, no 2014 is not the season Robin Ventura deserved to be fired for, 2013 was. Since that didn't happen when it should have, the next time he deserves to be fired is when the Sox spend money and the team fails. If they spend a boatload of money this offseason and they aren't a playoff team, then there better be a darn good excuse for why, because that would mean something went very wrong. You should be evaluated based upon the level of talent on the team and your individual performance. If you paid 150M on payroll and 80M of guys are out for season, you shouldn't fire them. There isn't some magical scorecard you can look at (there are a plethora of factors to consider) and a year ago, Robin was saved because he had one year where his team drastically overachieved and then 2013 happened. Even then, just because payroll was high, team was still saddled by players who while they may have made a lot of money, weren't necessarily worth that money.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 8, 2014 -> 01:49 PM) At least one of the managers of a postseason team was just fired. I assume you think that's a bad idea? That is a team that had talent and had a disasterous clubhouse and underplayed their level of talent. What part of coaching to the level of talent is missing in the concept. Firing a guy cause they don't make the playoffs because you have a bad roster is just foolish, unless there were things from a player development standpoint and grander scale which you have issues with. Reality is team played hard for Robin till the end, players got along, young guys got chances, some guys took step forward, etc. Bottom line this was never a playoff team and the team didn't underachieve drastically and if it did it was because our pen was terrible not because Robin was terrible. There is zero logical reason to fire Robin given his current contract, etc. And I don't know what manager you are referring to but I'm presuming you are assuming Donny baseball gets fired. Well, he made some poor baseball decisions and there were significant chemistry issues in the clubhouse, etc. Oh and this was a 2nd consecutive year with playoff disappointments. It also was a team loaded with talent, including arguably the best 3 man rotation in baseball with Kershaw, Grienke, Ryu.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 8, 2014 -> 11:10 AM) What do they have that they're actually trying to develop? They picked at the bottom of the first round each of the last couple years. Do they actually have some young player somewhere I don't know about who is key to their future, or wouldn't that instead be much more likely to occur in the 2015 draft? I mean, with George and Stephenson both gone, would anyone honestly be surprised if that was a mid-lottery team this year? Since when is the last year or two what matter? They have current players and they have developed guys like Lance Stephenson and Hill and even to an extent George who were not high high draft picks. George, being the highest of the pick. The reason they are where they are is because they have hit and drafted serviceable players and coached up and developed their picks, not because they have mad tons of FA signings or had the top pick in a stacked draft. And a lot of that development happened under their existing coaching staff.

QUOTE (Jake @ Oct 8, 2014 -> 11:03 AM) He's one of the few "turns chicken s*** into chicken dinner" coaches around. Might as well sign him up, especially considering the preponderance of chicken s*** they have over there You look at who they have developed and its pretty impressive. I think he's a good coach and one of the better ones in the league and if things go wrong, in the grand scheme of things, it isn't the end of the world to let him go. The idea of having a lame duck coach is usually a disaster in this league and is a pretty good bet at having more lockeroom issues as players often question the coaches authority a lot more in those situations. I always get a kick out of the people who tend to put heat on coaches who have generally gotten more out of their teams then expected.

This is the year that matters for Robin. We should have higher expectations and see development. If we don't, then this is the year we talk about whether Robin is the right guy. Past 2 years have been about player development, right attitude, etc. Yeah, you want to compete, but no one could have competed with the bullpen Robin had and well to be frank, he can't play defense and we have a lot of guys that are just bad defensive players. However, for those young ones who have the tools, his success is going to be very dependent on the player development side and the fundemental development side and whether these guys can take the next step. Robin isn't leading the Yankees, his staff is going to have to be good on the player development side as that is a large part of how we are going to succeed and while it starts in the minors, it continues at the major league level based upon how we are operating as a franchise.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 8, 2014 -> 10:47 AM) Basically, there's virtually zero chance that they'll fire him this season since George is rehabbing. If his contract ends at the end of this year, basically the question is whether they want him back in 2015 or they're going to let him be a free agent (some team, of course, would pay good money to sign a guy with a conference finals appearance in recent memory). Given the internal issues they had, I don't know how you can state that. If they aren't as good because of George but overachieve based upon their talent or show signs of development, etc, then I don't see the issue. You judge him based upon the current roster / expectations. You don't go, oh they won less games this year, we should fire him. Everything you do and how you judge it is based upon a variety of factors, most specifically, how he handles the roster this year, how players develop, how the team performs compared to internal expectations, etc. If they have internal issues again this year and thus it becomes more of a theme, then he should be fired, especially since they have lost both guys who were supposedly the primary guys who brought some of those lockerroom issues.

QUOTE (bmags @ Oct 8, 2014 -> 10:46 AM) Considering we are getting negative plays with bad returns, how much worse could we be? I would be a better return man. When it comes to our returns (I actually have no issue with Holmes on punts), we just need to take a knee and start at the 20. Holmes has been ok when he's had blocking and he's had a few good returns, most of which have came back because of penalties. Holliday is a guy that could create some really negative plays so I am leery there as we already have an issue with that to begin with.

Donny baseball will be fired.

QUOTE (Harry Chappas @ Oct 7, 2014 -> 01:44 PM) There was a stat Sunday that showed Bears are last in the league in play attempts greater than 20 yards or something along those lines. This is also about the time of year where Jay gets hurt and misses a few games. I also don't think that stat is on Jay. That is the exact opposite of his DNA / Nature. I realize some was probably due to some injuries. I think a big problem has been the lack of time Jay had to work with the majority of our secondary wideouts. He's thrown 2 picks in the direction of Holmes, who he doesn't appear to have a good rapport with yet (understandably) and Morgan was in / out and that was one of the picks (GB game) and to be frank a lot of coaches will tell you when it comes to a slant, it is the wideouts job to win the coverage, etc, and I had heard a commentary saying that pick was more on the wideout then Jay and Trestman / Jay have both talked about how it was the right read, blah blah blah and the DB made a great play. Either way, its pretty apparent that Jay had a whole offseason where he spent the bulk of the time with Wilson (IR - Temp), Alshon, B, and MartyB and the rest of our wide outs are kind of running around and our big negative plays that have led to picks have been focused in the area of those two (with exception of the 2 picks that were poor routes on B/MartyB and the pick this week that was forced to B).

Bout time. I say if they think the guy can hit and play then who cares what hand he uses.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Oct 7, 2014 -> 01:33 PM) He would have been great for Forte, I don't think Marshall and Alshon would like Alex at all. I don't know why, most everything we've ran for them the past few weeks has been relatively short. He's good at getting ball out quickly, mobile with his feet, and pretty smart, etc. I'm not saying we should trade Jay, not at all, just saying that in another planet, had Jay not been with Bears when we hired Trestman, Smith really is an excellent fit to be a QB in a west coast offense. PS: You haven't exactly seen us throw the ball down field a lot, which is relatively typical of a true west coast offense. That said, we did it a lot last year and I still don't understand why we aren't doing it this year.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Oct 7, 2014 -> 11:15 AM) I like Morse. I just think the Sox are not going to plug up the LF spot with a guy who can't field and hits right-handed. Now if the Sox could satisfy the left-handed need in LF and then bring in Morse to DH I would be more inclined the buy into it. Ding ding ding. That isn't a bad move. It should be noted that when the Giants gave Morse the money he did, the contract was viewed as being one of the worst in all of baseball from a pure WAR perspective (based upon his more recent WAR's).

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Oct 7, 2014 -> 09:23 AM) Jermaine Dye signed with the White Sox for his age 31 season. He is also only one year older than Torii Hunter. If anything, signing Torii Hunter at this point is comparable to bringing in Harold Baines at the end of his career except that Harold Baines was a better hitter. Guys at Hunter's age typically fall off very quickly. He should not be an option for the White Sox at this point. At the end of the day, I'm just glad the Rick Hahn is the GM. Michael Morse's season numbers couldn't have been any closer to his career averages. 2014: .279/.336/.475/ .355 wOBA Career: .281/.335/.473 .351 wOBA His wRC+ was actually significantly higher this year (133 vs 122 career) partly because of the park he played in. Frankly, it was a really good year for Morse and he simply got hurt down the stretch. He is a bad defender though. Which is why we need to stop talking all a bout this mighty wRC and factor in defense. A metric the Sox absolutely suck in. Now in your defense you are presumably talking about Morse as an option for DH, which is fine, but he isn't left handed and well quite frankly, he sucks defensively. When it comes to position players we need to be finding some guys who can catch the ball and hit (at least one of them) and then we can focus on potential platoon options at DH but it would be nice if they were capable positional players as well.

You know who I like and think is underrated, Alex Smith. He'd have been the type of guy that would have been a nice fit in Trestman's offense. I'm not writing off Jay yet but Bears obviously need to hit on the talent devlopment part. That is somewhere we have sucked and have started to see some offensive talent development and now need to see it on the defensive side. I really like Fuller and our young DT's. They all look like players.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Oct 7, 2014 -> 01:02 PM) Yeah, that guy is incredible. If I'm building a franchise, I'm still building it around Rodgers. Rodgers has had to literally put an entire team on his back and win. Wilson has a beast of a rb and an exceptional defense that allows him to do a lot of things. Rodgers might have some wideouts but his line has generally been bad and he's pretty much had no running game most of his time in GB. He also has had, outside of a couple years, a horrendous defense. PS: I like Wilson a lot but he's not at the same level as Rodgers / Luck. Both of those guys are running my franchise before Wilson, although Wilson is pretty high on my list of guys I'd take for QB if I were to build a franchise.

QUOTE (Harry Chappas @ Oct 7, 2014 -> 12:13 PM) The curl route was covered the fly was wide open. If jay recognized this as marshall did it would have been a touchdown. Had Marshall stopped and ball thrown back to him, I don't think that play was covered.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 7, 2014 -> 12:08 PM) How is it that other QBs are sometimes able to go hundreds of pass attempts without an INT when they have to deal with such things? Not many do. And for those that do, you will typically find that you are talking about a top 3 QB. Yes, QB's from time to time have various streaks but the guys that throw minimal picks are either top 3 or so in the league at the time and typically in similar systems with good protection, etc. Or in rare exceptions they are a game manager and have fewer attempts or some other variable.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Oct 7, 2014 -> 10:23 AM) I Love That Jay Cutler Doesn’t Care That I Love Him He sums up most of my feelings.

Jay is on pace for 28.8 turnovers over 16 games. Which would put him near the high point of his career. A lot of that is driven by the fumbles lost increasing his rate.

QUOTE (bmags @ Oct 7, 2014 -> 07:19 AM) Honestly, he's not bad enough to justify it, and this team needs to continue to get cheaper talent through the draft. We have Cutler for 3 more years, it's done. They need to continue to invest in the defense and probably need to find a way to get a speed wide-out in one of the rounds and obviously don't ignore oline so you have youth to step in, especially since I have massive faith in Kromer / Trestman in regards to oline. Defense, specifically LB / Safety / Corner are huge areas of need. We also can't ignore the fact that if we thought there was an impact DE available, we'd have to look at him.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Oct 6, 2014 -> 02:27 PM) We agree here...I was never a fan of the squared off feeling of the 4/5 series iPhones...I mean, they weren't bad, and in that smaller form factor that squared off design worked quite well, but the squared off edges on phones this big would just be terrible. The 6 is a stark departure from the 4 and 5 series iPhones, back to the rounded shape I always felt was more comfortable to hold. I'm confused...I'm looking at my 4S and the corners are rounded. What do you mean by squared off?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 6, 2014 -> 01:51 PM) The NBA has completed its extended deals with Disney/ABC/ESPN and TBS. Total comes to ~$2.6 billion/year, compared to $900 million a year currently. Would think that would set the stage for some pretty hostile labor negotiations. Would certainly think that the cap would see significant increases.

QUOTE (bmags @ Oct 6, 2014 -> 01:14 PM) LOL. I quit.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Oct 6, 2014 -> 01:07 PM) One of these things is not like the other. Dunn's contract was nowhere near as bad as ARod or Fielder's. You are talking about 9 and 10 year contracts versus a 4 year contract. Think about that for a second. Anyways, plenty of these contracts are just fine. It's just not advisable to give 6+ years to guys who are older than 30. And, frankly, you have to assume players will have down years every now and then. How did you feel about Buehrle's 4 year, $56 million deal that he signed with the Sox in 2007? That's the same exact amount as Adam Dunn's. How about Paul Konerko signing a 5 years, $60 million deal after 2005? How about Jose Abreu signing a 6 year, $68 million deal? Do you feel any of those are bad contracts? Yanks aren't even paying Arod right now (or at least I don't think they are). Yanks won a world series with him. He had a 40.8 WAR over 10 seasons, which was just over 4 per year and includes 2013 which was shortened significantly due to injuries, etc. Adam Dunn, -1.5 WAR. Arod made 297.4M from Yankees over that tenure and that worked to 7.2M per win above replacement. Dunn on the other hand, equated to 37.3M per NEGATIVE win above replacement. Dunn was a far worse contract then the Arod one. It isn't even close. Dunn was truly pathetic. I'm curious to see what the bottom WAR was for qualified players over the span Dunn was with White Sox. I'd imagine it is bottom 10 in all of baseball.

I think these iphones are the least comfortable in the hand. I don't know if it is the aluminum backing or what, but they don't feel right.