Chisoxfn

QUOTE (Real @ May 19, 2011 -> 09:50 PM) and 10 back in the loss column. that's how bad it was for this team to start the season like they did. they just took two straight from cleveland, and won 9 of the last 12, and we're still 10 back in the loss column. Cleveland is also on pace to win more games than pretty much anyteam over the last 10 years and we know that isn't going to happen.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ May 20, 2011 -> 07:11 AM) I also liked Gavin hitting 93 late in the game out of the stretch. He made Adam Everett looked horrendous twice in the game. Was beautiful to watch. Gavy is so fun when he has it working. He has such a good arsenal of pitchers, between his FB, Curve, and Change (which is just nasty when its on).

Sinkerballers historically are worse pitchers early in games and on extended rest. They do better when there arm is a bit fatigued as they don't overthrow and as a result get much better downward sink on there pitches. When they are rested, they'll start to elevate the ball.

QUOTE (gatnom @ May 20, 2011 -> 06:22 AM) Pretty much the entire pitching staff minus Garcia and El Duque had flukish years, and then they got hot at the right time in order to win a world series. I'm not trying to take away from what they accomplished, though. I'm just trying to say that one shouldn't count out a team because they don't appear to be talented. That right there is 2/5ths of the rotation and I'm not buying it. Buehrle didn't have a flukish year. If you want to say Garland did, thats fine, but Garland outside of a first 6 to 8 bad starts was more dominant in 2006 (just look at the splits, once Garland started pitching, he took his ERA down). Contreras was nasty and that nastiness lasted as long as his back held up. Once his back went to crap, he went back to being mediocre. But post all star break, I couldn't think of a pitcher who had better stuff that year than Jose Contreras. Guy was unhittable.

QUOTE (gatnom @ May 20, 2011 -> 01:38 AM) I have five words for you: two, thousand, five, White, and Sox. I'm not saying; I'm just saying. And I don't get this. Just cause some idiots at baseball prospectuses projected us to suck, didn't mean the rest of the league did. I know I thought on paper, entering that season, we had an awesome chance at making some noise and considered ourselves a favorite for the division. For pete sakes, the Sox have been favorites for the majority of the decade by most of the analysts in the know. Sadly, they haven't lived up to that status too often. But this BS about comparing this years Cleveland team to the 2005 White Sox has to stop. It is a baseless argument.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ May 20, 2011 -> 05:25 AM) Have Garland/Uribe not frequented the Cell since '05? What are they going to do? Announce their names and all 275 fans do the slow clap? Stupid. Edit: I obviously meant since they left the Sox. Garland spent a long time in Chicago and was a quality pitcher with the White Sox and helped us gain a World Series trophy. Uribe made two of the best plays in the 9th inning of the final game of the world series, including making the final out. They deserve to be recognized. I'd imagine Garland was in Chicago before (with the angels) but this might be Uribe's first time back.

I built the forum at 17 and have broke it off and on over the years.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ May 19, 2011 -> 11:14 AM) Then that's going to be a problem. He needs to be out there to stretch the floor. Miami is too good defensively. Plus he can easily match up with Mike Miller (or Bibby). Bulls just have to find a solid way of handling the pick and roll/switch scenarios. And on the flip side, Bulls really need to take advantage switching Miller onto Rose when he's on the court.

10 pounds adds 10 pounds, haha.

At her height, 145 is a pretty good amount of weight. Isn't she under 5ft? For pete sake, I'm 6ft and weigh between 160 and 165.

Wow, that 2nd photo is horrible.

Sweet. Given that a bunch of shows on my DVR got cancelled. This will have to be one of the few getting replaced. Over the past couple years, pretty much all of my regular DVR shows have been cancelled (or ended, e.g., Lost/24).

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ May 18, 2011 -> 12:19 PM) I just think we're so used to the Twins being the ones to deny us year after year that we can't fathom maybe another team getting the best of us. Nobody in this division is going to win 100 games. s***, the Yankees or Red Sox are not going to win 100 games. It might not even take 90 wins to take the central. We jumped out on everybody in '05 and nobody took us seriously until we were in the ALCS. It could be just one of those years for the Indians. But they've definitely put us is a big hole. The difference is, I thought the White Sox team was good. We had good relievers, a great rotation, and a solid offense. I had no reason to see us coming back to earth. When I look at the Indians, I don't see it. I don't see a fantastic lineup, I see a ton of guys playing over there heads (outside of there two most talented offensive players, Choo and Santana) and a pitching staff that has a few guys putting up ridiculously career years. That said, I do think Masterson has always had the potential to do what he's doing. But there are a lot of things that scream smoke and mirrors and I didn't see that with the 05 Sox.

Is Alcatraz a TV show?

QUOTE (IlliniKrush @ May 18, 2011 -> 12:11 PM) I'm also saying this as someone who went to plenty of guy's friends weddings in college as a single without a date. I wasn't offended - I wasn't with anyone. Plus, I knew other people there. If you don't know anyone (somehow), maybe you try to work one in for them, but yeah, essentially cutting people you know for people you don't know doesn't really make sense. I don't care if it's not "proper," it's what's practical. Plus, you're footing the bill. Also Jason did you have anyone reply to you and put a plus one on there even though you didn't give them one? Like they assumed it? If so how did you deal with it? I think we had one person, which was on the list because of her parents, who added some random person. Since it was just one and was a parents friend, we didn't deal with it. To be honest, I probably wouldn't have said something if someone did do that anyway (since the goal was to make sure we didn't have 25 to 50 extra guests). We did have one person who put himself and than went on to invite someone else anyway and let me know such intentions on the day of the wedding. I told him if he brought her, she could stand cause there wouldn't be a seat for her nor food for her (guy is just inconsiderate so I wasn't going to go out of my way for him). It was one of the few people I regretted inviting to the wedding. But I never had anyone gripe or complain about the no plus 1 unless serious rule. Its just stressful and I think people who have gone through a wedding, have a better idea of what it is like and tend to be more courteous than those who haven't been to many weddings/part of weddings and just don't realize the edicate and how much work goes into stuff and just how important it is to get an RSVP back, etc. The last thing you want to do is be tracking down and reaching out to people to find out if they are coming or not. Its just one more thing on a long list of things you have to do.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ May 18, 2011 -> 11:45 AM) And we've gained, what, a game? It will most definitely take an "insane" run to overtake the Indians. Well the Indians are going to fall back down to earth. They've had an easy schedule and have had an unsustainable amount of walk off/we shouldn't have won this game type of wins. I look at the team and I don't see a 100+ win team. In fact, I'd be surprised if they played .500 ball the rest of the way. They are going to have a slump or two and even if they maintain a .500 pace, we could catch them with good solid baseball.

QUOTE (IlliniKrush @ May 18, 2011 -> 12:04 PM) It's a tough call without knowing all the circumstances. Like was said, you could have been up against Mom's neighborhood friend or something. I know some people break it down by guests invited per person - like 50 per group or whatever, so you were #51 on a 50 person cut off. In your situation I lean towards you being right, an acquaintance, but who knows. Guest lists are tough (I'm going through it now). Even tougher when you have a limited # of spots and 3 families to work with instead of 2. That changes everything significantly. Almost no friends get a plus one unless they are married or they are a true SIGNIFICANT other and we know them. That's just the reality of our situation, but who knows if people will realize that. My attitude - if you are really offended by that and don't want to come because of it, then that's fine, you don't have to. For every "random" plus one we threw in there, we'd have to cut one of our friends or family members. Call me crazy, I'd rather have more people there we know and love than essentially random strangers. We did the same things on plus 1's and personally I think it is perfectly appropriate. Unless the person was in our wedding party, they weren't going to be allowed to bring some random acquaintance that we'd never see again. Now if you are dating someone seriously and/or are married, than thats fine and we included a plus 1 on there invite. But there was no way, I was going to see the list of people I wanted to have at the wedding drop because we had to factor in a bunch of random people our single friends brought as plus ones'. Plus, regardless, a wedding is going to have a lot of single people and plenty of conversing anyway so if you are single and looking to mingle that opportunity is going to be there, haha.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ May 18, 2011 -> 11:29 AM) And more likely than not, after the wedding they'll say to each other "Why did we invite ____? We should have invited Ron instead." I know I had those thoughts about certain people at our wedding. Some of our "friends" didn't even get us a card. f***ing lame. Ditto.

While I agree with you, I think the Sox made the right decision. If they weren't ready to play Viciedo full time, he should have been held in the minors. No point in calling him up, only to have him sit on the bench and PH and play in a couple games. Makes no sense. When he's called up next, it should be for him to permanently stay. Guy is going to be a great offensive player, imo.

Given that everyone else was invited, unless they forgot (sure, not the best excuse, but with as much that goes on in the planning, I could easily understand this, I had forgotten people in my initial list and had to send out later invites to them), but if you are #301 out of 300, its not to say they aren't friends with you, it might just be more that on there ranking of friends you aren't as high on the list. And that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Just maybe you aren't as tight as the others that they wanted to.

QUOTE (iamshack @ May 18, 2011 -> 11:12 AM) From the track record KW has, do you really think if this team is sitting at .500 he is going to blow it up? Not to mention that if you look at the clubs record, outside of the anomaly (this is assuming we are around .500 at that point in time), that he wouldn't have reasons to be convined. Now if Cleveland is 20 games over .500 at that point, than I understand and it is what it is. But the reality is the Sox can only control what they do and they can't play like they need to win 20 in a row. They just need to play good baseball and if they lose, they lose, but if they play good baseball, they will win a good number more than they lose cause they are a good team. I will point out that even in this recent winning streak (which I'm deeming the road trip plus a split against a good Texas ballclub), we haven't played our best baseball. The question is, as the team regains confidence, will better baseball be played and I for one think it will. I also will point out that we play the vast majority of our inter divisional games during the 2nd half of the season. So if we are near .500 around the break, the team will really be in a position where they can make some serious noise via divisional play. Will they, I don't know? But I know there are enough reasons for me personally not to give up.

Playing 2b down in AAA is what the doctor ordered. His swing is a complete and utter disaster. Guy is whiffing at breaking pitches and can't touch a good fastball. If there is one thing I'm sure of, it is that I want Walker gone. I don't blame him but even while we are winning, I've seen too many bad at bats and seen some of our young guys swings get worse under his watch.

QUOTE (iamshack @ May 18, 2011 -> 11:02 AM) Agreed...but you have to be patient. There are 119 games left! I'm not arguing with you that any game isn't big at this point...but you have to accept that we probably aren't going to win 25 out of 30 games and find ourselves tied for the division lead in a month...therefore, we are going to lose games. We just have to start winning more games than we are losing at a fairly decent clip. We are doing that lately. Not much else to say. I think the key is looking at things from a macro perspective. Don't focus on any one game, rather focus on series/one week at a time. You want to win series and more importantly you want to have winning records week after week after week. That could just be 1 game over per week, but the key is to make a habit of it. You do that and in time, they'll be right back in this thing. And if they run off a couple really good weeks in the meantime, they might be in it quicker than not. And if they don't, well, than they don't and all of you panning for change will get exactly that. No, I'm not saying anyone is rooting for the team to lose, I know better than that, we are all huge ass fans here and everyone treats games differently and I respect that.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 18, 2011 -> 10:58 AM) Yeah, that part sucked. Well you invited one person from work, now you have to invite your whole department. Ugh. I'd never get married again for no other reason, than to never have to plan a wedding again. Agreed!!!

QUOTE (iamshack @ May 18, 2011 -> 10:43 AM) No, but you're going to lose baseball games. This isn't the NFL or the NBA. We have 120 of these left. We're going to lose at least 9 of them (I kid). Certainly you want to win every single game, but you cannot be on a ledge every day saying "if we don't win this one, we've got to blow it all up." There are just far too many different things that can happen over the course of the next 4.5 months to start calling out must wins. The key is to keep improving and gradually climbing out of the hole we dug ourselves throughout April and early May. We're doing that. That's all you can ask for at this point. Not to mention, I simply can't enjoy the game I love, thinking that every single game is a must win. So what I do, is sit back and hope to see the club play good baseball and I know that if they play good baseball, they'll be just fine. If they don't, they don't, and they have no one to blame but themselves and we'll see significant changes made. Either way, I'm not going to go crazy and say if we lose game X that the season is over (unless game X is game 162, haha, or any playoff elimination game).