Chisoxfn

QUOTE (daggins @ Jun 22, 2010 -> 09:14 PM) Like usual, his bat is heating up with the weather. The pleasant surprise has been his crazy good defense lately. It really shouldn't be a surprise. Last year he made a lot of great plays, had trouble with the easier plays. He's gaining more and more confidence and I think we'll have one or two really good seasons out of him where he's a plus offensive & defensive player (after that, who knows where Ramirez will be playing). If the Sox end up making the postseason and finishing strong, he'll be a big reason why, imo.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Jun 23, 2010 -> 09:19 AM) There really are maybe 10 teams or less that are in a different class than the US. It appears that the US will not have to face any of them. Even Germany is a team that the US matches up with considerably better than a Spain, Brazil, Argentina or other teams who play a quicker Spanish style pace. US tends to give up a lot of fouls and set pieces against teams like that. Unbelievable turn of events. Of all the teams out there, these are the ones I really really don't want to play and that we will have a hell of a time beating: Spain, Argentina, Portugal, Brazil. There are another set of teams that I personally wouldn't like matching up against and that would include Ghana, but outside of that I think the US can play with every other team in the world and we have beaten Spain relatively recently. The key will be our defense playing strong and our offense finshing because we can't continue to not finish. I have a lot of faith in this squad though, but I'll take it one game at a time. Lets kick some ass on Saturday!! USA USA USA!!!!

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Jun 23, 2010 -> 09:02 AM) Is this the farthest Team USA has gotten? I'm a noob to all of this. 8 years ago they faced Germany in the quarterfinals, lost in a heartbreaker where we outplayed the Germans but the German goal keeper was a tank. Prior to this team, I believe that team was the best team in US history (from a pure talent standpoint).

QUOTE (chw42 @ Jun 23, 2010 -> 08:58 AM) Hopefully, Germany loses and we get to play Serbia or Australia. Agreed. The greatest player in US soccer history delivered when we needed it. US really played its best game of the tournametn so far though. We had tons of great opportunities, didn't finish and choked a bit, but I don't expect that to happen in our quarterfinal matchup. Altidore played like a stud for the most part, albeit he missed one. Dempsey is rock solid and will not miss those opportunities again. I personally prefer Hercules to Buddle but Buddle might be the better option as the starter because Gomez seems very comfortable coming off the bench where as Buddle was atrocious. f***ing awesome. Biggest goal in the history of US soccer right there!!! USA USA USA!!!! This win was huge for US soccer too because there is a good chance this will help us get the World Cup again in 2022.

Jim, if that time doesn't work. I'll also be in Miami for a week on business sometime between now and the end of August. Just found out about half an hour ago.

Fantastic news. Glad to see he's gotten better. Scary thing Josh had to go through and its something I hope he'll be able to control the rest of his life.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 21, 2010 -> 07:07 AM) There's lots of things you can blame Obama for here. 1. Not reforming the MMS fast enough 2. Being slow in the response 3. Leaving BP too much in control 4. Not committing enough resources to deal with the cleanup 5. Not responding fast enough to international offers of help I could go on. I agree with all of those. And that is what I've been saying and ripping into Obama for.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jun 18, 2010 -> 11:10 AM) Yeah, but you didn't see Jas agree with those statements. I think he's done a terrible job. I don't necessarily think he's intentionally screwing things up.

QUOTE (The Beast @ Jun 22, 2010 -> 12:28 PM) Part of my issue is that I don't fit with a lot of jobs. Obviously I'm not some smoking hot woman paralegal. I also would not be good with sales, so that is out, and I don't fancy accounting or finance. So with my skills it appears that guidance counseling, being a paralegal or doing something completely unrelated might suit me. Google ISFJ. That's my personality type, and unfortunately I don't fit a lot of extroverted careers, though I can try to force myself to be more extroverted. Go into the repo business. You are pretty big dude from what I remember and you don't have to have great peoples skills. Or you could become the next, Dog, the Bounty Hunter? Maybe you could become a UPS driver? They pay pretty good.

QUOTE (FlaSoxxJim @ Jun 22, 2010 -> 11:56 AM) Business or Pleasure? I'm a little more than an hour east of Orlando. Let me know when you're going to be in the area and I'll try to swing out to meet up for a beer. I'll be there for a Soxtalkers wedding (Shipps). I'll be in Miami for 2 days and than Orlando for 3 days. October 10th, 11th, and part of the 12th. I think we are going to do Disneyland on the 10th and than haven't decided between Sea world (my wife took a lot of oceanography classes and absolutely loves sea world out here and marine animals in general), Universal or whatever for the 11th. We'll probably lounge on the 12th at the hotel pool. Let me know, drinks would be great.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jun 21, 2010 -> 06:31 PM) G. Cole has a great fastball, but holy crap does he work slow. I'm still surprised that the Yanks weren't able to sign him when they drafted him. UCLA has a filthy rotation with quite a bit of upside.

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Jun 22, 2010 -> 09:16 AM) Totally agreed, right now Im getting experience at my internship with SAP and I know that I will have an abundance of opportunities because of this experience. Three letters can make your resume very impressive, SAP. Not to mention the massive amounts of money it takes large companies to implement one of the big systems. Your talking about between 100 and 250 million to implement. Could be more for all I know. I've worked at a company that was migrating to SAP, spent 100M and than wrote it all off because they weren't even close. Now I'm at a company going to Oracle and the bill ain't cheap and we still won't be done with our world wide roll out for a while. Russ, that will be super beneficial. If I went back and was going to change anything, I'd probably look into that. I don't have the IT skills but what I do have is the finance/accounting side with a decent mix of IT and am hoping to get more involved in being the middle man between IT and Finance because it appears there aren't many people who know enough about both and one of the huge problem areas is that IT ends up creating something without the options finance wants or without the capabilities (or they do way too much, etc). And that is just one small area of the platform since SAP/Oracle are so much more than just Finance/Accounting tools. They handle the procurement, production, taxes, etc.

QUOTE (FlaSoxxJim @ Jun 21, 2010 -> 08:11 PM) You don't need to be the least bit political to understand that this oil thing is going to be still going on for decades after they figure out how to stop the flow. I wish everyone involved could drop politics and posturing and actually do something constructive. Hey Jim I'm gonna be in Florida this summer. Are you close to Miami or Orlando?

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Jun 21, 2010 -> 03:57 PM) Eh, depends on what you want to go into. There are plenty of IT jobs now and the area is still growing heavily. If you can get experience implementing Oracle or SAP you can do quite well. I'm getting involved in some of those type of projects right now, related to Oracle and It could open up some more doors for me (outside of the accounting realm).

QUOTE (SHIPPS @ Jun 21, 2010 -> 04:54 PM) Thank you. He is so busy now a days I think he has found some chick that he has been digging on. Really? Thats awesome. I'll make sure to poke and prod away until I get the dirt.

Shipps...I just shot Scalise an email with my itinerary so hopefully that helps get him off his butt

Miami in October for a certain mods wedding. After that,Orlando to check out Disneyworld for a couple days. Anyone have any recommendations for both Miami & Orlando?

QUOTE (girlslikebaseballtoo#26 @ Jun 21, 2010 -> 09:35 AM) Thank You!! I have even been looking at Amtrak prices!! One of the closest stations to Bristol is in W-S!! ..I wouldn't mind catchin' a game on my way in! I'm going to keep looking ..it'll work itself out ...always does!! AGAIN ..Thank You guys!! You could fly into North Carolina and drive to Bristol from there. Charlotte isn't all that far from Bristol. You should fly out of LAX.

QUOTE (JPN366 @ Jun 21, 2010 -> 10:07 AM) I think Miller wowed people with his gas at North Carolina, if I remember correctly. Didn't know his BB rate was so bad though. Ya. And his college world series performance also added to his hype. Not that it really impacted his draft status, but the guy was tall with a huge arm and it worked well in college. But at the professional level he had adjustments to make and never really was able to. You could argue that rushing him impacted his ability to do such, but who knows.

QUOTE (JPN366 @ Jun 21, 2010 -> 09:56 AM) The question is, do the White Sox really want to go the Andrew Miller route with Sale? I just saw Miller pitch the other day for Florida's AA team. I don't think Miller had the command that Sale does and ultimately I think it is the command that has more or less done Miller in. However, there is no denying that they rushed Miller up and didn't allow him to develop and make the necessary adjustments to try and improve his command at the minor league level. I don't get the feeling that the Sox are doing this with Sale as they just feel he is flat out more advanced and capable. My big concern is by us utilizing him as a reliever so early, there is a chance we stunt the growth and development of some of the secondary pitches needed for him to excel in the rotation.

QUOTE (DBAHO @ Jun 21, 2010 -> 09:45 AM) The knock on Bosh has always been his defensive ability IIRC. But putting Noah next to him seems like a pretty good solution I'd say. He was a stud defensively during international play. I think the big problem is Toronto runs a system that doesn't allow you to do much anything defensively.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 21, 2010 -> 08:38 AM) 24 ppg and 10 rebounds per game, those are "Best player on a championship team" sort of numbers. Better scoring rate than Howard, for example. His PER was 4th in the NBA, better than Duncan or Howard. The only 3 better than him were James, Wade, and Durant. You're not going to win with just him, but you put him on a team with 2 other possible all-stars like Rose and Noah, with good depth like Deng, Hinrich, and hopefully some other SG behind him, and yeah, he could easily be the best player on a championship level team. And at times he's been a well above average defender. Last year was not one of those times though. I think Bosh would be a great get if LBJ stays. If LBJ goes anywhere but Chicago or Cleveland, I'd be pissed. But if LBJ stays, I want Bosh over anyone else.

QUOTE (chisoxfan09 @ Jun 19, 2010 -> 11:58 PM) Gilmore was not projected to be a power hitter was he? HIs OBP wold be even higher if he could take walks. Anyone peg him for AA later this year?? The guy has power. He just hasn't shown it during the games. You watch him take BP and the ball bombs. I don't know what it is or why he hasn't, but the in game power just hasn't shown up for the most part. But the projections all indicated he would be a guy with 30 HR power.

QUOTE (Ozzie Ball @ Jun 19, 2010 -> 06:40 PM) Kyle Bellamy: 3.2 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 6 SO. 41.2 IP, 11 BB, 50 SO. I keep waiting for him to move up. I expected him to make the bullpen later on in the season if he pitched well. So far the Sox have been relatively patient with him. If all goes well, I would be surprised if he didn't break camp in our pen next spring. Nice to have him and Santos because that would give us two cheap relievers with the ability to be above average.

QUOTE (Springfield SoxFan @ Jun 20, 2010 -> 05:31 PM) It is pretty amazing to read all of these draft stories and it would be nice to hear what actually went down, because if he his agent told the Royals who would not sign for the 4th overall slot, that agent should be fired, but oh well. It's great to have him and let's see how he does this summer. Some teams were thinking it was going to take 4M to sign him. It was odd that he went to the Sox since it didn't sound like Sale had really talked or heard much from the Sox at all.