Jordan4life_2007

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Aug 19, 2010 -> 09:51 PM) No DeJesus, Guillen or Pods. Do they have anyone left that can hit? Billy Butler. And Alex Gordon has been swinging a pretty hot stick. Besides that? Yeah, it's bad.

QUOTE (Jenks Heat @ Aug 19, 2010 -> 09:51 PM) Berkman on DL Twins hopefully face Haren and King Felix and then also the Rangers Berkman on the DL and will miss next weekend.......... The Twins rotation looked bad in this series....maybe the innings are catching up to Carl. I wasn't impressed with any one of Baker/Liriano/Pavano.

This game was so huge. For the moment, I think the season was saved. A sweep and it would've been a wrap. We gotta take care of business against the Royals.

QUOTE (pittshoganerkoff @ Aug 19, 2010 -> 09:38 PM) Consider his miserable start and you realize just how good he's been since the beginning of June. .292/.364/.341 since May 1. We can obviously ignore the slugging percentage. And he's 38/49 in stolen base attempts in this span. Combine that with his great defense all year, and there's really nothing to complain about.

QUOTE (fathom @ Aug 19, 2010 -> 09:36 PM) He's going to end up hitting .300 He'll probably end up with an OBP over .350 and 60+ stolen bases. He's just been great this year.

QUOTE (WinorDie88 @ Aug 19, 2010 -> 09:34 PM) Who the hell is this guy wearing no. 1 on our team? He's been our second best position player since the beginning of May.

JP has been incredible this series.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Aug 19, 2010 -> 09:13 PM) Where the f*** was this team the last 2 games?? Danks and Floyd getting torched didn't help much. Mark stepped up. That simple.

QUOTE (bucket-of-suck @ Aug 19, 2010 -> 08:59 PM) C'mon. Like a low level pitcher would work. They have no leverage. He cleared waivers. They have no leverage? Unless I'm mistaken, can't they just pull him back if a trade can't be agreed upon? And there's no way in hell a low-level pitcher, which in our system would be a SUPER low-level pitcher, would be enough to get Laroche. They could've gotten a s*** more than that before the trade deadline.

What the hell could we offer Arizona for Laroche? Viciedo/Sale are untouchable (Sale can't be traded anyway). We've got nothing.

I want Hawk eliminated. What the f*** is wrong with this idiot? A woodpecker dies everytime this buffoon says "Don't stop now, boys!"

Buster Posey is god.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Aug 19, 2010 -> 05:58 PM) Cubs keeping it "fun-bad" I was lmao when I saw that. And Mat Latos? Good god. Strasburg definitely has some competition for future Cy Youngs. Dude is amazing.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Aug 19, 2010 -> 05:35 AM) It's too late for this season, unfortunately. KW really has to take a long, hard look at himself in the mirror and see if he still has the burning fire and energy left to do his job effectively. Ozzie does, too. One of the observations from this series is that "the White Sox beat themselves," or, "if you wait around long enough, they'll make a mistake." This particular comment has come from both the Minnesota t.v. and radio broadcasters (I think the direct quote was "that's a stupid play by Ramirez" to throw home) alike. How often do we say that about other teams? Not very often, right? Or is it simply that we're harder on the Sox because we watch them all the time? The problem and resulting question, of course, is how do you teach players not to make stupid plays? If Ozzie's going to stay around, I really wish that JR would make him bring in some new coaches (of course, I might as well believe it will rain frogs like the end of Magnolia while I'm at it). And I'm not sure any of us have seen solid reasons or evidence to believe that Buddy Bell has turned around our minor league system...or, if he is, it's basically like turning the Titanic around in mid-ocean and we're missing the progress. Drafting philosophy? Perhaps that's changing a bit...but coaching/instructionally? Here's the main difference between the Twins and White Sox. If you look around the diamond, all of their everyday players except for Hudson and Young spent time growing up/maturing/developing in the Twins' system. Many of them came up together, they won together, advanced level by level...grew to trust each other and believe in each other (Koskie, Mientkiewiz, AJ, Rivas, Guzman, Hunter, Jacque Jones, etc.) What do we have? We have a rag-tag collection of talented players from all over the place, but they can't play with cohesion and sustain it. One simple example, there was a flyball that fell in the outfield that Rios or Pierre could have caught...but they don't trust each other, so as they were in the same line, both thought the other would get it, no communication or leadership from Rios, the ball falls in and it leads to some early damage and everyone saying "oh, no, here we go again." Of our everyday position players, none of them came up in our system. How do you instill "the White Sox way" when there's no such organizational philosophy to be translated from the minors to the majors. I guarantee there's a "Twins' way" and it started with the foundation built by Tom Kelly and continues to this day with very few fundamental changes in organizational strategies (just a much bigger budget). Or look at the situation with 3B this year...you have Ramirez playing with yet another person surrounding him to his right that he didn't trust or feel comfortable playing with and it took him until Vizquel was put into the line-up to have 100% confidence he wouldn't have to worry everytime the ball was hit to that side. Another obvious observation: Their pitches consistently got OUR hitters out with offspeed pitches, whereas our pitchers have thrown way too many fastballs (without much life on them in the case of Putz, Thornton and Floyd) and pitched right into the strengths of the Twins. So it might take a change in managerial philosophy, new coaches all around. In all honesty, I wouldn't be uspet at all if Omar Vizquel was the manager next year (once again, something that will never happen). Ozzie's done a very good job, but his act has worn thin, and you can only go the same well so many times motivationally with the same team/group of players. There's something very wrong when you're 4-21 against your main rival in the second half of the season over the last 3 seasons. I would like to keep KW, but I'm very concerned he doesn't have the patience to try to build another great team from inside the organization and be patient for 2-3 years. Something else that's interesting...we have sort of evolved over time into the Twins, and they've become more and more like the mid 00's White Sox teams. The problem is that we still have to play 81 games at USCF. The Twins have adapted and adjusted (they still have the #1 defense) and we have too, except our adjustments were made to prepare us for a National League schedule, unfortunately. We actually have more speed and athleticism, overall, than the Twins, and yet they're a much better ballclub across the board. I don't know how we can expect to play smarter if we keep the same players and coaching staff in place, but that's on JR I guess. If we're really going to be stubborn and try to win with "small ball" in a small park, then we have to get a lockdown closer (like the Twins had in Nathan), and where exactly are we going to get that on the FA market? It seems it will have to come from either Santos or Sale. And the other problem is we might need Sale as a starter in 2012 or sooner. So, to summarize: 1) Stop making so many stupid plays (see coaching staff) 2) Develop players and bring them all up to the majors together, stop trading them 3) Find a lockdown closer 4) Hope and pray that Peavy is 100% next year 5) Hope and pray that Santos, Sale, Beckham, Viciedo and Flowers are all ready to make big contributions next year 6) Hope and pray that the fanbase will be patient if you finally articulate a strategy that can produce a 3-5 year winning team and not just an occasional blip on the radar every 5 or 10 years In my opinion, we're almost as good as those Twins' teams from 2002-2004. The problems are fourfold, 1) the Twins have surpassed us in terms of major league talent, minor league talent and perhaps even in payroll for next year, 2) we have no Joe Nathan, 3) as good as Danks and Floyd can be, they aren't "aces" in the category of Johan Santana that you can count on for big-game performances (one exception, Game 163) and 4) Jake Peavy, if he's not healthy, there's really no way to come up with anything resembling a solid backup or fallback plan Finally, I'm tired of these "Camp Coras" and lip service in spring training and occasionally during the season to fundamentals...if we're not going to be able to pound teams into submission, we have to do the little things right, and do them consistently and not suddenly and conveniently forget they exist once the season starts. As much as Ozzie can be a poor in-game manager, one of his biggest weaknesses is talking or stressing something, saying the right things, then one or two days later it's like we never said anything at all, whether it's about Bobby Jenks or bunting, you have to follow through with those types of organizational decisions or the players will start to tune them all out and just shrug their shoulders and say "that's Ozzie being Ozzie." I've already come to terms with losing AJ and Konerko. In the next 12-18 months, we'll go through the same thing with Thornton (he's the best trading chip and Sale makes him a bit less needed if he can give you some major league ready talent back), Danks and Mark Buehrle. They'll try to extend Jackson if he pitches well, but that won't be easy with Boras. Brooks Boyer might have his work cut out for him marketing the White Sox without Konerko and Buehrle. When he started, he must have thought he was in heaven with the 2005/06 seasons. Now he'll really have to earn his money! I fell asleep halfway through this post. But I will say that of what I did read you made some legitimate points.

QUOTE (Jenksy Cat @ Aug 19, 2010 -> 12:45 AM) Do games in August count for more than the ones in April? I was unaware of the format switch How often do teams dump the salary of multiple players through the waiver process? I can see one player. But this guy is proposing a White Flag.

Dumping salary? Is there another trade deadline I don't know about?

QUOTE (southsideirish71 @ Aug 18, 2010 -> 10:47 PM) I figure Derrick Lee will be here as Ozzie tries to relive 2003. The only one off that team worth having is on the Tigers. So who was good back in 2003, is having a down year or years, and is willing to play for the league minimum. That pretty much is our blueprint. The diamond in the rough theory for building a winner. Bingo. Perpetually putting temporary band-aids on obvious holes while we continue to be cheap when it comes to the draft and trading away young talent like it's set to expire.

QUOTE (Thunderbolt @ Aug 18, 2010 -> 10:45 PM) Hey, Chris Sale is going to be a pretty crucial piece when we land Carlos Lee next year. "Change of scenery" and "best shape of his life" would be used to describe such a move by KW.

QUOTE (SoxFanForever @ Aug 18, 2010 -> 10:41 PM) With the sunk money they already have in guys like Rios, Peavy, et al I don't see them trading Sale. He is a cheap bullpen arm that looks for real. You can't give that up unless it is for something pretty damn amazing. I thought the same thing about Hudson. No prospect is safe with KW around.

QUOTE (SoxFanForever @ Aug 18, 2010 -> 10:38 PM) At least Sale looked good tonight. He looked f***ing great. I have to temper my enthusiasm. As KW is liable to trade him for another expensive, underachieving pitcher that Cooper told him he can fix.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Aug 18, 2010 -> 10:33 PM) We are 4-10 against the Twins. Our awful manager is going off the deep-end and wants us all to f*** off. We play with no effort and refuse to take any sort retaliation or do anything of note against our archrivals. Things are going just great. Um, how about our two best pitchers soiling themselves when we REALLY needed them? And I don't know how you can be complaining about effort. We lost on a walk-off last night and another tough 1-run loss tonight. I've made my feelings about Ozzie pretty clear. But can't say much about him in this series. We're getting beat by a better team.

I don't even care that we lost tonight. I've come to expect a fisting from the Twins when it counts. But how about Chris f***ing Sale!? This was my first chance to see him. And his stuff is REAL. Made Mauer look like a sissy Mark Kotsay on three pitches. Appears to me that he's got 3+ pitches AND a change, which we didn't get to see tonight. For the love of the devil, KW, do not trade this kid!

Damn, you guys are awesome.

I like to lay down in my bed with the lights out stroking my stuff to Hawk's voice saying "Don't stop now, boys!"

QUOTE (11and1 @ Aug 18, 2010 -> 04:21 PM) Only Ozzie can answer your question. But last night's debacle would have been easier for me to handle if it had been ANY Twinkie other than Thome. Honestly, if we had to lose that way, I'm glad it was Thome that did it to us. It was like Thome was figuratively pissing on Ozzie's face.