fathom

I want to give credit to Ozzie for not being stubborn and putting Dunn back in the lineup. I think he would have preferred to rest him one more game, but Cahill was the perfect pitcher to get Dunn back into the lineup to face. Hopefully he benches him against Gio though.

Phillies with some absolutely terrible play in extra innings tonight.

What a terrible charge call on LBJ.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 10, 2011 -> 12:40 AM) Frankly, yes. The only fair way to evaluate things is in aggregate. Even I agree with this

Franklin and Bash was better last night than the pilot. Loved it!

QUOTE (Stan Bahnsen @ Jun 9, 2011 -> 06:24 PM) Actually, his much-heralded bunting skills have gone south as well. They were DREADFUL last year. He had a success rate last year when he'd get a bunt down of around 15%.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Jun 9, 2011 -> 07:15 PM) Ozzie has cost this team five games off the top of my head. He's stubborn to a fault and he most certainly doesn't put his players in the best position to succeed. At least not consistently. Ozzie doesn't overreact? Didn't he just go on a tirade a couple weeks ago? Getting mad at the fans because most don't give him a free lifetime pass for 2005? Players respond to him? Well I wish Alex Rios, Adam Dunn, AJ, JP, Danks and Thornton would start responding. Because nothing he's done has worked (this is obviously on the players, too). To me, it's been his worst year, no question about it.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jun 9, 2011 -> 05:53 PM) I doubt his speed has suddenly vanished, but it doesn't have to. Even if he's just lost a "step", that makes a big difference by itself... then its compounded if he tries to make changes to adjust. That small decline in speed can have a pretty huge impact. Why's that hard to believe? He's played so hard and ran so often for quite a long time now (while rarely getting a rest, unless it was with the Dodgers). Also, in today's age of baseball, we have no way of knowing what the actual aging process for players is.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jun 9, 2011 -> 05:46 PM) To me the question is how much "slower" is he and I don't personally know that answer. Part of him getting thrown out could just be him having a flaw in his technique when it comes to getting good jumps and part of that is about confidence. The more he "thinks" about something, the slower he might appear. As long as he has above average speed, he should be a solid player. When that skill isn't there, than I think it is time that he is reduced to more of a bench role. I personally don't know if I've seen enough to say he doesn't have the speed anymore to be effective or if it is more of a mental thing as of this point. Kind of like how fathom points out that part of his problems in defense seem to be his "timidness". I don't know the answer because I'm not around Pierre enough to see first-hand the difference in his actual skills (e.g., his practice, the time it takes him to get from 1st to 2nd, etc). The eye test isn't pretty to date, but as I pointed out above, part of that could be due to practice or a slump. The longer it goes though, the more you think it isn't a slump anymore. I thought Pierre had lost a step last year compared to his time on the Marlins, and I'd say comparing last year to this year, he's lost another step if not more. The most telling play to illustrate this was when he hit a line drive into the right field corner against the Indians, and the old Pierre would have had an easy triple on this play. However, the 2011 Pierre didn't even round second base, and settled for a double. He's even had a few instances where his jumps haven't been bad, and he was still thrown out with ease. Most of his steals this year have been on bad throws. My best analogy is that if Pierre was a pitcher, he would have used to throw 97 mph but now throws 91 mph.

Also, just because Dunn and Rios are having seasons from hell doesn't mean Juan should be excused for how bad he's been. Left field is one of the easier positions in all of baseball to find a replacement player, especially when you have Viciedo tearing up the minors (and LF being very easy to play at the Cell).

The biggest problem with Pierre's defense is that he seems so timid to go after fly balls that he's never running at full speed. If you look at the fly balls he's dropped at the Cell, he keeps stopping and starting numerous times because it's like he wants anyone else to catch the ball besides him. And maybe it's me, but Juan getting a random single once a game and then being caught stealing is just as mediocre as Dunn striking out 3 times in a game.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Jun 9, 2011 -> 03:12 PM) It only got us Scotty Pods and allowed us to sign AJ and El Duque, among others. I hate, hate hate when people b**** about the C-Lee trade. It was great. Yeah, I'm not complaining about the money it freed up at all. It worked out, even if we gave up more talent than what we got back. And IIRC, the player that we definitely couldn't have afforded if we didn't do this trade was Iguchi.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 9, 2011 -> 04:03 PM) It would be fair to point out at this point that the Carlos Lee trade went a long way towards winning us our World Series title. Yes, by freeing up more money to spend on other free agents, and not because Pods was actually better than Carlos Lee.

I would look online to see if Dave Wilder is his agent.

I bet we see this lineup tomorrow Pierre, Ramirez, Quentin, Konerko, AJP, Rios, Dunn, Beckham, Omar

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jun 9, 2011 -> 04:45 AM) He's always had no arm, but now he has no range, so it's a perfect time to call up Dayan. Everybody would say it's time. You really truly hate Juan. He's bad, but I don't think he deserves the venom of your first post in the thread. He's by all accounts not a bad guy. He's kind of likeable in interviews I think. He sucks. I don't care how nice or how much of an ass someone is...as long as they help the Sox win. Pierre's had an absolutely brutal season this year.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jun 9, 2011 -> 04:44 AM) I am having a hard time blaming Crain...he's been just as overused, hasn't he? I would have just taken my chances with Thornton there and let him pitch to Olivo...I seem to remember Olivo being an excellent hanging breaking ball hitter...and Crain tends to hang one or two... Crain had like 4 days off after the line drive incident. He just can't keep anything down in the zone. But like you said (and I also added earlier), the main righties are going to continue to be overused. Ozzie seems to have a lot of confidence in Bruney.

So back to the game/team: Crain has got to step it up. Santos is going to hit the wall again sooner rather than later if he keeps having to be the only reliable righty in the pen. Crain's fallen in love with his slider again, even though he had more success earlier in the year getting hitters to chase the high fastball.

QUOTE (SoxFan1 @ Jun 9, 2011 -> 04:34 AM) Ya, that includes Cuba. I assumed that was included in "Latin America"? Ha, I'm just bad at geography I guess. I was talking about the players available during the usual contract period with the DR, Venezuela, etc.

QUOTE (SoxFan1 @ Jun 9, 2011 -> 04:31 AM) Since KW has come to the Sox, we're one of the highest spending teams on Latin American players..... There's no way that's accurate unless you're considering Cuba (which you know I wasn't referring to).

QUOTE (SoxFan1 @ Jun 9, 2011 -> 04:30 AM) There is not a executive in ALL OF BASEBALL that doesn't encourage getting on base. Would you consider Ozzie an executive? Cause if you do, then he feels like someone who walks a lot is just a base clogger.

QUOTE (SoxFan1 @ Jun 9, 2011 -> 04:29 AM) I'm fairly certain one of his (Ozzie's) good friends is ill. Seriously? Hadn't heard that. All day on the radio, they were making it seem like it had to do with the draft.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Jun 9, 2011 -> 04:27 AM) And yet no matter how many years go by and this philosophy fails miserably, nothing changes. But we can hand out extensions to Teahen and $4 million bucks for a month of Manny. We draft terribly, we develop terribly, and spend nothing on Latin American players (even though most of them LOVE Ozzie). It's scary looking a few years into the future, but hopefully the new General Manager will have a better plan for running an organization.

QUOTE (TheBigHurt @ Jun 9, 2011 -> 04:22 AM) I'd really love to know in what way other than "in-game" where he's a "good" manager. Well, we're 0-1 since he said he was very upset with something in his life even though we had just beaten King Felix.

QUOTE (DirtySox @ Jun 9, 2011 -> 04:22 AM) Yea. He is far too involved with the draft decisions. He constantly hammers home that college players are the best choice as they are safer, and closer to the majors. Gonzalez reiterated this tripe in his pre-draft piece. As did Hawk last night