fathom

At this point, if we can put Rios on waivers and have someone claim him, you drive him to the airport. That's one contract that would be great to rid ourselves of.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Apr 23, 2011 -> 09:24 PM) First triple of Alex Avila's life. Thanks, Rios. I'm almost wishing we had DeWayne Wise or Brian Anderson back, along with all the money KW's been wasting on Rios for most of the last 3 seasons. ALMOST? Hell, I wish there was a Scream 5 out for me to go watch and not have this torture on my TV.

QUOTE (JoeCoolMan24 @ Apr 23, 2011 -> 10:22 PM) And now Rios f***s up a ball in CF? LOL. This team's defense/offense/pitching is just terrible right now. I can't believe Quentin is our best fielder so far this year. Ahaha. f*** it, put Rios on the DL with vagina/toe pain. Bench Pierre, and play De Aza and Viciedo in CF/LF. No way they could be worse overall than Rios/Pierre have been. It will never happen, but Rios truly might be the worst overall player in the majors this year.

Way to run to the ball Rios. This might be the worst game of our season so far.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Apr 23, 2011 -> 09:20 PM) Wow, you get Boozer open for 3? Crappy job there. Between that and having Korver in on a defensive possession, Thibs is going to get blasted.

I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous. Pull Pierre and Rios off the field until they can catch a fly ball. Is that 6 misplays between them now?

Seriously, infield in with no one out in the 4th inning of a tied game against the worst pitcher in the AL? If that's not an indictment on our offense, nothing is.

PK must have had a rough night. It's really hard to imagine a team more lifeless at the plate. We all made excuses for when we were getting shut down by Cy Young candidates. But this is pathetic so far.

9 up, 9 down. Just realized what bugs me about Morel's swing. Every swing seems like it's an 0-2 swing trying to protect the plate. I hope he likes Charlotte in May.

QUOTE (bucket-of-suck @ Apr 23, 2011 -> 09:40 PM) Penny is literally putting it RIGHT DOWN the heart of the plate and Sox hitters are taking terrible cuts. Dunn is the worst. His path to the ball is awful. Just awful. Penny's fastball is tailing right down the heart of the plate. The top of the 2nd was ridiculous, as PK struck out on a terrible pitch and then Dunn couldn't catch up to a 92 mph 3-1 fastball.

QUOTE (justBLAZE @ Apr 23, 2011 -> 09:40 PM) Yup, its the NL Arizona Dbacks Edwin we got today, def not the AL Detroit Tigers Edwin form 09. His average fastball seems down this year, but I haven't seen any stats to back that up. Just feels he not popping the mitt like he did when we first got him last year.

Rios is swinging in the same spot every time, regardless of what type of pitch it is. Maybe it's time to reconstruct his swing, as there's nothing to lose right now.

First time watching Mattingly manage. Maybe it's not a good idea Don to let your set-up man try to go 2 innings and eventually give up 5 ER. Dodgers fans apparently can't stand him.

Real quick, looked at radar and there's nothing close to Michigan. Are they calling for rain?

Well, I'm being dragged to see Scream 4. Someone do a rain dance for me.

Buehrle has been hit very hard in all but one of his starts. He just doesn't fool enough hitters anymore. I really hope he has a strong year though in case this is his swan song with the Sox, as you hate to see a legend go out poorly.

I swear we face one Cy Young candidate every series. It's ridiculous.

Given the way our offense is going, if we were ever going to get no hit, tonight is the night. Gonna have to hope we get a man on for Quentin, Konerko or Dunn and we tie it up with a 2 run homer. Without Alexei in the lineup, we're a really, really bad high fastball hitting team besides Konerko (who's struggled vs Verlander).

CF is basically the position where we have the least amount of major league depth. The leash with Rios is going to have to be a lot longer than anyone of us would like.

What did rios do

I firmly believe Ozzie would be a great manager in the NL or for a team like Seattle. As illustrated by his comments about the bunt yesterday, his philosophy of bunting on a team with 2 future 500 home run players (possibly) is skewed.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Apr 22, 2011 -> 10:19 PM) I don't think anyone could have predicted Hermanson, Politte, Jenks and Cotts to pitch as well as they did. In the end, bringing in Thome wasn't the wrong move...it was believing that Brian Anderson was the guy to keep after parting with Chris Young, Anthony Webster, Jeremy Reed and Rowand. For 2006, it was the fact that your two best pitchers (Buehrle and Contreras) had a second half combined ERA around 5.75. The 2006 team during the first half was the best White Sox team, in terms of talent, I've ever seen.

QUOTE (Ranger @ Apr 22, 2011 -> 07:00 PM) As far as hiring the "big name", what good does that really do? Lou Piniella was a big name. So is Rudy Jaramillo (who is apparently an offensive god of some sort, yet his team finished in the lower 1/2 of NL teams in offense last year. Like I said, it's all about the players). People make too much of it. He turned that franchise around and had them in playoffs first two years (including best record in NL in 2nd year, I believe) he was there, but THANKFULLY, they choked in the playoffs.

QUOTE (Ranger @ Apr 22, 2011 -> 07:00 PM) Overall, I'm a firm believer that people tend to make WAY too much of both GM's and coaching staffs. In general, I truly believe that unless the guys you have are totally incompetent, the results on the field will be dictated by the players. Now, you could say, "Yeah, but the GM obtains the players, so isn't he responsible?" Yes, but to an extent. GM's acquire players based on two things: 1)track record and/or 2) projection. Let's say a GM acquires a veteran player that has a track record of success, yet, for some reason, once acquired, he does nothing like he had done in previous seasons. Is that performance really on the GM? Something I think about often is the '06 team. Really, that team was a very good baseball team that was betrayed by a failing bullpen. Even with all their issues, they still won 90 games that year and I think would have been a dangerous playoff team. However, how was KW supposed to know that Pollitte and Cotts would be so terrible after being nearly unhittable the prior season? It's not like their performance lagged a bit. No, those guys were TOTALLY different the next year. Elite in 2005, awful in 2006. That degree of change doesn't usually happen like that from one year to the next. Tons of baseball statisticians were predicting Politte crashing back to earth after the 2005 due to the percentage of line drives he gave up that turned into outs. Some metrics ruled him the luckiest pitcher of 2005. As for Cotts, the fact that he gave up one home run all 2005 with his high fastball probably indicated that there was luck involved. The 2006 team didn't fade because of the bullpen...it faded cause the starting pitching hit the wall with a few months left. Even with a bad bullpen to start 2006, we were 6 games up on the Wild Card at the ASB.

Make Danks a pitcher, as he's never going to become a MLB caliber hitter.