fathom

Ozzie....repeat after me: Paul Konerko is our best hitter, and is not a bad defensive player. I do not have to take him out for defensive purposes every time the Sox lead at the end of the game.

Cuddyer sure has less range at 3b than Koskie did. Also, it looks like Bartlett is going to bloop us to death this season.

Wow, great AB by Konerko! Great to see him keep that ball fair, especially against a pitcher he's struggled against.

Anyone else concerned about our offense? Seems like we're going to struggle mightily against righty starters. If we're counting on Konerko, Rowand and Uribe to match what they did last year, we're in a lot of trouble.

QUOTE(rudylaw @ Apr 9, 2005 -> 01:59 AM) Where is the small ball? why can't we move runners along? I was thinking the same thing. The way Ozzie has configured the lineup, he still isn't implementing the lineup to best use the speed. Rather, he has Everett, Konerko, and Dye together (aren't going to do anything special with those guys in terms of manufacturing). Then, he has A.J. and Crede back-to-back near the bottom.

Good job of pitching there by El Duque.

Hope I'm wrong, but this game reminds me of some of the Twins games from years past. Bloopers and infield singles left and right for the Twins, while the Sox squander good scoring opportunities.

His arm is pretty poor, but there's no excuse not to try and throw out a runner at home in a 4 run game.

I think we're seeing some of that "great" defense by Podsednik that the Brewers fans warned us about. I still don't know why he didn't try to throw the runner out at home in the 7th inning yesterday.

Rowand seems to have changed his swing a little, and looks awful. He's swinging with all arms, and is making him hit everything on the ground.

Hmmmm.....so this is what it looks like to save relievers in case the game goes to extras? Sorry, had to say that.

Good bunt by Branyan. Not in a million years would I have thought he could get it down.

Ah yes, the reverse psychology worked against Jenkins! Leadoff double for Jenkins.

That was the worst AB I've seen from Aramis in a long time. Now, Jenkins has the chance at 5 K's in a game. Where's Austin Kearns when you need him?

I'll never understand why Cubs didn't go harder after Benitez. Benitez was lights-out last year, and he's still young enough that he's not going to start throwing 88 mph all of a sudden. On the other hand, I think Percival is well on the decline. He was very shaky for the Angels last year. I'd guess every Angels fan is happier with K-Rod as their closer instead of Percival. With the Cubs high payroll, you would think they'd spend some money on their bullpen, which failed them so much last year.

Even if the Cubs win this game, I'm still going to take some pleasure from it knowing that Hawkins has already blown a game. I guarantee every Cubs fan is b****ing about their closing position right now. Much more so than we were yesterday.

Is the wind blowing in from center? Of course, the announcers don't even mention that Lee's ball might have been knocked down.

Haha, wow! I thought they were going to have Spivey out by a mile at home if H'worth came up cleanly with that ball. Come on Carlos!

Amazing that Cubs are going to win this game when I think they've had 2 hard hit balls the entire game. These announcers are worse than any major league tandem I've heard in a long time.

The last few years, I was nervous about the Cubs being a World Series contender because I thought their talent level was better than almost every team in baseball. However, this year, I'm nowhere near as nervous about them being a serious threat at winning it all. Other teams like the Braves, Marlins, Cardinals, and a few NL west teams are superior to the Cubs, in my opinion.

For the person who keeps saying that Mia Hamm is ugly.........I couldn't agree more. She looks like a rat. I've never understood how people think she's hot.

Am I the only one who thinks Cubs are going to have a ton of problems with their middle relief? Fox is incredibly inconsistent/wild, and we all know how Hawkins is as a closer.

Geoff Jenkins is a terrible player. Talk about someone who hasn't improved at all in the last 3 years or so.

The question I have is this: is Gload's defense that much better that it makes up for the difference between potential offensive help regarding Gload having to bat instead of Konerko? This isn't a situation like a few years ago where we replaced Carlos Lee in LF late in the game for someone like Rowand, where the defensive replacement was far and away better than the starter.

Let me also add that I hate the whole Gload for Konerko defensive replacement strategy. As I noted in the game thread, it's not like PK is bad on defense. We need to keep our best hitter in the game in case of a blown save.