southsideirish71

I call shennanigans

QUOTE(Wedge @ Jul 22, 2005 -> 10:26 AM) Didn't Levine crack the Ozzie extension story? And it's not like something has gone down that Levine didn't hint at before... He and Boston Gammons have about the same accuracy rate. I still remember when he announced something as an ESPN 1000 exclusive that was on rotoworld and was discussed here for the previous 2 weeks. He is about as accurate as carpet bombing.

QUOTE(YahtzeeSox @ Jul 22, 2005 -> 09:48 AM) That quote worries me. Tadahito has been striking out so much lately. He's been getting out on junk low and away breaking pitches. Walker needs to have a chat with him, somehow. I think thats the problem. Gooch was hitting great. Then Walker went to Borders and picked up.....

QUOTE(Spiff @ Jul 22, 2005 -> 09:33 AM) And don't forget all those division titles we won the last three years. Well thats what worries me. This offense is the same thing as before. We hit a lot of home runs and seem to score a lot of runs. But we have a hard time scoring without the dong lately.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Jul 22, 2005 -> 09:05 AM) How about runs scored? We are 6th in the AL. That's not great, but it is middle of the pack ... which doesn't suck. You asked for one stat, you got it. That happens to be the most important offensive stat of all. I know you said 'except runs" ... but really .. what else matters? You know oddly it seemed to matter so much that they changed the face of the team. Because scoring runs has been a difficult thing for this team. But then again it seems that scoring runs has never been a problem. In fact Ozzie wanted to change this team around because Scoring runs was a bad stat. KW wanted grinders on this team because the home run or nothing score 10 the one night and then get 3 hit by a no nothing the other night was bad. 2004 3rd in the league in runs scored. 1st in homers 2003 8th in runs scored 4th in homers 2002 3rd in the league in runs scored 3rd in homers

QUOTE(maggsmaggs @ Jul 22, 2005 -> 09:03 AM) Recap: Wake me up when he is relevant.

North is doing a number on Ozzie resting the starters so much. Jeter, Ramirez, Ortiz play a lot more games.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Jul 22, 2005 -> 01:50 AM) If a pitcher, any pitcher, shuts us down .... THIS OFFENSE SUCKS! If we score a few runs .... The pitcher didn't have his good stuff. :headshake Well please enlighten me. Show me in any set of stats how our offense doesnt suck. Last in just about every category except homers and runs.

QUOTE(Rowand44 @ Jul 22, 2005 -> 12:48 AM) It's always something. Most of the time when Buehrle gets 5 runs the Sox win, Red sox, Devil Rays, the Knights, usually it won't matter. Clement's there ace and we hit him fine, I don't know what else you want. And you are going on the idea that our pitchers are going to shut down the best offense in baseball. I forget.....

QUOTE(Rowand44 @ Jul 22, 2005 -> 12:43 AM) And what did the offense do wrong tonight? Was it score 4 runs off Clement in 6 innings or tie the game off Schilling in the 8th? Last time I checked at this point Clement's their ace and we hit him fine. Clement didnt have ace stuff. If you think this was vintage Clement then I think your seats were a bit too far up in the UD. A few solo homers and a few hits. They should of rocked him big time.

QUOTE(Frank the Tank 35 @ Jul 22, 2005 -> 12:39 AM) Hey, it's been awhile since we fired a coach... I'm thinking Greg Walker is in line for a little firing. Of course it's hard to fire a coach of a team with a record like the Sox, but the Sox' hitting is getting ridiculous. A majority of the time, if we even get SOMEONE on base, nobody has a high enough BA to drive the person in. If we get two hits in a row, it's only because I saw a pig flying outside of my house this afternoon. Check out our current batters' BA this year against their lifetime numbers (sorry I couldn't find lifetime #'s without this year's #s factored in): this year/ career/ difference/ best year BA (full season) AJ .243/ .288/ -.045/ .312 Paul .251/ .276/ -.025/ .304 Uribe .233/ .261/ -.028/ .283 Crede .248/ .254/ -.006/ .261 Dye .261/ .271/ -.010/ .321 Everett .265/ .276/ -.011/ .325 Aaron .289/ .290/ -.001/ .310 Timo .247/ .263/ -.016/ .295 Willie .213/ .237/ -.024/ .262 Ozuna .303/ .281/ +.022/ never played full season Widger .282/ .244/ +.038/ .264 (only 2 full seasons) Pods .293/ .278/ +.015/ .314 (I see this more as Pods understanding his role and not swinging for the fences like he did last year) Thomas (although it's not really fair to include him) .219/ .307/ -.088/ .353 People, keep in mind these career numbers factor in rookie seasons, etc, where these players might not have hit as well as they have in the immediate past. Look at the numbers though... this is frickin' insane! The only players that are hitting better than their career numbers are our backup catcher, our utility infielder, and a 3rd year guy who gets a ton of infield hits. This is sad my friends. REALLY SAD. How many championship teams can say that they got to the playoffs because their utility infielder and backup catcher had career years.(yeah I know Garland too) I can't imagine that everybody on our team this year was taking 'roids last year, so that's not a reasonable explanation. Walker needs to take the fall for this, you can't have nearly every starter having subpar offensive years AT THE SAME TIME. How is that even possible? Fact is, Walker is worn out his stay as so many coaches do. If these Sox players were even hitting their career averages (not their full potential), we'd have at least 100 more runs and be 40 games over .500 by now. Byebye Walk. There's your shakeup. Very insightful post.

That best record in baseball thing only goes so far.

This is a must win. THe cubans blow.

QUOTE(DABearSoX @ Jul 21, 2005 -> 11:31 PM) I too was at the game tonight...I totally agree they are as bad as scrubs fans if not worse.....From the minute I got on the red line at Grand ave i was surrounded.....Every flyout was like I was at wrigley filed watching from under the upperdeck, i guess they have every right to be on thier high horse, but the way they watch a baseball game is strikingly resembling to a cubs fan......The only thing that made it better was when Timo gunned out the runner at third I thought the run hadnt crossed the plate yet and I went buck.....got up then i guess i flailed my arms and hit a boston fans beer and spilled some on him....then after I apologized and got him another beer, he had the nerve to tell me "you need to calm the f*** down, its only a baseball game" The ionic particles from the Schilling bloody sawk fed a magic flea that summoned the invisible swordsman and he blessed the almighty sawks. Thats why we are a city of champs. Now Normy get me a Beer.

QUOTE(nitetrain8601 @ Jul 21, 2005 -> 10:56 PM) Last but not least, offensively this team needs to get back to what it was doing at the beggining of the season. Pods doesn't nearly bunt as much(yes I saw him try on 0-1 pitches when you should try straight out of the gate). Iguchi has caught PK-itis like I said earlier and Carl Everett looks like the only guy not lost at the plate. Oh AJ, how I want your offense to show up one day. Uribe, well I just lost hope on you. Timo is a better hitter than you and it's not even close. Our offense over the last 20 days is vintage corpseball. We live and die by the home run. If we hit home runs, we score and life is good. In the beginning of the season we werent a good hitting team. But we used our speed and our wits to manufacture runs. I assumed that when the temperatures got hotter that we would add power to that formula. Right now we look exactly like the 2004 and before team. We run a few guys and steal a few bags. But we dont hit and run. The sacrifice bunt is a waste because our guys strike out so much with men on. I cant wait for Gload to get here. He needs to start ASAP. Now to make things better we are facing a knuckleball pitcher. That will f*** up our swings for a while.

QUOTE(ZoomSlowik @ Jul 21, 2005 -> 10:30 PM) Frankly Boston's lineup doesn't scare me that much. Ortiz and Ramirez are monsters, but that's only two of the 9. The other players aren't going to beat you with any regularity. In a playoff situation, I think our guys will get through without getting hurt that bad. I am sure that Buerhle thought they were a piece of cake. High BA, leading the league in singles, doubles, OPS and OBP. What this mean is that not only do they have the power. But they constantly put pressure on a defense. They are constantly on base. They constantly hit the ball and put it in play. Our pitching is a series of guys who dont really strike out a lot, they let the hitters put the ball in play. This is not exactly a good mix. Buerhle, Garland and Garcia will give up runs. The idea that they will just shut down good hitting teams is very myopic at best. Our offense needs to hit better to support our pitching. We have seen numerous times this year and for the past few years that when a pitcher spots a fastball on the outer half our guys will shut down because of their pull happy tendancies. We are not a playoff tested team. We have some players who have played in the playoffs. But you should review our record as a team this year with big crowds. We dont play well with the large crowds. The spincters gets a bit tight and we s*** all over ourselves.

QUOTE(SoxFan1 @ Jul 21, 2005 -> 10:25 PM) In his defense, that is what we saw tonight. Actually we saw that for most of the detroit series also outside of some hits against bad relief. Cy Douglas had a 3 hitter going before Trammel got stupid and took him out. Bonderman shut us down 3 hits. Robertson shut us down 4 hits. The bullpen blew that one. And tonight we have Clement not nearly at his best. The same clement who has been hit very very hard in the last 3 starts. But hey we hit a lot of nice long solo homers. YEAH US. More power stats.

QUOTE(ZoomSlowik @ Jul 21, 2005 -> 10:20 PM) Where has having the monster lineup gotten us in the past? How many times do you see the monster lineups get shut down in the playoffs? Their offensive prowess is offset by their pitching deficiencies. Even assuming they consistently get 4 or 5 runs against our staff, which I don't see as that likely with our big 3 getting most of the games, there's a good chance that our guys do the same thing against the likes of Wells, Wakefield, and Arroyo. Zoom this lineup is the same thing as we had before. This is why our offense has been getting shut down like they have. We took out Maggs and Carlos who were both .300 hitters with big power and all. We insterted Pods who can hit 300 and Dye who is a 270 hitter. Konerko is going for power only hence his low BA. AJ is batting 40 points less than his career BA. I dont want a monster lineup. I want a high OBP team that can move runners over and get them in. Not strand runners all over while they pop up. I have seen that offense before. Line drive hitters dont slump as much as power guys with low BA and low OBP.

QUOTE(SoxFan562004 @ Jul 21, 2005 -> 10:16 PM) Freddy Garcia can get the strikeouts if need be, but unfortunately he doesn't turn it on until the 3rd inning. I live in fear of what the Red Sox or Yankees would do to him in his first two innings when he struggles I think Boston leads the league in pitches taken at bat.... do you have any idea what that is going to do to Contreras? Wow gives me the chills just thinking of him throwing three straight forkballs in the dirt, getting a 3-1 count then another forkball in the dirt or hung... Conteras has a 13.50 ERA against the bosox.

QUOTE(SoxFan562004 @ Jul 21, 2005 -> 10:00 PM) If the dropped popup happenned to anyone on our team (i'm thinking PK) there's no chance in hell they hit a HR after that, and you knew Manny was going yard in that at-bat. You should of been in game chat. The minute Crede dropped the ball that was the call. Everyone I mean everyone was saying homer. Its like the focking magic 8 ball.

QUOTE(ZoomSlowik @ Jul 21, 2005 -> 09:52 PM) Chill out. We put up four earned runs against Clement, someone that many on this site have thought would own us. We only allowed 3 earned runs, the other three were very out of the ordinary. Iguchi committed two errors and Crede committed one. Both have been spectacular defensively. That isn't going to happen very often. Also, Vizcaino isn't going to pitch an inning and a third in a close game in the playoffs. We lost one game to a pretty good team. Let's lay off the panic button a bit. Did Clement have his best stuff tonight. Was that a great pitching performance. He was off. We should of killed him tonight. When he was 2-0 to a bunch of hitters and was throwing rollers up instead of his biting slider he should of been launched. I am sure the cubans will shut the bosox down.

I dont know why people are so confused that our offense sucks or that this is a new thing. We are sixth in runs scored. Yeah that the same stat we have been at the top of the league at for the last few years. We are 4th in homers. Yeah oddly we still seem to hit lots of homers. We are 11th out of 14 teams in OBP. Well that might explain why they are solo homers. We are tied for dead last in the AL in BA. Now I know we are a small ball team and all. But small ball teams usually have power problems not BA problems. Dead f***ing last, DEAD last in hits. Dead f***ing last in doubles. Dead f***ing last in triples. But we hit a lot of homers. This is the same f***ing offense as we have had. The same offense that can be shut down to a few hits like we have seen lately. The same solo homer offense as before. We added two fast guys up top. But we took out two 300 hitters from last year. How is this team not going for homers and power. Just out of f***ing luck they shouldnt be dead last in hits, doubles, and triples.

QUOTE(JimH @ Jul 21, 2005 -> 09:39 PM) Put a cork in it 2nd guesser. If you were the manager, sit there and tell me you bring in lefthander Neal Cotts to face Manny Ramirez in a tie ballgame. If Cotts had been brought in and Ramirez HR'd you'd be the first one here screaming at Ozzie, and you damn well know it. Stop it, please. Vizcaino did not execute but no one is bringing in Neal Cotts to face Manny Ramirez in that situation except for an internet message board 2nd guesser. Vizcaino should never get into a close game. If this is our best option at the end of a game its time to make a trade. If we put this douche in a playoff game guess what happens. He loses it.

QUOTE(fathom @ Jul 21, 2005 -> 09:38 PM) Whenever Viz pitches, he's a hanging slider away from a homer. I can't believe he threw a fastball right down the f***ing cock to Manny. Cooper should have gone out and talked to Viz after the dropped foul. Whats cooper supposed to say. Hey retard dont toss a cookie to one of the best power guys in all of baseball. You are not nolan ryan.

QUOTE(That funky motion @ Jul 21, 2005 -> 09:37 PM) Easy now! He's not that bad! Check the numbers.