Jake

QUOTE (ptatc @ Jun 24, 2016 -> 09:49 AM) what is it with the sox and drafting pitchers with really odd mechanics. This guy starts with both feet on the rubber and his a$$ facing the hitter. Also another guy with no follow through and a low arm slot. Not a big fan of that. What's funny is I know he and I saw some of the same pitching instructors in the Chicago area and sometimes they will have you throw some pitches from a similar stance for drillwork. As I had to do it, you'd position your left leg over your right just as you would if you were going to isolate the right leg to touch your toes and stretch that hamstring. That would be the set position out of the stretch. The idea was to give you more of that sensation of being closed and leading with the hip. I suspect Burdi may have done something just like it and felt like it made his mechanics better than what he could do from a conventional set position.

Bulls are going to have an interesting team to watch. Will be interesting to see what Valentine can do. There's some real upside, but some serious downside.

Listen, we hit pretty well today and got burned by Matt Purke and some other losers. I think it's going to be okay.

Shields looked much more competent today. Not like he's "fixed," but like he's "going to make it past 2 innings in his next start"

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jun 23, 2016 -> 06:13 PM) Beck didn't have much command with his fastball. He threw it 94-96, but it was his slider that saved him today. And Webb wasn't counted on by anyone to be a part of the bullpen. He was just AAA depth. I'm forgiving Beck for some command issues in the second MLB appearance of his career. He wasn't walking anybody as a reliever in AAA. Webb was depth, but the whole point here is depth. Webb was the first guy to get the call from AAA but now we're into the Purkes, Kahnles, Becks, etc. of the world. It would be nice to bump off the next weakest link and have Webb.

QUOTE (SoxPride18 @ Jun 23, 2016 -> 06:09 PM) Yes, they didn't do well in the clutch situations, but when you score 7 runs in a game, you should win that game. These are the same assholes that made two errors in the field that led to runs, too

I actually thought Beck looked decent. We really need to get rid of Purke though, but I don't have an obvious answer for a replacement. Losing Putnam, Petricka, and Webb really strains things.

Bullpen wasn't great but our offense is still the overarching problem. Too many guys who can't handle the bat well enough to execute when situations call for a specific type of at bat. I like Anderson at the top of the order but he's the guy the opponents are dying to see in a situation when you need a strikeout.

I wouldn't have traded him, but meh

QUOTE (oldsox @ Jun 21, 2016 -> 10:20 PM) Robin actually looked like a Manager when he went out to mound after Robertson walked Ortiz. Looked like a leader. ha, I was joking that he went out there to remind everyone that he was the one managing the winning team tonight

QUOTE (soxforlife05 @ Jun 21, 2016 -> 01:51 AM) It didn't look like they wanted it in the 9th. Luckily for them the Red Sox choked. No. One pitcher not throwing strikes does not mean the team gave up.

This was a really well-played game. You can't accuse this team of not wanting it.

I'm very pleased with him. He's a reliable mid-rotation starter with zero minor league seasoning 35 starts into his MLB career. Considering his stuff, he absolutely has the profile of the kind of guy who suddenly finds himself in All-Star/Cy Young discussions a year or so from now. And it will take people by surprise because he'll have been around for a while, but the truth is that he's getting his seasoning in the majors whereas most players do that in the minors.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 19, 2016 -> 04:18 PM) Without doing a lot of research, it strikes me that the top of the last list is extremely small in population and diversity. There also seems to be some level of correlation to physical size of the country. Tiny and wealthy definitely wins the day, but as you start going down the list you see populous and relatively diverse countries: Canada, New Zealand, Singapore (very diverse, not so large), Australia, Belgium, the UK, and Spain would meet those criteria to me. You could make some of those arguments about some others, depending on what diversity and largeness means. Of course, Hong Kong is very diverse itself but also really tiny (and not exactly a sovereign state).

We have a couple of topical threads around, one (well, several) about firing the manager and another about the team playing better when the players meet expectations. I would like to counter both of those explanations for the team playing badly with another one: the team doesn't have enough talent. The Sox have enough talent to get lucky and win; in April we saw how the right bounces of ball and guys getting hot at the same time can produce a hell of a run. But if the guys on this team are on average just meeting expectations (for every guy who exceeds them another guy doesn't meet them) then there isn't enough talent. The fallacy that is easy to fall into is looking at the struggling players and saying if they played well, the team would be however much better. But this ignores the guys who are playing over their heads. You could have looked at Abreu a few weeks ago and sounded the alarm, claiming everything will be good if he starts hitting. He started hitting, but a guy like Lawrie regressing over the same time span completely cancels out the boost we got from Abreu starting to hit as expected. The thing about that, though, is we should have expected Lawrie to regress. There are obviously many other examples. So that's the issue. As for the manager, the amount of talent on this team doesn't necessarily say anything about whether he should be kept. If your argument is that he has ruined an obvious playoff team, then you are wrong. But you could argue that a good manager should lift a team with middling talent into playoff contention and on those grounds you could say the manager should be replaced as we seek someone to get this team to play above its talent level. You might also say simply that after a certain amount of time, if things don't happen—like a playoff appearance—then the manager should be fired. That's reasonable. You might also say that it's wrong to fire a manager who has never had playoff-level talent to manage on the grounds that his teams only play to their talent level. All acceptable arguments. But it's doubtless that the main problem is the talent. That is unless you subscribe to the idea that numerous guys on the team's true talent expectations for this season are beyond anything they have ever shown with their track record (might call this the "Tyler Saladino fallacy").

I would say skipping his start at the next chance (when there is an off day) is the most logical thing. Time in the bullpen could make some sense, but it's tough to control when he gets to pitch (how do you predict the next blowout?) and you can't risk him in a competitive game. You can only DL him if there is something resembling an injury going on.

I wouldn't give him any reps on the MLB roster, that's for sure. If he wants to go to AAA and prove he can hit, then why not

I believe Danks said that he would stay in shape for the time being but was not going to be a minor league baseball player, even if that meant that he'd not get to play anymore.

I didn't realize Soxtalk had gone full panic mode on Frazier

I'm not going to s*** the bed over his current performance, though at points in his last outing he looked a lot like a guy whose head was not in the right place. His throw into CF and later a successful throw to 1B were hallmarks of a guy who has absolutely no confidence in what he's doing. Confidence we can fix, so hopefully we do.

Heathcott has long been regarded as a very talented player with real MLB potential, but has been railroaded by injuries. He's spent the equivalent of well over 2 years on the DL in the minors, including two major knee and two major shoulder surgeries. Has some raw power, is (or at least was) fast and could play CF defense. Could end up being a name you hear again, which would be nice because it's such a sweet name.

As far as I'm concerned, if Gawker deserves to be punished for outing the guy, they should be punished for outing the guy. But that's not it because there's apparently no case to be made about it. Instead they will be drained of their resources trying to fight the guy's lawsuits of very dubious merit. Creates a disturbing precedent.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Jun 14, 2016 -> 12:02 PM) This is the issue with looking at stats in general. You can manipulate them any way you like to make a point. What one person thinks is important, another does not. This is the issue with WAR and many of those other overall numbers. The people who created them created it with what they though was important. So they are biased toward that line of thinking. FWIW, stats like WAR were created in part with careful attention to how the stats correlated with other outcomes, like winning. Other methods of slicing and dicing (look at RISP! high leverage! etc.) are going to be less justifiable

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Jun 14, 2016 -> 12:47 AM) REVERSE TEXAS SAXET QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Jun 14, 2016 -> 12:47 AM) Now reverse the season please thanks nosaes eht

Hard to take the polls too seriously with such a high number of don't know responses. You don't expect the undecideds to break 50/50 in general, but it can be hard to know who exactly they are at least without more supporting information