Jake

The piece of s*** Chicago Tribune Live had no idea why Hawk would be mad outside of being a White Sox fan. That show is hard to watch for baseball discussion.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ May 31, 2012 -> 08:56 PM) Carlos Gonzalez was traded twice. I repeat: Carlos Gonzalez has been traded twice. That must mean there are two message boards with stupid threads about what if they had kept him

I bet I can guess how the lineup will look tomorrow..

I was with a group of about 10 Sox fans when the Humber perfect game happened and all we could talk about during that last inning was how not having Hawk on the call was really sucking the life out of it. Watching that link to Buehrle's last inning posted earlier in this thread really shows me why I love Hawk. Hearing Hawk's call makes me as nostalgic as the moment itself... When I was a kid, I was convinced that there was no team for me except the one that Ken Griffey Jr. played on. The White Sox sounded lame. However, my dad continued watching the games and...they seemed so fun. The guy on TV would go off when the Sox hit home runs and, well, the Sox hit a lot of those too I imagine that Hawk is awesome for bringing in the casual fan in like that. He makes you complicit in his fandom. The love for the Sox is infectious, at least as long as you don't have some long held loyalty for another team.

Hernandez's eventual AAA promotion will tell the story. If his stuff is that bad, he'll get shelled against better hitters and small ballpark.

I think the Castro business will prevent Ozzie from getting MOY even if he deserved it.

At this point, we hardly have a clear need. 3B is the closest to it. There are some things that we can see becoming holes, and I'd imagine that will present itself more clearly as time goes on. I sure wouldn't strike quickly to add a player right now while we're so hot and lacking an absolute need (assuming that we should look more in depth at OH and BM at 3B before deciding what to do there)

Porn stars would be at the bottom of my list of people to have sex with

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 31, 2012 -> 04:11 PM) For about a year and a half, he flat out could not catch up to the fastball. No matter how fast his bat speed was in 2009, in 2011 you could throw a good fastball by him and he'd have no shot. He was talking about his running speed, not bat speed

I hope VMart goes to C with Cabrera at 3B and Prince at 1B. That would make it undeniably the worst defensive IF ever.

If the Tigers make the Cabrera/Fielder combo into a 1B/DH tandem, they're going to have a logjam when V-Mart returns. Do they still want him everyday catching? What happens to Avila?

Is there some way I can see what pitches a player hits home runs on? I'm interested in what pitches some of our guys hit out the most frequently (ie, does Adam Dunn only hit home runs on fastballs? etc)

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 31, 2012 -> 01:47 PM) Worth pointing out: after that many PA's, Joe Crede was 27. Gordon Beckham is 25.5 currently. This is the most important thing mentioned in the thread. Not to mention how few minor league at bats Gordon has.

Simon Castro has to be in the discussion for top prospect. He may also be on the verge of a promotion in the next month or so.

I think Dayan Viciedo has the potential to be a .300 hitter. He's young, has hardly been completely healthy until now and has carried some rather high averages in the minors before. What makes him different from the free swinger that we characterize him as is that he is willing to take the ball to the opposite field. He wasn't doing that early in the season this year but it was actually a complaint in his prospect days. I remember people saying that he was TOO MUCH of an opposite field hitter. As long as he can keep that balance between consistent contact and hard contact, we're going to have a ton of fun watching him. That 9% BB rate and 16% K rate that he carried over 120 games in Charlotte last year should be realizable at this level. The thrilling thing to me about this hot run by Viciedo was watching the adjustments. It wasn't predicated on him just doing the things that he did well while he was slumping (aka, feasting on hanging breaking balls)...he started hitting fastballs hard and to the opposite field when necessary, he laid off the low breaking stuff (occasionally hitting it, actually), and just generally has been picking his spots better.

I don't have reason to believe that Orlando Hudson can't hit anymore. 34 is pretty early to drop off the map entirely and his drop would have been very rapid since just last year he was a more productive player than Brent Morel. Anyone complaining about Hudson's defense at this point is just grasping for straws. He very well may have 5 balls smashed at him tomorrow and look terrible, but he's done a very good job to this point. One play made him look bad. The other was a play lots of third basemen make -- make a great stop (does the average MLB 3B even glove that ball?) and the throw gets away due to the difficulty of the play. Claiming that he's made a bunch of bad throws that the first baseman has caught is a pretty weak argument and is conveniently not verifiable. He's come in on balls well and made that diving play to his right in Tampa that saved the game for us. This needs more time to evaluate. What we've seen from Orlando so far is not screaming "bench him!" A week from now we may have a very different feeling about it. If the BA stays low, chances are he may not hit unless he's been getting RBIs. If he botches some hot shots to 3B, it may not be worth having him learn the position. We shall see.

There is a pretty significant difference in RBI's that hasn't been mentioned. Anyways...yes, there is a lot to hope for with Gordon since he's 25, talented, plays good defense at a position that doesn't require a big bat, and has recently started putting together much better at bats. I don't see what is useful in comparing him to Crede since we don't know if Crede was ever going to be a good player. He had one excellent season and then (basically) never played again...so we'll never know if that was a blip on the radar or the sign of many great years to come.

QUOTE (Jose Paniagua @ May 31, 2012 -> 11:29 AM) Marty, I will support you, sir. Viciedo showed us so little, in that the HR-power wasn't there enough to make up for the fact that so much of avg-inflated OBP seemed to be on bloops/luck over the last two years. At least at the major league level. On the flipside, many of his bloops are not luck, in that they are created by his pure strength. He's obviously not going to keep the first-ballot-HoF pace throughout this year.....but I have to say he seems willing (much like at the beginning of his 2011 callup) to try the whole plate patience thing. The big key is this - when pitchers leaguewide start being worried about him, how will he react to that. For awhile I thought we had a Jorge Cantu ceiling here offensively, but I'm glad to realize that was a low expectation. I think pitchers were afraid of him from the beginning and that's why we saw him almost always being pitched the same way. Pounding him with fastballs, especially inside, coupled with breaking balls off the plate. He's learned to cover fastballs better by going to the opposite field and has been swinging at fewer balls. You now have to throw Dayan strikes to get him out...and he hits strikes hard. You're seeing them trying to go with this same game plan but not doing well because he has adjusted.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 31, 2012 -> 11:27 AM) If that is true, he comes back and he shows no signs of improvement. If that is the case, we have a replacement for him on the roster. Morel's September shows that he could be way better than what Hudson is going to give us. If he can't demonstrate he is better, than you bench him. I don't know if Morel will ever be good, but last year he was at least good enough to belong in the MLB. I don't know that he was meant to regress this season. I won't say that the healthy version is the .280/15-20 HR/75 RBI player that we hoped for, but he should at least hit well enough not to be an automatic out.

QUOTE (ptatc @ May 31, 2012 -> 09:38 AM) As he should have. What AJ did was an unnecessary, bush league play. AJ started it and his pitcher paid the price. I think if Beckham hadn't been hit nothing would have happened. But eventually you do need to protect your players if it looks like it's getting out of control. I think AJ was happy to take a HBP for spiking Zobrist. Throwing at Zobrist may have had something to do with Becks being hit or there very well may be something we don't know about Zobrist's reaction to the AJ play. What people say to each other in those situations...we cannot know but who knows, maybe Zobrist said something personal/offensive/worse than "f*** you"

The quality of OH's at bats suggest that his average will go up. There's a sample size issue with his CWS numbers, but qualitatively it isn't that difficult to project those numbers up. You keep mentioning his defense like it's been bad - one error was a "bad" error and the other was the kind you expect on a tough play and was made possible by making a nice play with his glove. He's also made several very good plays, including one that likely decided a game for us. I know we like to think that you have to have an All-Star at every position to "compete the rest of the way," but this isn't the case...you just can't have any black holes, and that's not Hudson. If his next ten games make him look like a black hole (doesn't look like one now), we'll hopefully plug in a healthy Brent and not miss a beat. I wouldn't entertain too many thoughts about acquiring another alternative because we don't have the players or organizational philosophy to get a big fish right now. I don't know if there is a division lead big enough for KW to give up young players for a fix on the MLB roster.

Almost everyone that plays in the MLB will NEVER have a run as good as Dayan's tear in progress. That says something in and of itself. There have been players that seem to be as talented that just never do this. This really reminds me a bit of the runs that Quentin would go on where it seems like he'll just prevent you from losing. Luckily, DV is a bit more durable We just need to make sure that when he slows down he doesn't have any months like he did in April. And we need to do something to keep the Cubans from being worthless in April EVERY YEAR.

While Brent Morel is probably a more talented hitter than Orlando Hudson, I still remember a Brent Morel from last year that had frustratingly bad at bats. Never swinging aggressively, never taking a walk. The only redeeming quality was that he looked to the opposite field, but it was in a Juan Pierre kind of way, like he didn't want to hit ball too hard. Nothing was more frustrating than seeing him swing at anything the pitcher threw up there in a 2 strike count. If he could work a count like Hudson, he'd be a better hitter. But he has never shown me that he has an ability to intelligently pick spots to swing aggressively, know which strikes not to swing at, how to balance a 2 strike approach with one that might result in a hit, etc. Hudson is the better hitter because of what is between his ears.

Have to wonder if Morel hid/downplayed the injury to try to stay in the lineup. It always looks bad in hindsight, but in the moment as a player you're thinking that it'll just go away and you won't have someone potentially playing well in your position while you're resting. Of course there is some chance that his injuries have been played up by the team to explain his poor play. I don't know.

QUOTE (knightni @ May 30, 2012 -> 09:22 PM) I wasn't upset with them dealing Hudson at the time because, salary aside, it looked like a fairly even trade stat-wise. I'm upset that Rizzo bamboozled KW into being forced to keep Jackson instead of completing the 3 way to get Dunn. THEN Rizzo gets the Sox #1 on top of it the following season, with the Sox signing Dunn as a type A, AND he signs Jackson as a free agent for free. ^^^ this.