whitesoxfan101

Wow, think we might have caught a break there. Looked like he went too far.

OC has the opposite field swing going this at bat, so we have a chance.

QUOTE (whitesoxfan101 @ Aug 24, 2008 -> 03:43 PM) I don't want a damn home run. I mean it'd be nice, but just try and tie the damn game Paulie. THANK YOU PAULIE (and horrible throwing left fielder). Let's win this thing now.

PK swinging for the fences too on that 1-0 pitch, amazing. I think I can see where this is going.

I don't want a damn home run. I mean it'd be nice, but just try and tie the damn game Paulie.

QUOTE (Cerbaho-WG @ Aug 24, 2008 -> 03:41 PM) Martinez: "Jeff Cox is one of the best 3rd base coaches in the game." I think every fanbase in baseball hates their 3rd base coach, that's how it is. Rough at bat for Swish, probably swung at ball 4. Not good.

Swish can make himself a legend if he parks one here.

Nice job Griff, now let's get it.

This team should ban it's players from bunting.

QUOTE (fathom @ Aug 24, 2008 -> 03:34 PM) I've never said he's not a good hitter with RISP. It's all about late inning situations. He doesn't bat in them often, and when he does, it's almost always against a lefty specialist or a closer. What do you expect his numbers to do in those spots??

QUOTE (fathom @ Aug 24, 2008 -> 03:29 PM) What's his numbers from 7-9 He has a 1.037 OPS with runners in scoring position and 1.010 with runners on base compared to .781 with the bases empty. I don't know his innings 7-9 numbers, but those numbers I just mentioned point to "clutch" more than anything, if you believe in such a thing.

Jermaine just can't run anymore. He'd make a great DH next year except for the fact Thome will be back.

QUOTE (daa84 @ Aug 24, 2008 -> 03:26 PM) its a horrible series because we lost 3 games in a playoff hunt, but frankly i dont look at this tampa team and think "man they whipped our ass this weekend"...outside of the bullpens right now, we are every bit as good as they are, we just shot ourselves in the foot, and they had a few mroe clutch hits than us Can't give away games you should win, and the White Sox are baseball's unchallenged leader in that category.

QUOTE (fathom @ Aug 24, 2008 -> 03:25 PM) That swing was fine, just underneath it. If you swing 3-0 and don't crush the ball, it's a bad swing no matter how much you just got underneath it. It goes against the concept of basic mathematics to swing 3-0, so you better crush it.

QUOTE (fathom @ Aug 24, 2008 -> 03:22 PM) FWIW, I'm 99 pct sure that Balfour is a huge HGH guy. No question about it, Stone and Farmer talked about it yesterday and weren't being too vague about why he's been so good this year. Balfour goes on the same list as Soto, in the "ahh f*** it, I can't play, I'll take HGH and see if it works" category.

That's about the worst 3-0 swing you'll ever see, a fitting achievement for a team like this. If we lose this game, for the first time this year I'd consider us the underdog in this race. It's hard to win games when you have to play against both the opponent and yourself.

I probably think this because he's set lofty standards for himself, but Q should have crushed that 2-0 pitch, just wasn't ready for it and was too late on the swing. And now, an easy out on the 3-2 pitch. I haven't been able to gather in our encounters with them how good this Rays team really is, but they take advantage of the other teams mistakes and pitch well, a team perfectly built to beat on the 2008 White Sox.

The Orioles game Monday is tied going to the 12th I believe, Uribe hit the tying home run and we failed to score after that, thus they called the game. This won't be easy off Balfour, but this part of the lineup can do it if anybody can.

QUOTE (Tony82087 @ Aug 24, 2008 -> 12:42 PM) If the Sox miss the playoffs by anything less than 4 games, I will blame health. Last year, the Sox were 72-90 with a bottom tier minor league system. This year, without spending a ton of money in the off-season, the Sox have lead the American League Central for most of the year, and find themselves in the thick of a playoff race near the end of August. To get to that point without going crazy in free agency, Williams thinned himself out to be competitive. I have absolutely no problem with that strategy, but the hole to that plan is obviously injury. When an injury hits an organization with very little depth, the results are going to be felt. I'd say if we miss the playoffs, it's about a 50/50 split in terms of blame between health and playing stupid/sloppy baseball (mostly stupid, even some of the sloppy this year can be attributed to stupidity). As for the strategy this year, you HAVE to have a strategy like we do with our lack of help available in the farm system. Talentwise, KW did an INCREDIBLE job turning over the roster and the results from last season. The problem is, this team is not very smart/fundementally sound and makes too many errors/poor defensive plays, and that combined with poor health is killing us.

It's 8th inning or bust with the way this game is setting up. That is assuming the bullpen doesn't collapse again, which is a big assumption.

How many hittable 3-2 changeups are we going to have to see from Howell (both in Kansas City and now in Tampa Bay) before we realize it's coming and hit it hard?

QUOTE (Brian @ Aug 24, 2008 -> 03:04 PM) You say that every weekend that we lose a series. The Ray PLAYERS are easily outplaying our PLAYERS. People around here simply can't grasp that concept. It's always Ozzie's fault when we lose because we have so much talent and don't win. Well yes, we do have a lot of talent, but it's a bunch of STUPID talent. They can't do anything fundemental, they make errors, they are poorly built in terms of defense (that's on KW), and the bullpen has collapsed after a bad start. I was hard on Ozzie last season because he had a rough year, but so did everybody. If we miss the playoffs this year, it has very little to do with Ozzie and more to do with dumb players who underachieve.

It simply amazes me how stupid/dumb/fundenmentally poor this team is. It's not fair to compare them to 2003 in the sense this team has more talent, but in terms of being relatively good in a winnable division/playoff race and still underachieving your way out of the postseason, this team and 2003 stand together.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Aug 24, 2008 -> 12:28 PM) This looked like the All-Star game at some points. The international game is so much faster than the NBA. Looks like the United States finally learned how to play it. I'm not a fan of the trapezoid lane or the fact that the three point line is close enough that I could make open shots from it, but the pace of FIBA basketball is much better than the NBA. Fast paced basketball is the way the game was meant to be played, I wish the Suns would have won an NBA title in the D'Antoni era so that more NBA teams would have copied them.

Well you tend to worry about three things with a great basketball team: how will they react to their first close game, what if what they do best isn't there during a game, and what if the other team shoots the lights out. The United States ran into all three of these things in the same game, and it happened to be the gold medal game against a very good team, and they still managed to win. So they deserve a ton of credit and certainly winning the gold medal is a great accomplishment. They didn't play well at all defensively, but they just did everything they could on offense to overshadow it, and this is not a game they'd win without the continuity of being together the last few years during the summer. Hopefully we continue to improve at the international game now that we seem to care. I think this tournament proved that we still are that much better than MOST of the world, but a couple places are very good now and waiting to take us down (Spain and Argentina), and a couple more are very solid and can scare us if we aren't paying attention (Lithuania and Greece). The world is only going to get better though because this is such a huge sport worldwide, and places like Australia and China will improve, so the United States can't let it's guard down.