Balta1701

Well now in serious danger of giving away that entire 3 run lead.

LOL good work Danks.

QUOTE (Soxfest @ Jul 8, 2015 -> 08:24 PM) Stone say Sox will score at least 5 tonight and break streak of 24 straight home games scoring 4 runs or less a franchise record. We might have a legit shot.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 8, 2015 -> 06:58 PM) That has been my point all along. if it is Robin's fault, no one should complain about the players. If you think KW put together a horrible team, you can't blame RV for the poor record. If you have to blame KW, RH, RV,JR, you can't blame them all. If it is Robin's managing that is keeping this team from contention, then the other guys have done their job. If KW has taken over and set the Sox back until the next decade, then you can't blame RV when the Sox lose. Good managers don't win with bad players. Bad GMs don't put together teams that should win but don't because of the manager. I actually agree with this. But since we're so terrible and have been rotten for so long, I say we should just remove both parts just to be safe. After all, it's also possible that we're a poor team that is being managed poorly and both sides contribute.

QUOTE (BigHurt3515 @ Jul 8, 2015 -> 05:59 PM) But before this series Conor has been starting against RHP for a couple weeks I think. Didn't Conor have an injury (Plantar Fasciitis or something?) thrown in there?

QUOTE (fathom @ Jul 8, 2015 -> 05:31 PM) The only reason I have ever cared about attendance is the possible impact it could have on payroll. If this was like the NBA or NFL, I wouldn't even pay attention to it. This is, of course, why I bumped this thread. If walkup crowds in July are this bad...when season ticket sales hit and get the same trend, it's going to propagate through to another major revenue drop.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 8, 2015 -> 02:58 PM) You want them to do something that is against the rules. You can't "double switch" with a DH. You pinch hit for the DH, you are the DH. Really, you're not allowed to do that?

QUOTE (fathom @ Jul 8, 2015 -> 02:58 PM) I'm the same, and I still think they were planning on having that player be Bonifacio if he wasn't so awful this year. A day or two after he signed, I think it was Hahn saying he could see some time at DH vs LHP. LaRoche is fine as a clean-up hitter vs RHP, but the bad fit comes in having him be a full-time starter vs LHP. Minor point...how much of a chance has he been given? He's on pace for 150 PAs this season, so less than 1/4 of a full season.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jul 8, 2015 -> 02:53 PM) Someone like Kendrys Morales would have been a much better fit. He's having a good year against both LHP and RHP. With how he looked last year...adding him wouldn't have made much sense alongside the "win this year" kind of move that signing Samardzija was. I personally liked signing him, was surprised how much money he got but was generally ok with the LaRoche move. Frankly LaRoche still isn't that bad, his OPS against righties is only a tiny bit below Morales's. Someone just needs to have the manager look at his lefty/righty splits over the last 3 seasons. Hell, someone should have made them notice that in the offseason.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 8, 2015 -> 01:20 PM) I wonder what is going to happen when enough people complain about the Blackhawks Indian head being offensive. There was a really good article on this subject in the trib a couple years ago.

QUOTE (Stan Bahnsen @ Jul 8, 2015 -> 01:52 PM) Yes, but you can easily bench one of them to gain 300 points of OPS for each of at least 3 ABs, and yet aren't doing so on a team that can't score for crap. Of course, it's not a solution to overall problems of the offense, but baseball is a game of tiny margins, and it's precisely the little things that we fail at that other teams don't, that make a difference in a game like yesterday's. Deck chairs whatever. Dumb is dumb. Hell, at the very least, pinch hit for him in the 8th inning. Send up Soto, the only thing he's done this year is hit clutch HR. Do a double-switch if you're really worried about using up your catcher in the DH slot. They'd just brought in a lefty reliever and so you were 100% guaranteeing yourself that Soto would get to face the not-very-good lefty reliever. I really just wanted Q to not take the loss in that game, so that one did annoy me.

Just FYI, the reason I bumped this that no one really hit upon yet was really how bad last night's attendance was. I threw Sale's in because I was bumping the thread anyway. Based on all of the reports during the offseason and based on the attendance at the lowly-attended games in the spring, we seem to have gotten several thousand additional season ticket sales or at least ticket packages sold in the offseason. We should be able to easily beat the attendance numbers from last year, but for comparable July games, we're significantly down. The issues brought up - weather, etc., that could have kept Tuesday night down happen sometimes every year, hence the comparison from year to year. Yet, last night's was still somehow below seasons where we had fewer season tickets sold. For that to happen with the season ticket/ticket package boost, we must be doing absolutely awful on the walkup numbers. I mean like epically bad, "worst walkups in the last decade" bad. That's not an auspicious trend going into season ticket renewal period.

QUOTE (BigHurt3515 @ Jul 8, 2015 -> 01:29 PM) Have a feeling the Blue Jays are going to smash Danks.. Danks went 5 IP, gave up 6 ER at Toronto on May 26. Interestingly that was the outing right before he threw the CG Shutout against the Astros.

After the Washington Football Franchise had its trademarks canceled by the US Patent Office, they filed suit in federal court to overturn the decision of the patent office, a technique that has successfully worked for them previously. Today a federal judge agreed with the US Patent Office that their trademark is offensive and ruled against the football team's lawsuit. The decision will obviously be appealed upwards and the decision will not be enforced until all appeals are exhausted, but this marks as far as anyone can tell the football team's first major legal loss in any case over its name brought in the last 20 years. Even if this appeal is successful, it now seems likely that this process will be repeated in a few years until the full federal courts agree and the team fully loses its US Patent/trademark protection.

After the Washington Football Franchise had its trademarks canceled by the US Patent Office, they filed suit in federal court to overturn the decision of the patent office, a technique that has successfully worked for them previously. Today a federal judge agreed with the US Patent Office that their trademark is offensive and ruled against the football team's lawsuit. The decision will obviously be appealed upwards and the decision will not be enforced until all appeals are exhausted, but this marks as far as anyone can tell the football team's first major legal loss in any case over its name brought in the last 20 years. Even if this appeal is successful, it now seems likely that this process will be repeated in a few years until the full federal courts agree and the team fully loses its US Patent/trademark protection.

As far as I could tell, last night' attendance of 17,028 was the lowest attendance of any June or July home game for the White Sox in at least the last 5 years and probably since 2005 (I got lazy after getting to 2011). ESPN writer Nick Freidell attempted a twitter callout of white sox fans after only 24k showed up for Sale/Buehrle on Monday asking: I'm sure you can guess how that went.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jul 8, 2015 -> 12:17 PM) To be honest, I do believe a start against your own team can actually drive you to be more interested in a player. It is a fickle business and everyone knows about what Jeff did last year (very strong season, including down the stretch with the A's). Now they know he had his early struggles but a FO could look at the recent splits and see how he has trended upward and then more guys get to watch the start against the team (just more top brass on hand) who can see the "stuff" and what he was capable of doing against what they know is one of the premiere offenses in baseball. So yes, it has impacts. Inherent one is more top people get recent eyes on a guy against a really good talent base. How much of an impact, I wouldn't quantify it as significant but I would still say it has a positive effect. I'm pretty sure the White Sox wound up with Javy Vazquez because of one start in 2003.

So, today = Die Hard 3, right?

QUOTE (Jerksticks @ Jul 8, 2015 -> 04:58 AM) I feel like people on here forget how good the teams all looked on paper going into the seasons 2009 and beyond. Our superstars failed us or got freak injured- quit hanging KW out to dry and get the f*** over it. CQ ruined his career when he broke his hand but how the hell could anybody know that at the time? Peavy was a BAMF. Rios was free and finally solidified CF. PK in his end prime years. Who the hell would blow that kind of team up and rebuild? We were stacked. Mercy. Here's the problem. You're right, how many of those teams seemingly "looked good on paper"? All of them but 2014 right? And yet as a franchise we're below .500 since that time and have 0 playoff appearances? You can even take that back farther, how many other White Sox teams looked really good on paper and completely missed the playoffs? That seemed like an anthem of this franchise in the 2000s as well. So if we "constantly look good on paper" and yet the team completely fails to achieve even the goal of making the playoffs...it's time to stop and re-evaluate the decision making process leading to the conclusion that the team "looks good on paper". What assumptions can we challenge that are proving incorrect? Are we neglecting things like defense or baserunning, things that impact the game a lot but are hard to quantify? We've got so many different guys, such as those from your list, who break down or struggle right when they get to us - is there something wrong with the decision making process that leads us to acquire guys who immediately underperform? Maybe we're spending too much money and trading away too many players to acquire guys at an age where they're at a higher risk of failing. Maybe we're giving away too many draft picks to sign moderate level free agents or guys who are too late in their careers. Maybe we're trying to play too many guys out of position to get them in the lineup. Maybe we're just trying to fill too many holes through free agency and trades because we're not producing our own players. Maybe the lack of fundamentals is hurting us. Maybe we're projecting guys contributions based on career years that they're not likely to match at their ages. Maybe people are playing through too many injuries because of a lack of bench depth. Maybe guys aren't physically or mentally ready for seasons. Over and over and over again...exact same result. "looks good on paper. how did we wind up below .500?" In that case...something is wrong with the logic that leads you to think the team looks good on paper. You're constantly overlooking something, probably several, systemic problems.

Angry Jose Quintana finally has enough, starts throwing balls at own teammates. Teammates still strike out.

Dah. Come on whoever is pinch hitting next.

Was Encarnacion not running or is he just Konerko fast?

Well that was interesting.

This does not seem like a team where it's a smart idea to walk the leadoff hitter.

QUOTE (Soxfest @ Jul 7, 2015 -> 10:24 PM) LaRoche can go anytime. He's still pretty decent against righties. His OPS is .300 points lower against lefties.