Balta1701

QUOTE (Vance Law @ Sep 28, 2013 -> 07:03 PM) how? with who? I agree Tank shouldn't go to first base. Do people think Avisail could play a better centerfield than De Aza? Tank in right and De Aza in left would be an improvement. Personally, that's exactly the of I would try next year but no idea if they want to. If they want to do that though Avisail should have been told it a month ago so that he could really start working on seeing the ball in CF in warmups and in the games he played there.

QUOTE (GreatScott82 @ Sep 28, 2013 -> 12:45 PM) If they do increase payroll to 100 mill, what FA's do they go after? IMO, if they sign abreu, McCann, and a reliever, they can field a potentially-competitive roster and still be under $100 mil.

Sizemore for 3/$30 when he wasn't healthy enough to play this year? F*** just sign me for 3/$20 and there's a good chance I'll produce exactly as much.

QUOTE (Soxfest @ Sep 29, 2013 -> 03:45 PM) What a fitting end to 2013 bases loaded 1 out and nothing but K after K. Season I thought the exact same thing. At least we only lost 99.

QUOTE (Brian @ Sep 29, 2013 -> 10:06 AM) Feels like a move for the sake of it. Never really thought to blame Manto much. At this level, you're very well paid and evaluated by things partially out of your control, but if you can't accept that then don't take the job and enjoy the lower salary. There are dozens of people as experience and well qualified as any hitting coach. If a team falls apart where one big problem is hitting, the hitting coach is a logical place for some blame to fall. Of course, I'd say the same thing about the manager and preparing for te season as well.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Sep 28, 2013 -> 10:08 AM) Maybe everyone passing him on the right made it impossible to merge back? I don't know, I wasn't there. All I have is testimony from a 4 wheeler. And that's the problem. You barely know the meaning of "slowed down". Its just more of the same "I know better than these ignorant f***ing truckers do on these roads! They barely know how to drive!". I'm sorry you didn't shave a minute or two off your commute that day, really breaks my heart that you, your BIG TIME Class D license and little s***box didn't feel as entitled to full ownership of those roads as you should. Us truckers, yea I mean we might drive more hours in a day than you will all week, we might be carrying 45,000 lbs of crap for you to buy and sure, the difference 10 MPH makes to your commute 1 MPH makes to our entitre day but we need to understand that 4 wheelers just know better. I'll keep it in mind next time I have to overtake another truck: "Now think, not passing him will cost me $1.50/hr. But if I do pass him some of these 4 wheelers might be 4 minutes, as opposed to 6 minutes, early for the job they hate". There was absolutely no reason he should have ever been in that lane. He had to defy the warning signs to be there. I don't know if that counts as illegal or not but it's at least close. At some point he chose to do so and it created an unsafe condition for the entire highway. But one thing I do learn from this is that there are truckers out there who will defend the right of other truckers to make conditions unsafe for everyone. That's a real good thing to know, basically assume that no matter how much experience they have, they're either as irresponsible as that guy or they will step up to defend him.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Sep 28, 2013 -> 10:13 AM) De Aza and Viciedo are far from defensive wizards, Beckham is about where he's always been. Flowers is not an everyday catcher and the first basemen are old. Viciedo was average last year and terrible this year, De Aza was solid last year and terrible this year, and Beckham has obviously gotten sloppier and lost a step (which he should not be doing at his age).

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Sep 28, 2013 -> 10:03 AM) When you talk about the defensive slippage from last year to this, isn't it mainly Ramirez we are talking about here? He got pretty decent grades for a guy who was so awful in the field. Ramirez, De Aza, Viciedo, Beckham, Rios when he was here, the pitchers, both 1bmen, Flowers (maybe one guy you can actually blame injury), Keppinger. All of them vastly worse in the field than last year. Oh and Gillaspe fell apart in September.

QUOTE (GreatScott82 @ Sep 28, 2013 -> 09:53 AM) It looks like Robin is here to simply score us a couple of top 5 picks in the draft. He will be gone after 2014. He is too cheap to let go now and the White Sox will likely not be competitive next year as well. (I hope i'm wrong with my last comment, but there are waaaayyy too many holes with this squad.) We ought to be able to tell that by the payroll next year. If it hangs out below $70 million, that's deft pick time. If they push back towards $100 mil, that's a couple huge signings to fill those holes.

QUOTE (oldsox @ Sep 28, 2013 -> 07:22 AM) I agree with your 8 names above. I would add Molina and Mitchell, possibly Axelrod, Castro, Veal. I'm sure Sox will give Mitchell another year, but to me his departure is inevitable. These other players, all pitchers, might be kept only for the Charlotte roster. That does not justify keeping them all on the 40 man roster. Is Molina on the 40 man already? I think they were optimistic about what they saw from him out of the penn.

Robin, if you really care about this job, make your players actually look like it next year. You pulled it off before.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 28, 2013 -> 08:32 AM) The decision on Sveum is coming Monday. It seems to me evaluating the last 3 games of the season is pretty silly. They know what the deal is. You would think if he is coming back they would just say so. The evidence points to a new manager. Waiting until they can admit whether they've been talking to Girardi

He will have plenty of job offers.

So, because of this thread I paid attention while driving yesterday any had to pass three trucks on the right. All of the. Had chances to merge right and weren't doing so. The worst was just south of Birmingham. In a merging area full of signs saying trucks stay in right lane, a truck had gotten himself into the far left lane out of 3. Because he couldn't keep up with the traffic speed he was slowing everyone in the left hand lane down. This caused everyone in the left lane to try to merge right, slowing down the other 2 lanes in the process. This truck caused his own half mile long traffic jam by getting into the left hang lane. There were no entrances on the left so he had to actively merge there, ignoring the signs, and stay there when people gave him a chance to merge right. As far as I can tell he just wanted to slow down the full higway. Made me think of this thread.

QUOTE (Tex @ Sep 26, 2013 -> 04:09 PM) Has every iPad app updated in the past three days? You've never gone through a release of a new iOS before have you?

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 26, 2013 -> 02:48 PM) Runs, walks, strikeouts, hits allowed, ERA. They are all around average. Also, White Sox pitchers historically have pitched better at home than on the road, so I kind of blow off park factor. They're 6th in MLB in fWAR out of their pitchers however. Considering that they traded away 2 relievers and a starter on top of that, that's still pretty good. They're 8th in MLB in ERA+.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 26, 2013 -> 02:38 PM) He just doesn't do it for the TV cameras. He does it in the locker room. His recent quotes definitely have the sound of a guy who has been completely exhausted and beaten down by trying to deal with this team this season.

QUOTE (maggsmaggs @ Sep 26, 2013 -> 11:46 AM) Could only be that scouts don't believe he can be a long-term starter. Stuff and stats are clearly there, but role is in flux. No, his role really isn't in flux the Sox did everything they could to make him a long term starter but they weren't going to pile 50 more innings onto a full season in high school innings for a kid that young. They literally had him pitching every 5th day out of the bullpen with a normal throwing schedule in-between. That's how insistent they are on making him a starter, they even put him through the routine of being a starter. That said, if you compare him to someone who was used as a starter this year already, then fine, you under-rank him and the rankings really aren't that useful.

QUOTE (Soxfest @ Sep 26, 2013 -> 10:49 AM) According to CBS Sports' Jon Heyman, Robinson Cano has asked the Yankees for a $300 million contract .It's another strong indication that the impending free agent second baseman is headed to the open market. Cano won't come close to $300 million in the end, but the final sum to sign him might creep near $200 million. The 30-year-old Roc Nation client is batting .315/.384/.519 with 27 home runs and 106 RBI in 157 games this season. Per Rotoworld Good luck with that Cano. One of the ESPN bloggers threw some numbers together based on Cano's current performance and how other elite 2b have aged and came up with $211 million as a fair price for him. Thought it was an interesting read at least.

QUOTE (TaylorStSox @ Sep 25, 2013 -> 08:18 PM) Without looking it up, Keppinger has about 15 xbh's in about 600 PA's. He makes up for it with awful defense. If that's not an F, I don't know what an F is. And you can't make any reasonable excuses like he's still young or he wasn't expected to do more.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Sep 25, 2013 -> 08:12 PM) I don't get the not working on fundamentals in spring training argument. Our defense has been bad all year, that would be one hell of a spring training carry over effect to explain the majority of the change in fielding percentage between 2012 & 2013. I spent the entire year last year crediting the manager for the great fundamental play the whole year. They came out of ST focused like lasers on their jobs and it lasted the whole year.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 25, 2013 -> 08:09 PM) And its been pointed out over and over again, they work on fundamentals, as Marty pointed out Connie Mack managed the last team to do that. Was he a horrible manager? BTW, It is funny that fielding percentage seems to be a worthwhile stat sometimes, but other times it is laughed at. I would think if taking groundballs in March was as vital as you claim, and it was blown off, after playing X number of games, the Sox would have been at the point of where the were a season ago in April, yet the fundamentals never improved. I am quite sure if the Sox never worked on them like you claim, that story would be out there, but it is not. Of course a good manager would have been on top of it in April. That's why they did that one extra hour of fundamentals work in mid May.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 25, 2013 -> 08:00 PM) The only way to steal first base is to learn how to bunt. AJ pierzynski disagrees

Again, you insist that they adequately worked on fundamentals, the evidence instead says that the white sox are te first team in nearly 100 years to have the best fielding percentage one year and the worst fielding percentage the next year.

QUOTE (fathom @ Sep 25, 2013 -> 06:27 PM) Balta, what's with the extremely low grade for Beckham? If he was just any player he'd be right on the border of having played himself into being non-tendered this offseason. His defense is getting worse, his range is going down, and at the time of the year when the excuse I was making for him the whole season, his wrist injury, should have been getting better, he fell apart again. He would have played himself into about a C if he'd kept at least getting hits at a reasonable rate, but his year is borderline terrible again.