Greg Hibbard

QUOTE (MEANS @ Aug 2, 2016 -> 07:43 AM) and I don't know why we have to explain it to you every August....root for the young guys to develop, hope everyone stays healthy and lose lose lose. Except the White Sox don't do a great job of identifying future stars in their first round draft picks? And before you say 'it's all a crap shoot' then why willfully lose for a low-percentage crap shoot? Since 1990, how many 1st rounders from this list not named Chris Sale turned out to be bonafide major league talent? http://espn.go.com/mlb/draft/history/_/team/chw

QUOTE (ronkark @ Jul 28, 2016 -> 09:02 PM) ARe you really comparing him to Konerko? He hasn't earned it. He's had two good years of offense. None of defense. Konerko was MUCH better defensive player. Range? Not so much. Jose even less. But paul much better hands and much better thrower and much better decision maker. And much better clutch hitter. Yes he had a bad 03 after 4 stellar full seasons. And are you really reading this season as a bad april and lack of power and that's it? Horrid defense. Horrible with runners on in key postions. 8 rbi in july. That's not power. That's productivity. So tell me again how he's had a good July. Happened again tonight. He's the master of the dinky grounder and chasing the same pitches out the zone he has for 3 years. Konerko had 4 good seasons of offense when he had 2003. So yes....I'm comparing him because it's an extraordinarily apt comparison. Konerko also had a much much worse than Abreu that year. As for Abreu's glove....ok, fine. I don't need a 1B to be spectacular especially since we need a DH long term. Yes, 8 RBI in July. How many RBI in June? How many homers in June? How small of a sample size are you gonna strangle to make your point?

I guess the 8 RBI argument makes sense if we accept the notion that it's truly Jose's fault that nobody was on base for the 7 doubles he hit in July. Seems logical to me

QUOTE (Hatchetman @ Jul 28, 2016 -> 12:51 PM) hold up now. are we really comparing Abreu to Frank Thomas? LOL. Abreu could be 37 years old for all we know. He's had one good year in the majors. Expecting him to repeat 2014 looks less and less likely with every passing month. Omg. With every passing month? Seriously, wtf. He's hitting .325 in July and has a combined OPS for June and July of about .840 His career OPS is .868.

QUOTE (ronkark @ Jul 28, 2016 -> 03:18 AM) And only the most blind optimist would ignore his EIGHT RBIs in July. From a guy in the middle of your lineup. His least productive month of a poor season. I'd like to hear your take on Paul Konerko's 2003 season and his value overall as a player for this organization. Sorry, I'm just a realist who knows .295 hitters occasionally have bad months or even "bad half seasons" - christ, if that's what we're calling this. somehow I'm pretty fine with him hitting .276 even with garbage power numbers, because I expect him to have 30-40 homer seasons regularly in the future. This isn't some Gordon Beckham type dropoff. He just had a s*** April and hasn't hit homers.

Only the most dedicated of pessimists can find real reasons to complain about a guy hitting .320 in July. Oh, and he's on pace for more walks than last year. If you liked his numbers last year, why are you complaining about his walk totals? Yes, he has hit no homers recently. Yes, he's made some defensive gaffes. Ok. Those things can happen from time to time. Abreu is definitely, absolutely, positively, not the problem with this team. Not even close. He's 20 points shy of his career average and having a power slump that would be corrected by a good WEEK of homers. Back away from the ledge, people

f***ing brilliant fastball down the middle to one of the league's best hitters. Who would have thought he could hit THAT.

This west coast trip reminds me of the summer of '99 when Hawk just stopped speaking at all during the games because he was so beside himself I believe they went 0-8?

People are really lynching Jose f***ing Abreu for 86 games in which he needed to literally hit just 4 more home runs to be at basically career numbers? If you don't understand things like variance and sample size please stop talking about anything, and if you aren't willing to give an all-star caliber first baseman with two EXCELLENT seasons a single mediocre half-season, JFC - baseball isn't the sport you should be following

Who is this team? What is happening? Can anyone figure anything out this year?

We are 4-3 in the last 7.

QUOTE (bighurt574 @ Jun 13, 2016 -> 10:28 AM) I don't know if Robin is to blame for this slide, but I still can't figure out where he adds value either. If the players like him, great, but plenty of employees would love to have a lax boss. That doesn't mean it's good for the organization though, especially when the employees aren't performing. This is the main point I struggle with as well. I don't think Robin is doing a great job, can't figure out where he adds value, but don't think he's responsible for this slide. I think he's the result of a problem, not the problem itself. The problem is that organizationally we have had the philosophy that we could patch holes for going on 12 years, and we have mortgaged the farm for years to do so. All that said, I also don't understand what moves people think the White Sox should have made in this season to be in a particularly better position right now. Their freaking bust of a DH quit a week and a half before opening day, putting a huge hole in a lineup that already had holes. The pitching was never particularly great beyond Sale and Q, who have performed.

Avi!!!

I wonder if Rollins will be more of an offensive liability than Gordon Beckham.

Also, why is it that when the Twins can go 4-2 against the Indians they are "playing much better of late", but when the Royals come back and win three straight come from behind victories against the Sox, it's the White Sox who suck?

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jun 3, 2016 -> 02:23 PM) The White Sox absolutely need to win at least 2/3 in DETROIT to prove they can actually win a series for once against one of the 3 remaining contenders for the division. If we can't beat the arguably (and statistically backed up) 4th best team in the division, then who/when/how? Just like we like to blame Ventura, KC fans will blame Falling "Asleep at the Wheel" Yost for last night if they end up on the wrong side of the season series with CLE (and giving them huge momentum now with two crazy walk-off twins in a row over TEX and now the Royals). The fact of the matter is that we were pretty fortunate to get Minnesota and hold them down when they were just mental midgets. Now they're playing much better baseball (see series against SEA recently)...and they're 4-2 against the Indians, for example (should have even been 5-1). If we're NOT going to beat Cleveland and KC now (when they're missing so many key players), then when? When we've acquired this ideal LH power hitter, improved the bench, bullpen and starting rotation in July/August? This also puts us in the uncomfortable position of having to beat up the Tigers...on the road, something that (recently, at least) has shown is quite tough to do because their offense matches up pretty well with our pitching (other than Sale, when he's on) staff. Plus, we're apparently going to be without one of our most consistent hitters this year in Cabrera, and playing at least one terrible defender in Sands/Garcia in that huge RCF. So why aren't we saying that Cleveland isn't going to win the division or doesn't deserve to win the division because they are 2-4 against the Twins? Why not say that the Royals don't deserve it if they are going to go 1-3 against the Indians thus far? Or 1-3 against the under .500 Yanks and 0-3 against the last place Angels? The Indians and Royals aren't exactly juggernauts, here. Yes, the Royals are playing much better of late, but both teams have had wildly inconsistent stretches and shown plenty of weaknesses. So have the Sox. I'm call it about even in early June. I hope you're being hyperbolic when you say the White Sox absolutely need to win a series in Detroit this weekend. They may win 3, they may lose 3, they may win or lose 2. It will likely have little bearing on the strategy or the overall standings. No one is going to run away and hide with this division. The composition of this team will drastically change WHEN (not if) the front office acquires players to make their run later this summer. It's likely we won't have the same rotation, daily lineup, or bench. We will likely be much improved, if we can remain injury free. So yes, we will have a much better time beating the Royals and Indians when we are actually sporting a Major League Designated hitter, a deeper bench, and a more seasoned rotation. Additionally, Rodon and Saladino are good examples of players that are apparently benefiting from seasoning on the job, and may be better as we go on. Wouldn't you agree? Would you say that they might be more reliable major league pieces in September than they were in April? Because there are so many teams in the AL that are still in it, it's likely that the White Sox will not acquire all of their pieces until potentially late July or early August, when some teams finally give up. I think I'll wait until then to start proclaiming certain series "must win"

QUOTE (flavum @ Jun 3, 2016 -> 02:04 PM) It may be cherry-picking six games into a 19-game season series, but if they get to the end of the season and the Royals win the division with an 89-73 record, while the Sox go 86-76...and in the process go 6-13 in the season series---there's no other way to look at it than the Sox blew the division. So, let me play devil's advocate here. Let's say the Sox go 9-10 vs. KC and 8-11 vs. the Indians, but lose most of their games early, but go 5-1 against each team respectively, late. Did they blow it in mid-May? Look, I agree with you that being results-oriented post-season against the eventual division winner is a whole lot different than any other team in your division or in baseball, but I also would say that games in September against the then-division leader become even more important as we all know they are decisive. They are maybe 3,4,5,6 times as important as any other game. Simply saying the record heads up is important, in a vacuum, is way oversimplifying things. Also, let's say the Sox go 18-1 against the Twins, and 12-7 against the Tigers. What do we say, then? Is that just what they "should have done"?

QUOTE (CB2.0 @ Jun 3, 2016 -> 01:54 PM) You can certainly have your own preference for how you choose to measure success, but flavum's (correct) point regarding divisional foes is it's not just an increase in the W or L column. It also directly affects your position in the division. You sweep the Angels in a 3 game set while the Tigers, Indians, and Royals also win over those 3 games - so what. You don't gain any ground. Same as if you and they all lose. But you GET swept by any one of those 3, you can see huge difference immediately. I agreed with him on the point about 2-game swings. I disagree on cherry-picking particular divisional teams, as I said in the preceding post.

Well, first of all, while I do agree that it typically takes 90 games to win a division, I don't know that I'd assume that it will take 90 wins to win this ALC. The AL is an extremely even league this year, and it appears something like at least 10 teams (maybe even 12) have a shot at winning at least 77-82 wins. Currently there are maybe 13 of 15 teams in the AL within 5 games of .500. I could see 86-87-88 games winning the ALC, particularly as the top 4 teams all still have to play each other a ton. To respond to the way you've broken this down, I must say that in this particular year with this particular team, I don't think that it's particularly useful to break down each series in this way and track it. I think it may be much more useful to track 10 game segments. The variance is clearly huge with this team this year, I think mostly because they are a team that relies on pitching and defense, and one that ends up in many 1-run situations (they've had 21 1-run games thus far and are 10-11). We've seen them go up to Toronto and sweep we've seen them win 2/3 at NYM. Conversely, we've done poorly against the Astros at home, as well as against the Indians. I don't think there's a way to predict each three game series in this way with any accuracy. Maybe it's because this team is also more streak prone than others, although I'm really not sure why.

Is this your prediction?

QUOTE (flavum @ Jun 1, 2016 -> 07:23 PM) I'd say the one thing to be completely worried about is the ability to beat teams in the division. It's a 2-game swing every time you play the Indians or Royals, or now the Tigers. 2-4 at home vs the Indians 1-5 vs the Royals That's not good when you have 19 precious games against each. 3-3 vs both right now would have the Sox comfortably ahead in the division. But the point is taken that it's rare that a team consistently wins 6 out of 10 games all season long. There are swings both ways. At the 1/3 mark in the season, 29-25 is pretty good if you didn't know they were once 23-10, and lost 9 of 12 vs the Indians and Royals. I agree with you regarding divisional games being particularly important with respect to the 2-game swing, but I really don't know that I'd cherry-pick the divisional teams themselves, in the way you're doing. For several years, I've heard the "if you can't beat divisional teams...." mantra, but I've heard it applied to all divisional teams in all circumstances, in what I think is a clunky way of doing things. We're talking about, what, 76 games of the season...in four 19 game chunks? Well, just as I emphasized that it might be a bit silly to focus on the 4-15 stretch and extrapolate that to determine how good or bad any given team could be, I think it's a bit shortsighted to take individual records against certain teams and state that it killed a season. If we had gone 3-3 vs. both the Royals and Indians, but then also gone 3-3 against the Twins, I guarantee you we would be having the conversation that we need to beat the Twins more often, if we expect to compete for the division. Back in 2003, I recall a lot of people lambasted the Sox for not having a better overall record against the hapless 43-119 Detroit Tigers (they went 11-8 against them), citing that as a principle reason why that particular team didn't make the posteason. Cherry-picking doesn't get us very far, no matter where we apply it. We are 6-0 against the Twins, and I guarantee every fan around here has just taken that for granted, and not thought twice about it since those series happened. In baseball, can you ever reasonably expect to be 6-0 in 6 games against any team, no matter how bad they are? I don't think so. That's part of the reason why the season is 162 games long. Nobody's counting their blessings every time they think about it, and yet the Royals and Indians records are very much the problem. Yes, we are probably competing with them for this division. However, in 6 games, are we really able to evaluate which team is better or worse, overall, so far? I don't think so. We might be able to determine who is better in May, who got hot, and where some problems are. I prefer to look at our entire divisional record thus far, and then measure our overall record against that. Currently we are 9-9 in the division and 29-25 overall. We've done a bit worse, but I expect that it will even out on both ends over the course of the season. If we don't have at least an above .500 divisional record by the end of the year, like 5 or 6 games above .500 - I don't really expect us to compete. I'm excited to see what we do against the Tigers this weekend.

Abreu needs to step up and be the man here.

COME ON EATON RIFLES EATON RIFLES

LIVING AVILA LOCA

Let's get some runs.