SHAFTR

QUOTE(White Sox Josh @ Jul 26, 2005 -> 10:35 PM) how the hell was that uribe's error. willie made a bad flip to him. I think the thought is that Uribe could have gotten to that ball and made the out at 2nd. The bad flip did cost them a double play though.

E on Uribe.

Remember when Willie Harris lost us this game? I'm sure he is entirely responsible for that inning as well.

QUOTE(Tadahito15 @ Jul 26, 2005 -> 10:13 PM) Crap. I dont think burls will last 6 innings. what a crappy night at this point, you just let him get through the inning. There isn't anything to lose.

QUOTE(jphat007 @ Jul 26, 2005 -> 09:44 PM) It was, mostly, a joke. I'm sorry I didn't thrown the green in there. CWS just seems like he really likes Beane and Oakland so I thought he might be a big fan equal with teh Sox. I dunno. Alright,, I didn't know you were joking. I'm, personally, not an Oakland fan but I do like how Billy Beane builds his teams.

QUOTE(jphat007 @ Jul 26, 2005 -> 09:36 PM) I hear the Oakland TV guys are pretty good. And you seem to like them a Billy Beane a lot. Maybe that would be more enjoyable? I know this isn't intended for me, but I'm going to reply anyways by saying that was an idiotic statement both in content and in form.

QUOTE(Rowand44 @ Jul 26, 2005 -> 09:39 PM) Anyone else think Willie has last years collision go through his head everytime there's a little pop up like that? Yes, I do. That ball was actually pretty deep.

Anyone find it ironic that what Hawk just said about Oakland (maintaining their streak) is the exact same thing that people said about the White Sox earlier this year?

QUOTE(Milkman delivers @ Jul 26, 2005 -> 09:16 PM) I hope Carl gets his s*** together, because I bet KW is looking for another bat to take away some of the playing time he could get. The past month, Everett has a .229/.286/.443 line.

I know there is still a lot of the season left, but it seems strange that there hasn't been a No-hitter yet this year. I think 2000 was the last time there wasn't a No-hitter that year. 2004: Randy Johnson 2003: Kevin Millwood 2002: Derek Lowe 2001: Hideo Nomo AJ Burnett Bud Smith My point, nearly every year has a No-hitter. 2005 hasn't had one yet.

QUOTE(the People's Champ @ Jul 26, 2005 -> 07:55 PM) How does this Douche bag figure that PK is the best hitter on the team more bogus info from people that have never watched a single game Well, Konerko & Thomas have the highest OPS on the team.

Who is going to disagree with the idea of Kenny only making a deal if it's a good one?

Another Article, this time from the NY Sun. How To Win the Pennant Without a Decent Offense BY TIM MARCHMAN July 26, 2005 The Chicago White Sox, arguably the worst offensive team in the American League, are on pace right now to win 107 games. If they play .500 ball the rest of the season, they'll win 95 games. That's more than impressive - it's pretty much unprecedented. Every winning team claims to be driven by pitching and defense, but the White Sox actually are. A claim that the White Sox are a terrible offensive club should, rightly, be met with skepticism. The team is, after all, sixth in the league in runs scored, first in stolen bases, and on pace to win 107 games, this last number being the best evidence against the Sox being notably bad at the plate. There are a few mitigating factors, though. The most important among them is that they play in U.S. Cellular Field, which is one of the better hitter's parks in baseball. The team's last place ranking in runs scored on the road is more telling than that sixth-place ranking in total runs scored. Another factor obscuring their offensive weakness is that their underlying statistics don't quite match up with the number of runs they've scored. The Sox are second from last in the league in batting average, third from last in on base average, and eighth in slugging average. They are fourth in the league in home runs, but since its renovation prior to the 2003 season, U.S. Cellular has been a better home run park than even Coors Field in Colorado. Last, it should be noted that the Sox play in an especially weak offensive division, something that happens to match up quite well to their strength in pitching. Playing teams like the Twins, Royals, Indians, and Tigers as much as the Sox do, you don't have to have a great offense to win, especially if you have starters and relievers as good as Chicago's. All this being so, the Sox are a lot worse than you'd think at the plate. Measuring by Equivalent Average, a Baseball Prospectus statistic that measures total offense, adjusted for park and league effects, on a scale approximating batting average - .260 is average, .300 is excellent - the White Sox have the worst mark in the American League, at .248. (The Yankees, to give a yardstick, are tied with the Florida Marlins for the best mark in the game at .275.) Running up and down Chicago's lineup, it's not hard to see why. First baseman Paul Konerko - the team's best hitter - has a fairly unimpressive batting line of .258 BA/.355 OBA/.487 SLG - respectable, but not what you'd expect from the best hitter on the best team in the league. Most of the team's other starters fit the same profile; Jermaine Dye, Aaron Rowand, A.J.Pierzynski, and Scott Podsednik are perfectly solid bats but not much more. Some, like third baseman Joe Crede (.250/.303/.435), approach outright ineptitude. None of this is to say that the White Sox are a fluke, or don't deserve their record, or anything of the sort. The team's pitching has been genuinely extraordinary this year in every regard, the best seen in the majors in many years. The Sox have gotten timely hits, key steals, and superb defense from the same cast of players who have put up the hitting lines so easily derided as subpar - clearly, as three-dimensional players, everyone from Konerko to Crede is contributing to the team's success. A team on pace to win 90 games might be written off as lucky; a team on pace to win 107 cannot be as simply dismissed. Still, it's beyond unusual for a team this good to be so light on offense. In the wild-card era, only four 100-win teams have been remotely close to being this weak at the plate. Using Equivalent Average as a point of comparison, the 2003 Giants came in at .266, the 2002 and 1999 Braves came in at .261, and the 1995 Braves (who were on pace to win 100 in a strike-shortened season) came in at .253. The Giants were well above average, and anyway no team featuring Barry Bonds at the height of his powers can realistically be called weak offensively. Those Braves teams, of course, are what the current Sox team was modeled on, and they featured a pitching staff of a quality never before seen in major league history. Still, two of those teams were league-average offensively; the 1995 Braves are the only recent 100-win team that was downright weak at the plate, and they ended that season with the only World Series title in the team's 14-year run of dominance in the National League East. Going back a bit further, it's still incredibly rare for a team without a strong offense to win 100.The 1985 Cardinals, who famously featured seven leadoff hitters and Jack Clark, come to mind, but their .273 Equivalent Average was the best in the league.(The seven leadoff hitters were all actually pretty good.) The 1962 Dodgers also come to mind, but their .277 mark was second-best in the league. Like the Cardinals, that team garnered a lasting reputation as a no-hit squad largely due to a misunderstanding of park effects and a lack of eye-popping raw power numbers, but was actually quite impressive in context. The only 100-win team of the post-integration era that approaches the current White Sox for plate futility is, of all teams, the 1969 Mets, whose .249 Equivalent Average was second-worst in the National League. On that team, no one save Tommie Agee and Cleon Jones could hit worth a lick, and their formula was very close to that of the current White Sox - pitching, defense, pitching, timely hits and steals, a healthy dose of the simply inexplicable, and a lot more pitching. Just as the other precedents for the current Sox team are, this is an encouraging one - like the 2003 Giants and the 1999 and 1995 Braves, the Mets won the pennant, and like the 1995 Braves, they won the World Series. All of this, however, should be taken with a few grains of salt. Statistics like Equivalent Average have their flaws, and one of the biggest ones is their inability to account for things like shrewd managing and timing. Chicago's gross totals of steals, walks, and so forth aren't particularly impressive, but the timing of them is. In close and late situations - the seventh inning or later, with the game tied or one team leading by a run or with the tying run on base, at the plate, or on deck - the Sox are one off the league lead in runs scored, first in steals, and second in OPS. If there's any secret to their manufacturing of runs, it's that they've been good in the clutch, and that can make up for a fair amount of crummy hitting. The Sox' curse - they haven't won a World Series since their 1919 edition shamefully handed one away - is for whatever reason by far the least glamorous in baseball, but judging from the past, they have a great shot this year at putting it to bed forever, no matter how little they hit.

QUOTE(beck72 @ Jul 26, 2005 -> 03:10 PM) With both MIL and the Sox being in the southern league, they should be well aware of each others talent in AA and those who went onto AAA that played in Huntsville and Birmingham. And checking the Brewers minor league rosters and stats, they don't have anyone decent at 3b in AA or AAA. They have Bill Hall. He can play 3rd.

QUOTE(kyyle23 @ Jul 26, 2005 -> 02:25 PM) I dont know about that, Prince Fielder showed them he could hit major league pitching, and getting him a half season in the bigs wouldnt hurt him at all. Isnt Overbay a free agent after this season? If so, Milwaukee would be wise to move him now so they can get something for him. I have a few reasons why he won't get traded now. a ) Melvin believes that Position Players get more trade value during the offseason. b ) Milwaukee is only 5 1/2 out of the Wild card right now. c ) They don't think Fielder is ready to play everyday. d ) Overbay is a fan favorite e ) Cheap Contract With all that, there is no reason to rush trading Overbay. It is best to just wait until the offseason.

As I posted in another thread, Milwaukee isn't going to trade Overbay this season. They are going to wait until the offseason before they make a move with him.

Lets not forget, Neyer did pick us to win the Central before the season started.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Jul 26, 2005 -> 02:03 PM) Overbay would be a perfect short and long term fit for the White Sox. Plus with the duel successes of the Pods/Viz-Lee trade, I could see these teams matching up for another deal as the Brewers would like to free up some spots for their big prospects, and the Sox would like a shot at some of their players. Milwaukee won't trade Overbay this season. They will probably trade him in the offseason, but not right now.

QUOTE(Yossarian @ Jul 26, 2005 -> 11:26 AM) What a way to ruin the enjoyment of the greatest game in the world. Do you have a statue of Billy Bean in your den? Go play with your stats. I'll take real wins over "1st order Pythagenport" wins, or whatever the you know what that is. You ruined my lunch. It's spelled Billy Beane. Also, FYI, he didn't write Moneyball (if you thought he did). Also, do you realize that HR, Hits, Batting Average & even Win/Loss are stats. A statistic is a quantity within a sample. All of those qualify for stats. Now, if you want to play ignorant and ignore any stat that wasn't created over 90 years ago, go ahead.

I just read this at Beyond the Box Score (a site that I enjoy quite a lot). here is the link: http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/story/2005/7/25/195312/129 ------ Thoughts on the White Sox The White Sox have played like two different teams in and out of the division. Record v. AL Central: 31-7 Record v. Others: 33-26 I dug deeper and tested a hypothesis of mine: RS/Game v. AL Central: 4.76 RS/Game v. Others: 4.81 RA/Game v. AL Central: 3.24 RA/Game v. Others: 4.39 There is very little difference between the runs scored between divisional matchups, but the pitching is completely different, completely average, in non-divisional games. I think it's a fairly safe bet to put the White Sox in the playoffs at this point, but hold off on the World Series tickets. A lot of their great pitching is the product of a very weak offensive division, with 3 of the 4 lowest-scoring teams in the AL as frequent opponents (the Royals, Twins, and Indians haven't been too great offensively, and the Tigers are in the middle of the pack). And their offense has taken a step back from last year; 97 games into the season last year, the Sox had scored 526 runs. Currently, they have 465. Part of that is because it seems that offensive numbers as a whole in the AL are a bit down, but that's not the whole story and that doesn't account for a loss of 61 runs so far and a projected loss of 88 runs for the full season. Offensively, the White Sox are merely average, thus far, averaging close to 4.8 R/G, in total, which is near the American League average. A few other things: - One of the reasons for their success is how well they've done against the Indians... they're 10-3, even after having only outscored the Indians by 10 runs in those 13 games. If you were to flip that record around (say the White Sox went 3-10 in those games), you'd see major differences in the standings. W L GB Cleveland 58 41 -- Chicago 57 40 -- Minnesota 53 45 4.5 Detroit 49 49 8.5 Kansas City 36 62 21.5 Unbalanced schedule at work. The Sox have only played 5 games against the Twins, meaning that there's plenty of time for a pennant race. So far, the White Sox have the upper hand and the Twins can't hit. But it should make for an interesting pennant race. Clutch? So far, so good for the White Sox. TOTAL RISP White Sox .261/.322/.421 .264/.337/.419 Opponents .248/.313/.393 .225/.318/.350 Finally, a look at run distribution, as per Dave Studeman over at The Hardball Times. Based on their run distribution now, the White Sox are projected to have won 63 games (assuming I've done the math correctly). Their standard Pythagorean projection is at 58 wins, and 1st-order Pythagenport has them at 57 wins. So run distribution maintains that the White Sox have done much better than the average, especially in games in which they score or allow 1 run (they've been held to 1 run 2 fewer times than expected and have given up only 1 run 5 more times than expected), and in games which they score or allow 5 runs. Run distribution values have the caveat that I haven't quite perfected the "Above Average" methodology I'm using...

QUOTE(fathom @ Jul 23, 2005 -> 07:26 PM) This is vintage Everett from a few months ago. His swing is entirely too long right now. After he fouled off that ball and walked out of the box and screamed. I think he yelled, "Dinosaurs!"

QUOTE(qwerty @ Jul 23, 2005 -> 07:21 PM) Manny ramirez is my favorite outfielder. I really think that is why he is leading the league in assists. He makes those errors, baserunners go for the extra base and he throws them out.

QUOTE(Pasqua's Mailman @ Jul 23, 2005 -> 06:57 PM) Thanks Carl... great AB... good one... as much as everyone complains about him, atleast Uribe always gets the Sac fly.

I'd trust Ponson in a bar fight.