LVSoxFan

They were at the Capitol Grille in Philly, so skip the one in Pittsburgh if you don't like the blue language!!

Really! Who COULD he name right now? Erstad was the only one making a name for himself until he got hurt. Right now I'm unimpressed/disgusted with all of them. Save for maybe Buehrle and Garland. Jenks.

I'm no Ozzie apologist and this year for the first time ever I started thinking about the team without him and what that would be like (and this from a guy who wanted him here 100% and loved KW for hiring him). But back up here. We have veteran players like Konerko, A.J., Uribe, Gooch and Dye (and Thome) and they have sucked ass now for at least a month, two months and arguably since last July. What exactly is Ozzie supposed to do? I've seen him try and be tough, be soft, be funny... but these men are paid millions to HIT THE DAMN BALL and they cannot even do that. How is that his fault? Or the bullpen situation? Who is he supposed to go to after seven innings? Jenks? Sorry, but right now I put almost all the blame where it belongs: on the core players. They look fat, slow and uninterested. I'd rather watch the entire team be replaced with AAA who at least TRY then watch the fading glory of '05 get trampled by their lifelessness. I think we can all agree that we'd be more forgiving if it at least seemed like we were taking tough losses but fighting them out, but we are lambs. We lay down and die. There's only so much a manager can do. The only thing that irks me right now is Fields. Play the damn kid already. We have nothing to lose at this point. To be jerking him around back and forth like that... we'll never KNOW if he's ready because there's no consistency. Although if Ozzie's been right-on about our young guys not being ready, then this all comes down to one person: KW. If KW can't supply a bullpen and can't supply callups to get the job done regardless of the manager, then get rid of him, dammit. Oh and another thing: I can just PICTURE if we cut Ozzie as the fall guy, him going somewhere else and turning into, as somebody mentioned above, the next Tony LaRussa. I can just SEE it.

Why does everybody keep insisting that we didn't play small ball in 2005? //boggles Yeah we had home run power and won a lot of games that way, especially in the playoffs. But in the regular season? Come on...

Well here it goes... http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=txwh...t&type=lgns

Sox fest this year is gonna be MIGHTY interesting. Hey at least it won't be crowded.

My God I had been saying that MacDougal was the Politte of 2007 but now I think Thorton's taken that honor. Lights-out and dependable in 2006 (we called him Lefty Jenks) and now he's a gas can. BTW I did some checking about how long has it been since we've had a team this bad and the last year I could find where we were this awful was 1999. I don't remember it, but record-wise, that was the last horrific year we had. Unless I'm wrong--feel free to correct me.

Thanks for the post Chisxfan.

I'm down for DJ singing "Billy, Don't Be a Hero" like he did in that one game when he was bored out of his mind. Maybe Hawk will resign the season in protest and we'll get Black Jack and DJ up there, both drunk--now THAT I would podcast!

Wow, I'm sitting here listening to them and it's interesting to hear how distressed they sound. Hawk tends to get more of an angry tone where DJ just sounds resigned. Hawk did start to talk about how our offensive woes are due to injuries (Pods, Erstad, etc.) which of course was crap. But they both sound like they want to bust out and say what they REALLY feel. Ya know, it's gotta suck having that job when you have to call stillborn games like, well, pretty much almost every one this month. Man, 2nd half last year was rough--watching it--but this is just painful. I suspect as the losses continue to pile up Hawk and DJ will get a little less bashful about saying what they think is wrong. Point being: Hawk will slip and stop being Company Man and say something like: "Goddammit Konerko earn your money!"

Can you explain to me what "signability issues" means?

Both pitches FYI drilled Rowand right in the back; right on the numbers.

And that's the answer I was looking for. Sounds like Minny and Cleveland know how to stock their farm club and lock in young talent, and Anaheim has achieved the balancing act of spending and grooming. We, on the other hand, seem to do neither. And that's what concerns me. It concerns me that every single dude we bring up doesn't seem ready for the big leagues (with a few exceptions). And obviously we're not getting a blank check like the Yankees. So now what? Which is part II of my question: now what? How do we fix this? Thanks for the responses BTW guys, I was looking for this kind of info.

QUOTE(BigSqwert @ Jun 12, 2007 -> 03:41 PM) Yeah but Minnesota has a history of plugging in guys from their farm system. They had some great players leave in the past few years. And that's my point. They also always seem to have a backup when somebody gets hurt who can step right in. We seem to have nothing of the sort. If our first-line starters go down or are ineffective, we have no recourse. Nobody to bring up. We have to buy a veteran, if we can. I'm starting to wonder if 2005 was our "Space Cowboys" year where we took a chance on some players who time may have seemed over (Pods, Dye, Contreras) or had yet to arrive (Crede, Iguchi) and everybody pushed and had that one Big Year and then faded back to where they were anyway...

QUOTE(vandy125 @ Jun 12, 2007 -> 03:01 PM) I would bet that a lot of this is much easier said than done. You call tell Uribe to hold off on the Slider low and away, but sometimes there is something about that pitch that makes his eyes big and he will still swing at it. Can you find a better example? Uribe has always swung like he's climbed a tree and just stepped on a beehive...

Here's what I don't get. Granted, we don't spend like the Yanks or Boston, but overall we rank #5 in team salary, according to espn.com Link here. Here's how our division ranks: Cleveland: #23 Detroit: #9 Minnesota: #18 Kansas City: #22 So we outspend everybody in the division, the closest by $13 million, but have won the division once since 2000. Other teams that spend less than us: Atlanta, Oakland and St. Louis, for example. Anaheim is just ahead of us at #4. So let's take Minny: they rank #18 in spending but yet they're the all-around consumate team who Ozzie rightly calls the piranhas, and after whom we were modeled in 2005. They don't spend the bucks, so obviously they have a great farm system. So how come we don't? We seem stuck in this weird limbo between spend-for-talent teams like Boston/NYY and consistently good teams with tiny payrolls but great systems like Cleveland or Minny. What is our problem? Shouldn't we be one or the other? Or, at best, a balancing act? Yet we seem to flirt with spending some bucks but trying to be smaller-market-minded, but with no farm system that smaller-market-minded teams almost have to have. I don't get it. Or am I missing something?

The more I read stuff like this the more I think: how is it that posters here can figure this out but Greg Walker can't?

I've already started my countdown to how long it is before you start seeing the dreaded fans-with-bags-on-their-heads in the stands. At this point I come for the sun, the company and the polish with onions. At 4-8 this year so far, the last thing I've been seeing is baseball. And with this anemic offense, the "Star Wars" video has become unintentionally comedic.

I too noticed in this morning's papers that Ozzie finally mentioned Walker instead of defending him. I think Ozzie's loyal to a fault, but I think that loyalty is just about worn out at this point.

I appreciate the idea of a turning point--like the Tori Hunter game in 2004--but really, turned on what? When have we ever got it going this season? I'll do you one better: I'd say the "turning point" for this season was the ASB LAST season. Because since the ASB in 2006, we have never seemed like the 2005 team in the least. Even Ozzie admitted as much a few weeks back when he said he feels like he's watching the same crappy team since July of 2006. I would also say Contreras getting shelled in the opener set a bad tone for 2007. BUT, I will not wave the white flag until this year's ASB, so I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. I cannot believe we're going to suck like this all year. Because if we do, this will be the worst Sox team I have seen since... I can't even remember? A decade?

Sooooo... season's over, huh?

But you know what? I have a strange feeling that the offense is gonna bust out sometime soon and go on a roll. This is just too weird to have a team slump all together like this, when they have all proven they can hit and play (okay except Uribe or Pods last year). The bullpen though? That just seems like a black hole to me. I have no answer for that. It's still only June 11th, people...

QUOTE(South Side Fireworks Man @ Jun 9, 2007 -> 10:58 PM) Thome, Dye and Konerko need to step up and carry this team like they're supposed to. The responsibility for this team's success or failure falls squarely on their shoulders. BINGO. These guys get the big bucks. Start earning them. BTW who are our "leaders"? Time for them to step up.

I totally agree with the posts about how tight ozzie is now--what happened to 2005 ozzie and his sense of humor? I realize that losing makes it harder but for months I've been noticing this. at this point you just need to play and laugh and roll with it. crap even the yanks look carefree compared to us. I also agree with the "no horses" argument. the bullpen was kw's creation and nobody thought our veterans like paulie, dye, etc. would fall silent. we've been hard on ozzie but man with that bullpen and our dead-last offense, what "managing" is there for him to do? I still have hope we can turn this around. that expires at the asb.

QUOTE(southsideirish71 @ Jun 5, 2007 -> 09:51 PM) Uribe's pathetic AB. Hanging pitch of the middle of the plate. Missed. Low and away, he swings over it. Low and high, fouled off. Way outside and high. Ball High hanger around his melon. He fouls it off. Now a fastball at the melon, and he pops out to the catcher. 2 of these pitches were near the zone. 2 of them. The scouting report on Uribe must read, when you get 2 strikes, throw it over his melon. He will swing at it. How the hell does he think that he can put that ball into play. I mean come on. LMFAO. SO true. My joke about Uribe last year was that you didn't even need a baseball--you could throw a canned ham over the plate and he'd STILL swing at it. Ugh.