LVSoxFan

Yes, I'm quite aware that the pitching allowed us to win one-run ballgames. The point was that the offense last year, whether it be one-run or multiple runs, was clutch. And here's the key point multi-dimensional. As somebody pointed out, we could kill you with homers or we could kill you with a walked-in final run. Either way, we could get the job done. BTW I never posted any numbers about how many games we were shut out--that was somebody else. Now, to shoot down the myth that it's all the pitching. Really? Because for the last month and a half at least I've seen killer starts by Contreras, Garland and yes, Javy--more than a few--completely wasted because the offense couldn't score either enough runs or any at all. Even Buehrle in his second half woes would only give up 3, 4 runs in some games and we'd STILL lose. So while the pitching certainly was not 2005, there were MORE than a few times second half where they did their job but were left out to dry by our impotent, feast-or-famine offense. Granted, the bullpen got into the act of blowing it all in the last months as well, but again: our offense this year was ONE DIMENSIONAL. Sluggers in the heart of the order surrounded by weak hitters. As Bill Melton pointed out last night, quite astutely, our offense was getting killed by pitchers who had good offspeed stuff or just throwing "junk" because with out kind of pull, full-body slugger-type hitters, they couldn't hit crap. Whereas Minnesota (his words not mine) has dangerous "slap" type hitters up and down their lineup. Which brings us back to the point: slap hitting. Smallball. MIA in 2006.

I'm not gonna argue with people who say that the way we played last year--smallball, Ozzieball, smartball, whatever--had nothing to do with it. Bull-sheeet! Back then we had timely hitting, stealing, bunting, comeback ability, you name it. So WHAT if we had all the big bombs this year--that's freakin 2004 Redux. This year we had 20 run games, then shutouts. Strikeout after strikeout after strikeout. Bunts? AWOL. Opposite field hits? AWOL. Did we even attempt ONE suicide squeeze this year? I can't remember one. Tons of guys left on base. Double-play after double-play with one or zero outs. Oh, and did I mention strikeouts? Our offense last year may have been MINIMAL (the "hitless wonder" tag was being tossed around) but it usually did what it had to do. Do not TELL me that last year there were tons of games where the other team would go up 3-0 and we knew the game was over. Last night was just like a repeat of the entire second half story this year: we know you'll never come back because if you don't score 11 runs, you score zero. And ANY suggestion that last year's model wasn't what got us to where we won... well, all I have to say is: see you in 88 years. 'Cause it'll probably be that long again if you want to continue to field the 2004 White Sox, which is EXACTLY what these guys were this year.

Here's what I'd like to know after watching last night's massacre for about two minutes: How many times have we been shut out this season? Or held to 1-2 runs? There's an interesting piece in the Sun-Times today about what the Sox need to do to fix things and the overall gist was that we completely abandoned smallball for slugging (besides our pitching woes). When you couple that with the fact that we had super-underproducing hitters around our core of sluggers (Uribe, Anderson, Pods and sorry... I love the dude, but Gooch too), it's no wonder we sucked ass this year. I hate to say this because of the outcome but it's true: we won last year because we rebuilt ourselves in the image of the Minnesota Twins. This year, with the addition of Thome, we fell in love with the big bombs and COMPLETELY abandoned what got us to the dance last year. The fact that they're in and we're not... well, do we need any more reminders?

I agree and yes I think Buehrle will come back strong next year and hopefully he gets a third pitch! Maybe Buehrle can be the first to throw the gyroball, LOL! BTW I was not going to watch any more Sox games this year but if they were to put in all the new guys/bench guys for the last few games, I'd watch! Just to see what we got going! I think that would actually make me tune in...

QUOTE(AbeFroman @ Sep 26, 2006 -> 10:10 AM) I know this sounds wierd, but I've been so depressed for the last three weeks about this team that I'm actually just happy its over now. The writing has been on the wall for over a month now. Watching it happen was really misearble. Now may I can stop agonizing and try to move on. I'm actually happier now that the collapse is complete and we can move on to the hot-stove off-season I agree. I am relieved, too. Being a Sox fan this year was NO fun. Especially second half. First half had its moments, but since the ASB this has been a bummer.

Well now that it's all said and done, I'd say most of all: goodbye Pods, and I think it's safe to say that the Brian Anderson Experiment is over, unless he has a hell of a season in winter ball. As for the rest: Ozuna: keep him Pods: dump him, now Gooch: keep him Thome: hope he doesn't gas out 2nd half like he did this year Konerko: keep him, but SPEAK UP, Paulie! You're the team captain! We need more "Michael Jordan" and less "silent leadership" Crede: keep him (anybody notice how his batting always sucks 1st half but this year he was killer all the way until the last month, when he was terrible? Talk about just not getting a break this year!) Uribe: Hero last year, don't know this year. Not sure what to say. Mack: please stop putting this man in center field Dye: duh! Gload: keep him as a backup As for the starters, I still think we should Keep the Five Alive and deal BMac for speed/hitting, but I get a lot of abuse for that. In the end, and I had this conversation with somebody last night, we DID NOT PLAY THE SMALLBALL THAT WON US 2005. This was 2004, redux, but with expectations. Home run feast-or-famine offense. Things MIA this season: squeeze bunts, opposite field hits, stolen bases... you know, everything that we KILLED WITH LAST SEASON.

Yeah I vote for the AJ homer at Wrigley as best play of the year. Coincidentally, my favorite play of all of 2005 (regular season) was his walkoff homerun against the Dodgers. That was just flat-out incredible. Defensively, the Gooch ass-over-teakettle toss to first absolutely is an all-time classic and I would suspect will end up in the game opening video starting next year. Garland's homer? LOL! I had forgotten about that...

I cannot IMAGINE what the room will be like when they do the Q&A with Ozzie after this turd of a season. Yeesh. Shades of 2004? Where, I believe, KW had to be escorted out or something?

Sorry, but watching last night's debacle... don't tell me this team isn't "quitting."

I've been avoiding the pile-on for weeks now, pointing out that the team is injured, it's hard to repeat, etc., etc. After last night I am flat-out EMBARASSED. First of all, Javy got f***ed. The guy is throwing quality ballgames and we can't score ONE RUN? And on to that again: ONE RUN? NOT EVEN. ZERO RUNS. I am SO tired of these games where we win 8-2 or whatever and then get shut out the next game, or score one run. Or can't overcome a two run deficit, and lose. Nine innings, zero runs. Against freakin Seattle. Do people still want to insist that our starters are the reason for this season? No fire. No gut. No HEART. And that is UNACCEPTABLE to me as a Sox fan.

QUOTE(SoxFanForever @ Sep 21, 2006 -> 04:52 PM) How many "Ichiro-like" players are laying around on other teams just waiting to be traded? Hint: not many WELL THANKS, Cap'n Obvious! I meant with Ichiro-like sensibilities. Maybe it's one of our homegrown, I don't know. But we need to get back to what got us there in 2005. Enough of this feast or famine HR derby crap. And I'm willing to give it another year with the not-so-fantastic five. I think some of them are embarassed and will want to kick ass next year. I'll go with that. Let's not forget how many fine starting performances were wasted 2nd half because the offense was AWOL. Yes, even Javy got burned a few times.

Keep the five alive. Trade McCarthy for a freakin' leadoff, high-percentage batting, non-slugger man. Think: Ichiro-like.

I'm not really of the mind to go absolutely nuts because we didn't do it this year. Let's face it: this year was not fun to watch. I don't mean because we didn't advance, I mean: it seems like we've been playing literally .500 ball all season, but especially the second half. Just when we'd pull out a great win, we'd erase it with an immediate loss. As somebody here said: we would light the fuse time after time, only to find out it was a dud. Lots of fuses, but that firecracker never really went off, did it? It was clear to me early on in the season that this was not going to be 2005, Redux. Which was till okay; even if we had to scuffle and "grinder" our way into the playoffs, fine. But the red flags started appearing quite some time ago: the constant losing to KC. The starters having their troubles. The feast-or-famine offense. Everything that's been covered here. Usually the Sox are out of it by late August/early September so it's not a grind to the end like this year. And that made it more painful: they teased us up until about last week with the possibility that they just might finally light that fuse and it would explode, just in time. Doesn't look like we have any time left for that. Also consider this: last year Cleveland went on a second half tear and damn near knocked us out. Had that happened, we would still be talking about it now, that's how traumatic it would have been. This year, Minnesota was that team and while our season's done, at least it wasn't a free fall from a wire-to-wire first place season. We kinda all knew that this might not work out, seeing that we've been playing catch up with Detroit all season long and Minny lately for the wild card. So am I bitter? Done with the Sox? Screaming for heads to roll because we didn't repeat? Naw. We stayed in it until this week (or, arguably, Oakland last week) which, in the overall scheme of things, is above average for the Sox. Our expectations were so high this year, which made the losses harder to take. I can't say I had the fun watching this year that I did last year--duh!--but we had some moments. Let's hope everybody remembers how crappy it feels to be third place this year and to not even get in, and maybe that will be the fire under everyone's arse that many here think was missing this year. Yes I'll be the first to admit that 2005 and the title helps ease this a bit. Think about the Cubs coming this/close that one year, blowing it in the biggest Chicago choke in history, and then getting obliterated the last two weeks of the next year, and now they're a basement dweller. It could be worse!

QUOTE(vandy125 @ Sep 21, 2006 -> 11:46 AM) Just a bit to add on that. Haven't the dates of the World Series been moving further and further back? I think that it was moved back a week in 99. I don't know how much that adds to it, but there seem to be a good amount of nagging injuries. You guys sure about "two extra" weeks? Because I remember that if we hadn't swept Houston, there would have been a game on Halloween Saturday (i.e., the Saturday where everybody goes out). That's more than two weeks extra. QUOTE(witesoxfan @ Sep 21, 2006 -> 11:34 AM) The Sox won 8 straight at one point in April, and they won 9 straight in June, and nearly made it 10 but Iguchi's grand slam in the 9th was not quite enough. And that 9 game winning streak was the first 9 game winning streak since 1977(who some fondly recall as the South Side Hitmen) Well there we have it. May. June. I think our longest streak 2nd half has been four.

QUOTE(Rowand44 @ Sep 21, 2006 -> 11:00 AM) So being banged up is the new excuse, eh? Sorry, I'm not buying. The Twins, Yankees, Tigers and A's have all lost key players for the majority of the season due to injury and we're banged up so that's the reason for this team struggling? Nope, I don't buy it. Not from me. I think it's a perfect storm of events that meant this team really never got hot this year: -Injuries -Fatigue -Bad management calls -Inept offense -Starting rotation struggles -Bullpen struggles -Mental distraction -Losing to central opponents we usually dominate (HELLO, KC!) -Errors I mean, you name it. What's so odd is that we never had a long streak this year. Even the 2004 Sox I think had some 10, 12 game tears.

I don't think this is any big secret. Honestly, this team has looked tired to me all year. Everybody, at one point or another. You know who else looks exhausted? Ozzie. Man, what happened to 2005 Ozzie, stalking the dugout, clapping his hands, egging them on? Nowadays Ozzie just sits there like Dusty Baker, silent. Many here are calling for the dismantling of the team and getting rid of the pitching and this and that, but IMO the team has been fatigured and banged up for quite some time. Maybe the downside from winning the WS for the first time is that players can't adjust to the shorter offseason because it's all new to them. Not only that, but Freddy pitching in the WBC? Come on! I can't believe they let him do that. But yes, especially second half, this team just seems listless. Which, believe it or not, makes me optimistic about next year. Rested and healthy, and think in 2007 we'll have the team we thought we had this year. Maybe opening night was an omen, LOL: that long, drawn-out game that didn't finally conclude until after 1AM. Or the record-setting, dragged out game right before the ASB against Boston... Signs, signs, everywhere the signs...

Um.... Didn't I write a song already this year for us?...

We can all agree that the pitching upon which we're built was not the foundation that it was last year, but what did NOT go wrong this year? At any given time, I was ranting about: -The pitching -The offense -The bullpen -The lack of all three ever being present at the same time -Questionable managing -Bad baserunning -Bad breaks -Mental softness/lack of killer instinct -Most decidedly: lack of any hot streak this year -Maybe not making that trade To me it's across the board, peeps. I just think this wasn't our year. On paper this team looked to dominate everybody. I'm not quite sure that because it didn't work out--yet--it's time to gut n' rebuild. JMO.

Wasn't Pablo a walk-on or something like that? Amazing.

The KW mancrush! LMFAO!

QUOTE(Steve9347 @ Sep 20, 2006 -> 12:55 PM) yeah, but you say injuries like its a known fact... aside from Jose Contreras, there has been no documented injury in this rotation... Okay now who's being naive? I'm not saying Freddy is hurt: my baseball fanatic, expert co-worker called that MONTHS ago. While everybody was insisting that he was healthy. You do NOT lose that kind of velocity in one season just because. Freddy mentioning it this week was merely an "Aha!" moment, not my basis for this claim. What kind of standard must we have here? "Documented"? Come on. I'm no expert--admittedly--but even I could tell you most of these guys looked tired this year (save for Vaz or Garland). And again: are you really making the claim that Contreras switched exclusively to sidearm (when he dominated all first half with three different angles) because... well, just because? I don't know what we're arguing about here. All I'm saying is I think it would be rash to start hacking up the starting lineup and, in the same breath, thinking that BMac is just Greg Maddux waiting to happen. I know you're not saying that, but some people seem to believe this. I agree; however, even when the pitching held up the end of the deal in the final stretch here--as they pretty much have--it was our lack of offense that did us in. So I wonder if that BMac/Soriano thing would have made the difference. Acknowledging, of course, that hindsight is 20/20. In the end, I still trust Ozzie/KW and what they decide. I hardly am going to jump ship on them because we did not repeat. Our expectations were extremely high. Just too much went wrong with this year for me to start dismantling the team, that's all I'm saying. I think it just wasn't our year.

Exactly Hangar, when I wrote that I was thinking... you know, like an Aaron Rowand type. God I miss that guy!

Yeah I'm not in a hurry to get rid of Pablo. I like his hustle. I like Mack's hustle too, but in the outfield he is painful. Pablo/Mack? I'd get rid of Mack. Perfect world: I'm not dying to get rid of either.

Perhaps I worded it too vaguely. They've ALL had question marks this season at one point or another, whereas last year they did not. IMO injuries are what plagued the starters this year (save for Vasquez) and we just didn't hear too much about it. We will soon. So, who's the bigger question mark? An injured Garcia, or BMac? That's my point. I don't think anybody will "revert" to 2005 dominance necessarily, but certainly I do think, yes, they will be better than this year. I'm also just talking injury and not even taking fatigue into account. Don't tell me that you didn't notice some of them looked tired this year, too. In fact, not long after Buehrle's meltdown began with that horrific Cubs game, the Sun-Times had a piece where they were asking scouts about the White Sox' chances. When it got to Buehrle, the first thing out of the guy's mouth was "He looks tired." And that was in July! I am just not sold on BMac and I personally am tired of us passing on players because we've got this alleged magic bullet just ready to start, whom we won't trade.

QUOTE(Steve9347 @ Sep 20, 2006 -> 12:12 PM) ha. yeah. javier vazquez's inability to put together a complete season since he left Montreal mean's nothing... and lets all just assume Freddy Garcia will be fine because he's had two good starts... oh and Mark Buehlre will magically figure things out, and Jose Contreras will go back to the form that he held for what? 4 months? give me a break... saying our five starters aren't a question mark is dumb. Really? In your scenario we then need to accept that last year was just a fluke. In the course of one season, Freddy now sucks, Buehrle sucks, Contreras is a wobbly ship. The only unknown was Vasquez. Sorry, but it's clear to anybody that when you lose that much velocity (Freddy), you're hurt. It's not that he's just a lazy sonofab****. Even Buehrle's struggles SCREAM injury, contrary to his comments. The Javy thing is all over the place because even with the Big Inning (and who used to have those?) there were plenty of times where our offense went to sleep and couldn't overcome minor leads while he was pitching. Sorry, if the "O" can't overcome a two run deficit with Javy on the mound, that's not Javy's fault. And don't tell me that Contreras started all of a sudden throwing sidearm only if he wasn't hurt. Fine. I'll take these five against whatever you think it is that is going to be better any day. BMac? Now who's being dumb?