scenario

QUOTE (Thunderbolt @ Sep 20, 2009 -> 04:52 PM) The point is simple: Chris Getz is not the best 2b on this roster. Jayson Nix is also a rookie baseball player, who has shown the ability to hit the ball out of the ballpark, and does not rely on hitting it softly in front of a defender and running like hell. The platoon makes sense for the rest of rest year, but when your strength is excellent bat control, your potential at the major league level is limited. Break it down for me: what does Chris Getz do right? How many runs does he contribute to this team? What inherent value comes from his strengths? I've acknowledged how good he is when he gets on base, but just because we have 8 other guys who can hit on a team, doesn't necessitate the need for a ROLEPLAYER (as you said). Chris Getz is not the biggest problem on this team, I never said that, but he's not an ultimate solution fort next year. If we're going to be more than a boom and bust home-run hitting softball-type team, you need to have players who hit doubles and triples too. And if you look at doubles+triples per at-bat as a stat, Getz is second on the team behind Beckham. Bottom line: he's not just hitting singles.

Today was our season in a nutshell... Good pitching... Can't hit with men on base... Stupid baserunning killing us... I can't remember the last time I saw a game end on a caught-stealing... pathetic.

The White Sox farm teams combined for a 425-346 record in 2009... 3rd best farm system record of all major league clubs.

Twins beat the Tigers 6-2 today to reduce the division lead to 2. Major sphincter tightening going on in Detroit.

QUOTE (3E8 @ Sep 19, 2009 -> 10:07 AM) That's slightly misleading because the line you've provided is post All-Star break, which is less than 1/3 of his at-bats. But regardless, for a 20 year-old dropped into the Southern League playing in a pitcher's park...I'm not discouraged at all by his numbers this year. Especially since he showed a lot of improvement as the season progressed That's true. I looked at post-allstar without looking at the at-bats. Thanks for catching it. Based on at-bats, his second half average comes out to be right about .290

Viciedo's stat-line for the second half of the season... .313/.350/.464/.814

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Sep 16, 2009 -> 08:39 PM) When do we sue and get our money back? What's the exchange rate? Maybe we can convert his pounds to dollars! Recoup our losses and probably turn a profit.

A friend sent this to me today. Thought it was funny (and right on target), so thought I'd share it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world. Rule 1 : Life is not fair - get used to it! Rule 2 : The world doesn't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself. Rule 3 : You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both. Rule 4 : If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss Rule 5 : Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity. Rule 6 : If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault , so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them. Rule 7 : Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room. Rule 8 : Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life. Rule 9 : Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time. Rule 10 : Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs. Rule 11 : Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

Since when did AJ turn into I-Rod? Another caught stealing...

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 12, 2009 -> 04:07 PM) tie Yep. That was pretty close to the definition of a tie.

Not too often you see an inside-the-park homerun look that easy. BTW... on the replay it looked like the ball bounced off of Abreu's head. Were my eyes playing tricks on me or did it?

QUOTE (Ozzie Ball @ Sep 11, 2009 -> 10:12 PM) Because it needs to be said, again, Nix>>Getz by a large margin. Yeah that .235 batting average is really blowing up my skirt.

Not sure how anybody can complain about the season Konerko has had.

Great Falls pitchers have combined for 16 strikeouts in the first 7 innings tonight... And they still trail 2-1.

QUOTE (danman31 @ Sep 11, 2009 -> 09:33 PM) Flowers is getting penalized for struggling in AAA, which seems fair enough to me. Only his first month though. In his second month, he looked very good. And a system that wouldn't take into account some period of adjustment after a guy gets promoted doesn't make much sense to me. No sense in penalizing a guy who played well enough to get promoted, and have him trail a guy who stayed behind and didn't play as well until later in the year.

Abreu ran pretty fast down the first base line for an old guy.

QUOTE (JPN366 @ Sep 11, 2009 -> 09:13 PM) Kanny's done. Lost 9-0 tonight? Ouch. Bellamy with a nice short relief job though. Struck out 3 of the 4 batter he faced.

QUOTE (Disco72 @ Sep 11, 2009 -> 09:10 PM) Just turned it on, and I have no audio feed on WGN. Well, I have audio - I can hear the crowd, etc...but no Hawk and Stone. Anyone else having that problem? Yes. But I'm not sure I consider not listening to Hawk a problem.

QUOTE (BaseballNick @ Sep 11, 2009 -> 02:53 PM) More doubles, more HRs, more RBI, more runs, more walks and less Ks for Santana. I haven't seen either of them play (outside of a few innings of Flowers since his call-up), but the numbers suggest Santana is the better player. Sure... if you want to ignore that Flowers got promoted from AA to AAA after 248 at-bats; Santana didn't play nearly as well in the first half as Flowers and therefore played his entire year (438 at-bats) in AA; and that Santana had 75 more total at-bats on the season than Flowers. Compare their AA averages: - Flowers... .302/.445/.548/.993 - Santana.... .290/.413/.530/.943 Now try equalizing the at-bats. You get a better picture. Flowers in the same number of AA at-bats projected to have 31 doubles, 23 homeruns, and 100 walks. The point is not that Flowers numbers at the same level are substantially better... but they are better. Also consider that Santana's numbers weren't nearly as good in the first half of the year. In roughly the same number of at-bats as Flowers had when he got promoted, Santana's numbers were: .266/.394/.494/.888. Clearly advantage Flowers. Especially since Flowers had an outstanding year defensively. So what's the justification for Santana being 6th and Flowers 20th? That's all I'm asking. Was Flowers penalized for doing well enough to get promoted to AAA while Santana only came around later in the year and fattened up his stats on AA pitching?

I like how Flowers was outhitting Carlos Santana at the AA-level... And was selected as the best defensive catcher in the Southern League... Yet was the 5th catcher picked at #20, while Santana was the 2nd catcher picked at #6.

Not too much of a revelation here... but I found the comments on Gartrell interesting. In the wings: The White Sox's decision to trade Jim Thome was based at least partially on a wave of talent coming in the farm system. Rookies Gordon Beckham, Chris Getz and Jayson Nix made contributions this season, but only Beckham seems assured of sticking going forward. Double-A Birmingham has been one of the best stories in the minor leagues. The Barons, under manager Ever Magallanes, entered the last weekend of the regular season 88-46. "You could just tell we were going to have a really good team," All-Star second baseman C.J. Retherford said last week. "I wouldn't be surprised if every position player in [our Opening Day] lineup played in the big leagues. One through nine are awesome players." Retherford was speaking of Beckham, catcher Tyler Flowers, since-traded first baseman Brandon Allen, third baseman Dayan Viciedo and right fielder Stefan Gartrell, among others. Retherford himself has been a huge surprise, earning a unanimous selection onto the Southern League's postseason All-Star team and continuing to look like a more productive hitter than Getz. Gartrell, 25, might be the White Sox's biggest sleeper since Magglio Ordonez. A 31st-round pick in the 2006 draft, he has hit .280 with 21 home runs and 85 RBIs in 127 games between Birmingham and Triple-A Charlotte. He looks a little like Jermaine Dye on the field and will make the Sox think hard about exercising Dye's $12 million option for 2010. "He really has improved his hitting," Birmingham hitting coach Andy Tomberlin. "He has a chance to hit for serious power."

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Sep 10, 2009 -> 11:59 PM) You totally missed the point. I could've googled it. lol. Point was that without googling it 99% of baseball fans wouldn't have a clue. Because the minor league playoffs simply don't matter. Winning certainly doesn't hurt anything. But it's just not a priority. The minor league playoffs do matter... to people who care about minor league baseball. I find the conversation in this thread interesting because it's very easy to separate those people who care about minor league baseball from those that don't. Do you realize that in 2009, minor league attendance (based on paid tickets) is going to top 40 million fans for the 5th consecutive year? Bottom line is that there are ALOT of people who care about minor league baseball and follow their local teams much more closely than they do major league baseball. To those fans, and the players and owners of those teams, winning does matter and is a bigger priority than where and when Boston choses to rehab one of their starters.

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Sep 10, 2009 -> 07:16 AM) I get that it frustrates you, but let it go. This happens somewhat frequently, just since it's against one of our farm teams people are freaking out. Does it suck? Of course. And yes, it is not fair that they have to face someone of his caliber. However, things are rarely "fair" in the ranks of minor league baseball (or hockey). But, it is legal and Boston is not doing it just "to be dicks". Come on. In the world of Major League Baseball the ML team is #1 by the longest of measures. If that means having a player you want to help youre team in the playoffs make a rehab start that's what will happen. And if the regular seasons over, guess where/when they'll be making said start. Rationalize it all you want... but Dice-K pitching in an A-ball playoff game. Please.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 9, 2009 -> 08:32 PM) Is there anywhere else that Daisuke could get his innings/work in? Side session in Boston... just like Peavy is doing for us... Rather than screwing up the season for minor leaguers who have worked their a** off to get to the playoffs.

Is it just a coincidence that 2 of the 3 minor league teams* CJ Retherford has played for have had the best years in the history of their franchises? *(2007 Great Falls; 2009 Birmingham) PS - Both years he lead the respective leagues in doubles. This year he had 46... 7 more than Dodger wonderboy Andrew Lambo... in fewer at-bats than Lambo.