Dick Allen

QUOTE (RockRaines @ May 8, 2012 -> 12:51 PM) Eh, maybe. This just makes me realize how much I miss 4 year players in college, even 3 years is better. That's true. I hate the one and dones. Let them turn pro. Its a farce having them pose as college students. Making them go for 2 is just going to create an even bigger farce and more cheating.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ May 8, 2012 -> 11:45 AM) Frank was coming off his second sub-par season. The other three guys you named were unknowns. Cleveland was winning the division for like the 6th consecutive year. Yeah. I'd say they were pretty irrelevant. As far as what's going on now, we're a virtual lock to miss the playoffs for the 6th time in 7 years. Assuming we finish below .500 (a safe bet), that will be 4 years in that span in which we've had a losing record. Attendance is already sagging. Minimal amount of young impact talent on the major league roster. Not a damn thing in the minors. What I'm saying is, it's already bad. More bad is not really going to make things worse than they already are. Doesn't matter if they were unknowns or Frank was coming off a bad season, they still were there which means quite a head start on a current, "total" rebuild.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ May 8, 2012 -> 11:33 AM) So in other words, we're already defeated no matter what? Because a World Series is definitely not in the cards for this team in the next 5 years. Famous last words. BTW, the last time the Sox were irrelavant in your estimation, they still had guys like Lee, Ordonez, Thomas and Konerko in the organization. Thinking they could tear it all down now and rebuild with their current players, it would be hard to imagine it could be done in less than 5 years. If the Sox lost 90+ for 5 years straight, I bet Soxtalk would be pretty dead, and those are the most loyal fans. The other thing that makes total rebuilds a lot harder these days is you don't get Jon Garland for Matt Karchner anymore. At least its very rare. It used to be commonplace to trade a decent veteran for a top prospect at the deadline. Not anymore.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 8, 2012 -> 11:28 AM) Why not? Nothing in the 12 years between 94 and 06 worked, despite having some very good teams, including a division winner. As a matter of fact, a couple of homestands ago the Sox had their smallest crowd since 2005, the year they won the WS and never were not in first place. So people weren't even sold back then. Until the consensus of soxtalk can show they have patience with guys like Beckham and Morel and Viciedo, which up until now is non existent, there is no way the same people will have patience with a total rebuild.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ May 8, 2012 -> 10:51 AM) Nobody expects an expansion team to do anything in their first 5 years or so. Yeah, it took them a while (aka Andrew Friedman taking over). But there's no way in hell any practical fans would be demanding a winner right away. Especially in their division. This argument might've been passable in 2008 when many thought they were a 1-year wonder. But it's 2012 now. They're legit and they're set up for the long haul. There's lots of reasons you can point to for their crummy attendance. Being bad pre-Friedman just isn't one of them. The Arizona Diamondbacks say hello. If you don't think a decade of horrificness hasn't done anything to harm their fanbase, you are being naive. People who would have been fans had they at least been competitve, moved on to other things. Its happened in Toronto, its happened in Cleveland, and it would most likely happen on the South Side of Chicago.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ May 8, 2012 -> 10:37 AM) Sorry, I don't buy it at all. The Rays haven't been around 15 years yet. Do you really believe a reason the Rays can't draw despite the amazing success they've had is because they sucked in 2004? No way. No, the years from 1998-2007 when 91 losses was their best season. Putting it in perspective, the 2007 White Sox had a better record than any Rays team their first 10 seasons. If your team is awful for its first 10 years of existence, you may have lost at least one generation of fans, if not more.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ May 8, 2012 -> 10:30 AM) Another team that had great attendance, went through a down period and got back at least 50% of their fans (compared to the Indians, Blue Jays and Mariners examples) is Colorado. The Brewers have done a great job moving from a largely-irrelevant small market team to a perennial powerhouse. It's not impossible. And even in the 1980's/early 90's and then again in the late 90's/early 00's, the A's NEVER drew huge crowds. And even though Beane hasn't been very good recently, I credit him for sticking his neck out with the Cespedes signing. You have to take a risk to get a superstar player when the odds are more likely it will go bust and really end up hurting a small-market team for years to come. If Milwaukee didn't have a roof, they wouldn't have the attendance they have.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ May 8, 2012 -> 10:25 AM) That was at a time when JR was willing to open the purse strings and the fans were coming out to support the team because they were putting a good product on the field. Nothing can be worse than this current oblivion we're mired in. Even a GM throwing darts against the wall with a blindfold on has to get something useful back for Floyd, Crain, Thornton, AJ, Alexei, Konerko, Dunn, Danks, etc. With the White Sox generating SO MUCH MORE MONEY than any of those other 6 teams from media rights, with their valuation at #10 in all of baseball, with a pretty inelastic market in terms of season ticket/suite buyers (corporate side) who will be supporting the team indefinitely into the future, they're financially in a much better position to weather the coming storm. Arguably, the Dodgers' sale price (over 20 interested groups in on the sale at one point or another) and upcoming national baseball renegotiated contract dollars/revenue sharing puts the real value of the team in the $900 million to $1 billion range. But seriously. what's the difference between 72-90 with John Danks on the roster and 65-97 without Danks? Will there be ANY difference in attendance? I sincerely doubt it. Moving up 5 spots in the first round of the draft will be much more valuable than then negligible difference in ticket revenues lost from being a semi-horrible team compared to a REALLY horrific one. Its funny you're now crying about money when you jab me all the time for saying the Sox weren't being straight in April of 2009 saying they had nothing to spend. Seriously, change your name to Mitt. And if nothing can be worse than where they are at right now, there's nothing from stopping you from paying any attention. If the entire situation bothers you that much, you should spend your hours doing something you might enjoy. Its not like JR is going to read your posts and give you a call for more of your opinions. Getting really bad only makes sense if you know the process of getting better will be short. It was short last time because they acquired 4 studs in the draft, and all were contributing by the time the season ended when the 4th player was chosen. That doesn't happen often.Obviously WS or bust is KW's motto, but there is value in seasons when the Sox don't win the division. It keeps people interested in your product.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ May 8, 2012 -> 10:07 AM) I can say with the utmost confidence that's bulls***. Florida doesn't give a s*** about baseball. Never has, never will. I would say the market probably isn't the best. The ballpark is hard to get to, but not being able to draw 10k is a problem for a team with that roster. They don't have the fanbase a successful team should have, and he could be very right that's part of the reason. Look what happened in Cleveland. They sold out for years, got bad for a long time and now are lucky to get 15k a game even when their team is good. People found something else to do and may never be back. I truly believe if the Cubs ever get down to 15-20k a night regularly, they won't get to their pre Sox WS title levels until they win a WS, even if the team is good. Eventually the hot restaurant or hot nightclub isn't so hot anymore. I think the same thing might happen with baseball teams.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ May 8, 2012 -> 09:55 AM) Interestingly, the White Sox are the one team out of the bottom six who hasn't done the "full out" rebuilding with youth, at least not since the late 90's. And yet we're going to have our worst attendance since 2002 and threaten the USCF stadium low 1.3-1.4 milllion mark (1998-99) if this team is knocked out of it again completely in May. As Fathom and many others have been pointing out, there comes a moment when even holding on to a Paul Konerko or Alexei Ramirez makes little to no sense going forward, as there's not any more ground left to fall from an attendance and PR standpoint. It has been a blessing and a curse during the KW years that we never bottomed out completely so that rebuilding could have started in 2007 or 2009 or 2010 or 2011. You can make an argument that 06-07 knocked off 50-75% of the bandwagon fans after the World Series and the remainders were lost the last 3 years with all the internecine warfare and squabbling between KW and Ozzie Guillen. Fans are fed up, and they're not going to come out to pay top dollar for a clearly inferior product, or simply to support former Sox All-Star Robin Ventura. The fact that we hired a manager with ZERO previous experience also has caused skepticism in the fanbase. For all we know, Terry Francona could have managed the club to the same record, we'lll never be able to test what would or could have happened with a more experienced manager, but the seriousness of the organization about winning anytime soon is questionable, some would even say dubious. Now, with Danks' contract on the books going forward, along with Dunn and Rios, we're still hampered payroll-wise to the point where rebuilding is made more difficult. If there's anything that's going to be questioned in the next 2-3 years, it's the intelligence of investing so much money into a #3 starter when the only thing that will pull this team into contention are elite arms like Chris Sale (assuming they actually have the durability to start). But you don't build around John Danks as your franchise cornerstone. I remember when KW acquired an $11 million a year #5 starter, people were fine with that. So if Danks is a #3, his contract appears to be right in line. And if the Sox totally bottomed out and got rid of all their top players, you would still be complaining, and there is no guarantee the rebuild will work. The guy pointed out that long rebuilds tend to lose you fans forever. He said one reason TB can't draw 10k is because they were bad so long, people became disinterested forever. People have no patience with the current young guys on the Sox roster. They will have no patience if the entire line up was full of these types of players. They would stop caring all together.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 8, 2012 -> 09:45 AM) The organization knows who is "ready" and who is not. If those guys were ready, they would have been here ahead of Stults. Then again, this group is really good at spotting pitchers who have been missed, so if they like him, I am giving them the benefit of the doubt. They apparently selected properly yesterday yet some still complain. Stults and Quintana were both good. It really doesn't matter what choice the White Sox make, there are a few people that wait for that choice before deciding the other choice was the proper way to go and no result can show them to be wrong.

QUOTE (The Ginger Kid @ May 8, 2012 -> 09:05 AM) They've lost 4 of the last 5 and seriously could've just as easily won 4 of those 5. I'm just as pissed as anyone, but the reality is that they are competing. Even with Thornton's predictable mental-midget wetting of the bed moment, they still almost came back again. How close was that TFlow shot to being fair? I'm not saying their luck will change. Just wish the could make some sort of move to spark the lineup. They do have to start scoring some more runs. Hawk going on and on about Stults' 5th inning yesterday was ridiculous. There's a reason a 32 year old guy is pitching in AAA. You can't expect him to throw a shutout.

This article is interesting. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/mari...ding_how_t.html

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ May 8, 2012 -> 06:16 AM) But that's exactly what you say every time he falls apart in those situations. It's not just bad luck, it's about having a limited arsenal of pitches and not getting behind in counts. Chunk fastball after fastball over the plate against major league hitters, they'll make contact eventually. Blame the pitching coach.

QUOTE (bucket-of-suck @ May 8, 2012 -> 12:46 AM) It's an annual May tradition: Consecutive inter-divisional series give-away games that result in free fall into Division irrelevance? CHECK. Obvious qualified closer candidate that is more than capable but remains unused until later in the season when he proves to be the best choice all along? CHECK. Inability to execute basic fundamental baseball resulting in opponent momentum and shattered Sox player's confidence? CHECK. Late-inning pressure Matt Thornton choke-job? CHECK. 2 of the 3 hits off Thornton were of the very cheap variety. He was way closer to unlucky last night than bad.

QUOTE (Harry Chappas @ May 7, 2012 -> 03:07 PM) Bet the Sox score one run and get two guys on for Beckham to K or ground into a DP to end it. You have a shot at being pretty correct.

The kid did his job. I won't get too excited about his future yet, Stewart pitched a game or 2 like this last season, but now the Sox are fully loaded for game 2. Its an impressive debut.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ May 7, 2012 -> 02:54 PM) His problem was he didn't get enough AB's in the minors. Yeah, he's only had 2800 minor league plate appearances. 3200 and he's in the All Star game every year.

QUOTE (Jake @ May 7, 2012 -> 02:44 PM) Apparently KW's man-crush on Quintana may be warranted. I wouldn't go that far, but he did do his job today and saved the bullpen from disaster while keeping the Sox within striking distance. The line up is filled with too many out makers.

Meat.

The new and improved Alex Rios has his OPS down around Juan Pierre as a White Sox range.

QUOTE (The Ginger Kid @ May 7, 2012 -> 02:09 PM) Lillibridge should at least swing at strikes Against RHP, he will swing at sliders 2 or 3 feet off the plate.

Nice job that inning.

This game is not out of reach for as bad as its been.

QUOTE (TitoMB @ May 7, 2012 -> 01:50 PM) So what is Humber's ERA minus the perfect game? 10+? 10.31