Dick Allen

Terry Francona had Jason Kipnis and his over .800 OPS bunt last night. Had him bunt several times last season as well. Is he an idiot? Joe Girardi is known as a good manager. In a 5-4 game in the 9th with a runner on 3rd, he chose to pitch to Miguel Cabrera last night.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 3, 2016 -> 09:46 AM) Everyone talks about the rebuild, but this team has spent a ton of money too. That gets lost in the narrative. Yes. The tanking for draft picks is way overblown. They made some great trades and signings, and spend several hundred million. Their prizes for sucking were good in Bryant and Schwarber, but what if Houston did the right thing and drafted Bryant? A lot of that tanking would have been for nothing.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Jun 3, 2016 -> 01:38 AM) Warriors bench has been severely underrated all year. Shaun Livingston was the 4th pick in his draft class for a reason (legit Penny comp) and, of course, was derailed by one of the more horrific, and I MEAN f***ING HORRIFIC, knee injuries you'll ever see in life. Barbosa is a former 6th man of the year. Iguodala is ELITE defensively and above average offensively, especially his passing. Ezeli is one of the better backup C's in the game. They're just loaded. Not overreacting here. Cavs MUST win game 2. No way they're beating GS 4 of 5. As long as GS stays healthy, this season was over before it began. OKC's chance was GS wasn't healthy.

QUOTE (Tex @ Jun 2, 2016 -> 02:33 PM) I have no sympathy for these guys and the supplements. When it is your job to know what you eat and drink contains and that you could lose your career for eating or drinking the wrong stuff you just make damn certain the ingredients are not banned. But at his age, he's just trying to hang on and not have to work a "real job". Especially a guy like Byrd who has already been suspended. He knew what he was taking. I think the innocent mistake does happen once in a great while, but it would surprise me if most of the busted don't have other things the tests haven't caught up with in their systems as well.

I understand how people would think Coats is a better fit than Sands, and he may be. But it isn't obvious. .366/.411/.522, Avi Garcia's splits in AAA. It hasn't translated to a lot of success. And he did this as a 22-23 year old.

QUOTE (oldsox @ Jun 2, 2016 -> 02:30 PM) If Coats' name were Courtney Hawkins, he would have been called up. Maybe, but I don't think there is some sort of conspiracy. If Sands head was totally in it, if he played at Charlotte, chances are he would put up huge numbers. The question with Coats is can he do damage against major league pitching, and can he do damage playing part time against major league pitching. If the Sox had the Twins record, we would probably have started to find out. A lot of players have lit it up for the Knights and fizzled if called up. IMO, there is nothing more the Sox would like than to call up one of their own and have them be successful with the bat. It's been far too long. I don't think the round when they were picked really matters, at least consciously.

So he won't appeal and claims he used a tainted supplement. Total accident. Alrighty then. When the Tribe were in town, Byrd hit a homer the first game of the DH. My buddy was yelling "Balco" at him. He's a genius.

Isn't Shields Aaron Rowand's cousin?

Bruce Bochy, who most consider a pretty good manager, had Melky sacrifice when he was roided up .346 hitting Melky.

QUOTE (shipps @ Jun 2, 2016 -> 11:57 AM) I actually make this mistake ALL the time and have no idea why. Is it a mixture of Carlos Santana and Jose Quintana? I really have no idea why I keep doing it. The Red Sox used to have a Carlos Quintana, and the above with players starting with Q. I've caught myself a few times, but have straightened it out the last year or so.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jun 2, 2016 -> 10:30 AM) Except playing for a tie game (the likeliest occurrence in that situation) instead of a big inning on the road is pretty questionable, especially with the shape psychologically that the White Sox bullpen was in. Now you can argue we won road/away games at Texas (Monday) and last night in completely improbable fashion when we were able to tie them up (3-1 now in extras) and had the BABIP "luck" of some quite fortunate DP plays, but you're not going to continue to beat those odds of more frequently losing a tie game on the road on a consistent basis unless you have the Yankees' or Royals' pens...and even those pens only go 3-4 deep in terms of really dependable guys, not 6-8. Let's not forget that key number, the BAA for Harvey his third time through the batting order was .509. 509! It's the reason the NY Post thanked Ventura for "doing his former team a solid" the next day. The score was 0-0, and if .509 applies to everyone, not just Melky who was 0-2 and not looking too good.

If Frazier hits a groundball or SF, and the Sox win 1-0, I doubt this thread exists.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Jun 2, 2016 -> 10:16 AM) No. You are adding that after the fact, in other words youre assuming a 100% succesful bunt in which both guys get over. If he hits a hr, our odds of winning go to 98%. That would be quite the statistically sound move. This thread was created and all of the arguing against it, was done after the fact. Once the bunt was successful, the White Sox odds of scoring increased. Since Melky has hit 3 HRs, the chances of him hitting one there were pretty slim. The graphic I saw was the chances of scoring a run do increase with a successful bunt. Your chances of scoring multiple runs goes down. All in all, considering the bunt was successful, the argument against was weak. At least Robin did the right thing and started Saladino vs. the LHP on Tuesday. The managers of Soxtalk might have been hung with an L.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jun 2, 2016 -> 09:30 AM) I just would prefer Robin field a less aggressive team in terms of stolen bases and bunts. If it's an extra inning game and we get a single, sure, bunt him over. But in the 1st-7th innings, let it play. And unless you are rollins or saladino, stop trying to steal. Running to stay out of the DP often results in a DP, but as far as bunts, I think Robin calls for less bunts than most manager.

Shuck did have one of the two White Sox hits and did hit the ball pretty hard right at the SS. Don't let facts get in the way. Bunting Melky was questionable, but not the fireable stupid offense many want to make it out to be. As soon as it was successful, the strategy was a non issue. Frazier screwed up. They were conceding the run. He couldn't even get a ground ball.

Teams, according to a graph I saw, score 1 run more often with 2nd and 3rd with 1 out than with 1st and 2nd with no out. They do score more than 1 run less. Bunting is not my thing, but the criticism of the bunt should have ended after it was successful. It was pointed out that Frazier was 1 for 22 at the time. What was missed was Melky was 2 for 22. I don't see how you should have expected Frazier not to do the job, but Melky would have been fine. The Sox were in a position to score a run without getting a hit.

QUOTE (shipps @ Jun 2, 2016 -> 08:17 AM) I am with you on this logic but I think the Sox are in a position to only get guys like Shields. We dont have the talent to trade for anything better and the couple guys we do have that may be able to get something bigger done would leave the farm empty. Now I am not sure that is something the Sox are afraid to do either actually. I think they realize what they are in evaluating talent through the draft and they are overall better at what they believe in selling high on their minor league guys for major league talent then they are at drafting and developing guys that help them down the road. They don't have the talent, at least should be unwilling to surrender the talent, but they do have LaRoche's cash. When half the season's paychecks are cashed, his $13 million becomes an ability to stay at projected opening day payroll and acquire $26 million in salary. Plus, the longer you wait, the availability should increase as well. The other thing is, you can wait on Shields. If Latos and/or Gonzalez fail, and he's the only option, fine. But they shouldn't be in a rush to acquire him.

No to Jay. Sheilds, they would have to eat a bunch of cash. Latos has looked decent his last couple of starts. Velocity picking up a tick and he is striking out more guys, but the long ball is a problem. That is a problem with Shields as well. Bartolo took him deep. Gonzalez has been decent as well. Lucky in some cases, but decent. As long as they show some life, I see no reason to pick up Shields. If Latos hadn't been better his last 2 outings, I could see it, but not now. Keep waiting for something better to open up. If either of these guys goes back to gas can, Shields should still be available for next to nothing.

QUOTE (SCCWS @ Jun 1, 2016 -> 05:39 PM) Robin did a great job w the bullpen today. 8 scoreless innings. Also great call letting Albers hit rather than pinch hit or even pinch run for him . All the Robin talk and the franchise being in trouble was laughable. If the bullpen was just bad in KC instead of horrible, the Sox sweep and are 10 over right now in first place. 2 huge wins. They are just as close to being 6-0 on this trip as 0-6. The dreaded lead off walk wasn't so dreaded today. Hopefully they can get on a roll for a bit here. Need to have Abreu start hitting. He needs to try something different, maybe back off the plate a bit.

QUOTE (shysocks @ May 19, 2016 -> 10:01 AM) Peavy was 4-4 against the Tigers as a White Sox. I apologize to Caulfield. He was correct. He didn't beat the Tigers once as a White Sox. He beat them 4 times.

He isn't exactly setting himself up for future employment.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ May 19, 2016 -> 09:34 AM) Peavy didn't beat the Tigers once in his entire White Sox career. Another lie.

It's all about money and success. If Penn State was Illinois on the football field back then, all of it would have been exposed.

QUOTE (Lillian @ May 18, 2016 -> 05:01 PM) I hope that you guys are right, regarding his ability to become a good defensive SS. It's not an easy position to learn, and too important to accept less than solid defense. For me, SS is a position that requires defense first, and offense secondarily. Then why was your first comment about him about his walk total?

Sox still at .600 which is a 97 win pace. It was obviously going to slow down and there are always bumps in the road. It's a 6 month season playing almost every day. Do that at your job, and notice the ups and downs. The 2005 World Champions once lost 7 consecutive games. The gamethreads really are ridiculous. All the problems with the team. No talent, the manager is horrible.... If the Sox have these problems and are playing .600, what exactly does that say about the other teams and the other managers?