iamshack

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 15, 2015 -> 06:14 PM) Yeah, I don't think that is it at all. Thinking big picture, they have called up Beck, Carroll, Junior Guerra, and now Montas... but not Johnson. Call me crazy, but that means something. I wouldn't be surprised to see Johnson involved in one of these deadline deals. Just a hunch. Well that would seem like a poor strategy to me. You're basically giving him away then. It seems they'd be better off just continuing to stash him in hopes that things click at some point.

You guys are getting all worked up over what is 99% sure to be absolutely nothing. I could almost actually argue that we need Sale to pitch the ASG so that when we win the Pennant we have home field advantage in the WS.

QUOTE (BigEdWalsh @ Jul 12, 2015 -> 03:40 PM) Sadly, LaRoche has been a major disappointment. Wouldn't be too surprised to see him be traded. I still have hope that LaDunn will get hot here any day now...isn't he traditionally a second half player? Hopefully he'll go on a tear right after the break.

Some of the poorer home plate umpiring in this series that we've seen this year.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Jul 9, 2015 -> 08:38 AM) Man, I've never owned a car that long, how do you guys do it? Doesnt the new models/redesigns just make you want to trade it in? I'm with you, Rock. I'm not a huge car guy from the engineering or mechanical standpoint, but I love and admire cars from the design standpoint. Love to look at and drive a beautiful machine. Currently, we have a Honda Pilot (my daily driver) and an Audi A6 (my wife's daily driver). I allow my wife to take the Audi during the week because the dogs have turned the Pilot into a bit of a, well, dog car, and so I feel bad asking her to drive it. But I drive the A6 whenever I can (nights, weekends) and I just am continually more and more impressed with that car. I don't think I have ever enjoyed driving as much as I do that vehicle. Now that the kid is here, eventually we'll probably get another SUV (I'll give that to her and take the A6 as my dd) and retire the Pilot strictly for the dogs, since I'm sure my wife won't allow me to drive the baby in it. I've been eyeing up the '16 Q7, but not sure I can convince the wife. She likes those damn Pilots.

QUOTE (Vance Law @ Jul 8, 2015 -> 04:43 PM) With the team angling for historically bad team WAR for position players is it not a minor miracle that the team is just 7 under .500? Is not the fact that Robin has the team outperforming it's pythagorean expected wins by 6 not circumstantial evidence of his excellent managing? Not if you blame the historically bad team WAR for position players on the manager. And let's be clear here, with this sample size, none of those metrics mean much of anything. With the way Chris/Q/Shark have been pitching recently, that is the reason we're only 7 under.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 8, 2015 -> 03:58 PM) That has been my point all along. if it is Robin's fault, no one should complain about the players. If you think KW put together a horrible team, you can't blame RV for the poor record. If you have to blame KW, RH, RV,JR, you can't blame them all. If it is Robin's managing that is keeping this team from contention, then the other guys have done their job. If KW has taken over and set the Sox back until the next decade, then you can't blame RV when the Sox lose. Good managers don't win with bad players. Bad GMs don't put together teams that should win but don't because of the manager. So you can't fire the manager unless you've got a playoff caliber team that is not making the playoffs because of the manager? I disagree wholeheartedly.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Jul 8, 2015 -> 02:17 PM) I'm not defending him, I'm just frustrated that everyone has concluded that he is the issue and that firing him will solve the team's problems. I'm not saying he's good, I'm just saying I don't think he matters. or at least there's no evidence to suggest he's causing this team to play poorly. So you're basically saying you cannot quantify the effect of the manager on the team, and so thus you don't care whether you have a manager you deem to be good or bad? You will ignore any circumstantial evidence solely because you cannot directly link it to manager. Therefore the correct conclusion is just to do nothing. If a manager does have an effect on the play of the ball club, is it safe to say that we cannot identify any good effects he has on the club, based on their play? Is that not enough?

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Jul 7, 2015 -> 03:41 PM) 1) Not possible. 2) Good tip 3) I've read a lot that Channel 1 is default, so if you think Channel 6 if default, then I'll go with 11. 4) Yeah, I've read that and that sucks, although I'm not sure I even own a single device that can connect on 5Ghz. My PS4 and LG G4 can not, and both my laptops are 6 years old. Why is relocating it not possible?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 7, 2015 -> 07:24 AM) I have said it all year. This team is trying too hard, versus not hard enough. They haven't played relaxed baseball most of this year. My concern is more on mental preparation than physical.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 5, 2015 -> 01:24 PM) My bad, I'm paying as much attention as the players. Well, to be fair, Steve made the same mistake.

QUOTE (BigHurt3515 @ Jul 5, 2015 -> 01:29 PM) And we weren't back there for the DP. Are these coaches stupid? It was a shift.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Jul 3, 2015 -> 12:23 PM) That's exactly my point, shack: we know that a manager affects these things, but we don't know how much and we don't know if a guy is helping or hurting. So, again, I'm not claiming anything about Robin, because I don't know. YOU (the collective you) are claiming that Robin is failing at making his veterans perform. How do you know? If you want to make the argument that the failure of a pinch-hitting veteran is RV's fault, you are then claiming that a different coach would make the difference. Demonstrate that. Research has not been able to find correlations between any specific manager and any specific ability or characteristic. The studies are hazy because not much is found. There appear to be some managers who consistently keep their players in position to perofrm at their best -- until all of a sudden they can't anymore. Ron Gardenhire was god until he wasn't god anymore. Joe Maddon was a miracle man until the miracles stopped. Joe Torre was a bum until he landed in the Evil Empire during it's period of being the Microsoft of baseball. Who is next? Clint Hurdle, maybe? I don't have any bookmarked articles like I often do, because manager stuff has always kind of put me off. It's so cloudy and frustrating that I haven't been drawn to it. But if you Google around or klook at some of the classic books, you'll see a lot of effort put into trying to isolate it to very little success. This is why, when posters start saying stuff like the team isn't prepared on a daily basis" and "RV has to make the batters move the runners over instead of striking out," I gotta call shenanigans. NONE of us know how prepared the team is. NONE of us know what they work on or what the coaches tell them to do in big situations. It's WAY more likely that they're being told to succeed in all of the glaringly obvious ways that we all know players can succeed, but they're simply failing. Alexei Ramirez does NOT need extra ground-ball practice. That's NOT the difference. A pep talk might help sometimes,l or it might not, but none of us know. Eminor, I smell what you are stepping in, and I know that our coaching staff understands enough about the game of baseball so as to recognize when guys aren't ready to play. We can't be so naive as to think we message board posters see things that people who have been in the game their entire life at this level don't see. In the meantime, as we often hear in professional sports, "this is a results business." This is not a court of law; we do not need to "prove" beyond a reasonable doubt that Robin is to blame. Unfortunately for Robin and his staff, all that needs to be demonstrated occurs on the field, and to even a very untrained eye, this ball club for the last several years has not played fundamentally sound baseball. At the very least, especially with a team that has a number of young and/or developing players, we need to see them play fundamentally sound baseball. If this doesn't start or end with the coaching staff of the big league club, where does it start or where does it end? And once that is identified, wholesale changes need to be made. I sure hope eventually they are. Because frankly, almost no amount of talent is going to overcome the lack of fundamental play this team has exhibited over the last 500 games.

See, this particular conversation about injuries today as opposed to in the last few generations is one where I appreciate Hawk being in the booth. I know its not the first time we have heard that conversation, but it is much more fascinating to me than most of the stuff broadcasters are talking about around the league.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jul 3, 2015 -> 10:02 AM) Every once in a while I get emails from people trying the African money transfer scam, and every once in a while I respond and f*** with them as much as possible. Today is that day You and Walter Football!

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Jul 3, 2015 -> 09:37 AM) To the bolded: absolutely. The FO is in the best position to evaluate him, so we have little choice but to trust them. We may not WANT to trust them, but we aren't privy to clubhouse dynamics like they are. To the second point: I agree, I have not seen anything to suggest RV is adding value to the organization. However, there has been a lot of work done to try to evaluate what a manager CAN contribute, and most of it points to the idea that the manager doesn't make much of a difference at the end of the day. That is NOT to say that the manager's job isn't important, but rather that the difference between the best manager in baseball and the worst is relatively small. So, you're right: I have no grounds and little interest in defending RV. I just think it's silly to spend so much time being so sure he needs to go because I don't think doing so fixes the team. Curious as to what the metrics are for measuring that. Are the measurements based on the impact on the actual 9-inning game that the manager has within his control (lineups, pitching decisions, strategical/tactical decisions, etc.)? How does one measure a manager's ability to have his team ready to perform on a daily basis? How does one measure a manager's ability to get a roster all pulling in the same direction? Say what you want about how big of an impact a decision to steal with 2-outs in the 7th has in a tight game. But what about the ability to have a veteran come in and hit to his potential as opposed to one or two standard deviations below his potential over the course of a year like we are seeing?

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Jul 3, 2015 -> 06:59 AM) Yes, it is possible. But what evidence suggests that's the case? RV was at the helm in 2012 when the team won 85 games and Adam Dunn was MLB's Comeback Player of the Year. What's different now? Something might have changed, but we can only speculate. The burden of proof lies on the one making the claim (in this case, the claim that "the White Sox failure is due to incompetent managing by RV"). For example, it's also possible that your brain is being controlled by a robot elephant that lives inside the moon. You'd have a hard time disproving that claim, since you can't see inside the moon, but that doesn't mean you should take it seriously, because there's no evidence to suggest that it IS the case. The crux of my argument/rage on this theme is this: everyone seems to be very passionately sure that RV is the problem, but I don't see anything to suggest that RV is actually the problem. Fair enough. I understand your desire to determine causation, and that's a reasonable desire. Unfortunately, I'm not sure many FOs have the patience to determine whether the manager is part of the problem...but they may be able to determine much more quickly that the manager is not part of the solution. Let's entertain the thought that Balta is correct - and I suspect that he is, at least partially - and that this is an organizational problem. Perhaps then Robin is sharing blame across a wider spectrum rather than carrying more of it himself. Either way, have we seen anything out of the guy which would suggest he is some tremendous leader? Has he done anything which would suggest that he is managing a team that would be winning if not otherwise handicapped by poor organizational philosophies/development? Is this guy a leader in an organization lacking them?

QUOTE (Jerksticks @ Jul 2, 2015 -> 08:30 PM) Fault is a weird word to use. I mean we are in the middle of a short retooling process. We had a shot on paper this year but it didn't work out. Clearly we aren't ready at 2b 3b or C yet. So what? Why does somebody have to PAY FOR THIS? Why does a career have to end because of this. Insanity. Stay the course boys, jerksticks loves ya! I would completely agree with you except for one thing, which is why I see no reason to "blow this up" like many are saying. What I want to see out of the roster on a day-in and day-out basis, namely, solid, fundamental defense and situational hitting, is just nowhere close to occurring. I really don't care one way or another whether we win 80 games or 70 games this season. All I am asking is that this roster start showing signs of playing the kind of ball moving forward where with some additional tweaks and some development by the younger players, one can see scenarios where they compete for the division in the next 2-3 years. Unfortunately, we're seeing a bunch of sloppy bulls*** which basically negates the talent on our roster because we are giving away runs and outs on a daily basis with no sign of any progress being made whatsoever. For me, it's not about wins and losses; it's about the way we are playing which leads me to the same consistent conclusion. The coaching staff simply has to go.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Jul 2, 2015 -> 05:47 PM) Two of my best friends are Cards fans that know a stupid amount of the general baseball world. Hell, the Cards might as well have gone from being a team that I hate to one that I can somewhat root for because of them. I ran this trade proposal by them, they both laughed because of how much of an underpay it is, The problem is, as others have identified, it's just not something that makes much sense for either the party trading for Sale or the party giving him up. It would take a Herschel Walker type scenario to get it done, and given the realities of how the league strives for parity, there just isn't a team that is so overwhelmingly wealthy so as to give up the bounty required to bring back such a valuable piece. From the White Sox perspective, it doesn't make much sense to trade in this type of currency until it's clear that Chris is going to leave, or someone offers them that bounty. The odds of either of those things happening anytime soon are remote.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Jul 2, 2015 -> 12:42 PM) 1. Alexei is not too old to lay off s***ty pitches. He's not too old to make routine 15 foot throws to second base. If Alexei's pile of stupid errors aren't his own fault, how are you going to blame the manager? Has he not had enough reps in his 8 year ML career as an above average and sometimes elite defender that he needs some coaching to prepare him to play defense during a baseball game? 2. I explicitly did NOT blame Flowers/Beckham/etc. for being bad baseball players. Do you blame Robin for them being bad baseball players? 3. Eaton put up a 3-win season last year with no unsustainable peripherals -- even if he's not a true-talent 3-win player, he is at least capable of being league-average. Regarding "the people who brought these players in (Hahn & Co., not Robin Ventura)": If these guys were putting up level of production that were even within an entire standard of deviation of what they were expected to do, and our team was STILL completely out of contention, I would grab a pitchfork and blame Hahn. But I do NOT blame Hahn for Melky Cabrera putting up numbers that are SUBSTANTIALLY worse than anything he's ever done at any level, including when he was playing with a tumor on his spine, ESPECIALLY coming off of his career year which just so happened to have occurred AFTER he served his PED suspension. Eaton's terrible performance is slightly less surprising only because he has much less of a track record, so anything would be less surprising. Going into the season, there were a ton of scenarios that could have unfolded where we would be totally justified in blaming Hahn for simply not putting enough on the field to justify his expenditures, but to blame him for what actually happened isn't reasonable because it isn't one of those scenarios. I mean if you truly believed that Melky/Eaton/Samardzija/whoever was going to perform THIS badly, then you can complain, but their performances are simply way worse than ANY professional expected as far as we can tell. The pieces on the field are capable of success, albeit without much margin for error. The pieces on the field, though, s*** the bed in the worst way, completely blowing that margin for error out of the water. They did not deliver what they were expected to deliver, even within reasonable margins of error, so I blame them instead of their employer. Let me ask you this: Is it possible that the current culture of our organization or our big league clubhouse could have this kind of affect on performance? Is this type of underperformance symptomatic of how our organization is being managed/coached/developed?

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 2, 2015 -> 12:15 PM) Let me ask this....how do you know they aren't as prepared as another human being can make them. Can't you prepare someone about as well as can be prepared, and they still screw up? I have used this before, but have you gone to a restaurant and ordered a sandwich or something using specific instructions (like for me, no mayo) and when you unwrap the sandwich, see it wasn't prepared using your instructions? If I said please no mayo, and it is loaded with mayo, is that because I didn't manage the situation correctly to begin with? Hawk actually went off a little on Alexei the other night with 0 out and a guy on second, making no attempt toward RF. He kept saying Steverson spends batting practice telling guys to get the runner over. At some point, you have to look at the professionals getting paid millions of dollars, many make more in 6 months than most people make in a lifetime, and determine they have to execute. I think it is pretty damning that it is even considered you have to actually teach players the most basic fundamentals after they reach the major leagues. Yes, I honestly don't know. All I know is this lack of preparation has been a relative hallmark for the previous 2.5 seasons, spanning several different players, both homegrown and acquired via trades or free agency. The common denominator seems to be either the coaching staff or the Front Office has an uncanny ability to bring in the same type of lacksidasical, unfocused or undisciplined player over and over again. I tend to think it's the former.

So let me ask this question then...is it not the manager's primary role to have his team prepared to play every night?

QUOTE (ptatc @ Jul 2, 2015 -> 09:47 AM) That's fine but it probably won't help. All types of managers win, calm, fiery, screamers, micromanagers. Just because it's different from the current one doesn't make it better. Just because it's what the fans want doesn't make it better. And one thing we know about fiery managers/coaches is that they have a strict shelf life. I don't care if the manager is deaf and blind. All I want is a team prepared to play on a daily basis. This team is not that.

I take it you only went to the first game of the series, Fath?

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jun 27, 2015 -> 10:45 PM) Well, there weren't exactly a plethora of Silver Sluggers at SS also in the top 33% of mlb defenders this past offseason and under affordable contract control for two seasons, which is a pretty ideal commitment for a lot of teams. But the fact is that year was a bit of an outlier for Alexei, and at a fairly advanced age nonetheless. I know for one I wasn't surprised by a fairly significant regression. It's doubtful there were many GMs who would have been.