iamshack

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Jul 30, 2014 -> 12:29 PM) Yes, we know you hate him. but it keeps you from posting during wins or victory threads. The manager is not the issue with this club, its talent. Why do you feel it is necessary to come at me personally for criticizing the manager?

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 30, 2014 -> 12:26 PM) And yours and the others are from hindsight. If his decisions work out, it is probably what you would have done. If they don't, he's an idiot, it was obvious what he should have done, and there is no way the alternative would have failed. Not true. You've always got to take it the other extreme. Look, I get it that being a manager in baseball is a fairly thankless job. When something goes wrong, the manager gets blamed, but when things go right, the player gets the credit. But these moves he makes and doesn't make, they go beyond that. This criticism isn't isolated either. I laugh hearing the handicappers here moaning about terrible he is.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jul 30, 2014 -> 12:23 PM) I won't disagree that he's made some moves that have been real head scratchers. He had Youkilis try and bunt against Detroit 2 years ago and I remember immediately hating every bit of it. Still, it's hard for me to look at some of these situations and criticize them too harshly. In the Nationals example, if Axelrod gets Zimmerman out and is pulled after that, nobody thinks anything of it. He got burned. But that is where the error lies...if you're going to pull him after that anyways, you make the change. And I understand if you did that you could argue that you'd be overmanaging; at some point you have to get outs without playing every matchup....and I'm not saying this particular example really even bothers me. But it's just another in a long line of headscratchers where eventually you reach the conclusion that this guy is not a good tactical decision-maker.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jul 30, 2014 -> 12:23 PM) I won't disagree that he's made some moves that have been real head scratchers. He had Youkilis try and bunt against Detroit 2 years ago and I remember immediately hating every bit of it. Still, it's hard for me to look at some of these situations and criticize them too harshly. I agree...but how else do you evaluate him then? By height?

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Jul 30, 2014 -> 12:17 PM) Sometimes you lose a battle to win a war. Perhaps they believed that burning the pen would result in more losses. Impossible to speculate, and once again, no one knows if the other options result in better results. Simply hindsight allows you to always argue another position with the possibility that position results in a better outcome. When in fact, there is also the possibility that the other position resulted in a worse outcome. Yeah, this is the argument one makes when his decisions turned out to be wrong.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Jul 30, 2014 -> 12:16 PM) Uh oh, Shack saw the Ventura signal go up Nah...I'm not going to go as far as some of these other folks...but I've been displeased with him since '12...(ask Fathom) I'm not going to sit here and try to determine how many games he has cost us, but for a guy that played the game for his entire life, he seems to have very poor instincts from a strategical or tactical viewpoint. He may be wonderful with managing the clubhouse, and that is the lion's share of the job, but I do believe he holds us back quite a bit.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 30, 2014 -> 12:09 PM) But you want him to go as long as possible. You are in an NL park and will probably be changing pitchers often. Not that it mattered, but burning out your bullpen in April isn't a recipe for success later on. You want him to do so effectively. If results don't matter because you just went through your entire pen the last few days, then fine. But when you're talking about a guy that doesn't have a body of work to fall back on, and your offense has just gotten you back in the game, and the guy is near 100 pitches already anyways, what is the point in trying to get one more batter out of him?

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jul 30, 2014 -> 12:03 PM) Axelrod was fantastic in the minors in '11 and '12, was great in a cup of coffee in the majors '11, and was bad but with positive signs in '12 in the majors. At that point, the Sox didn't know exactly what they had in Axelrod, and again, he was coming off a pretty good first start. The only way I'm pulling him there is if it was a high leverage game, and there is no such thing as a high leverage game 9 games into the season. Considering he was already at 100 pitches or so, at that point I think you're trying to bring in someone to stop the bleeding whether it is the 4th or the 6th inning.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jul 30, 2014 -> 11:52 AM) What's absurd is pulling a starting pitcher in the 4th inning when he's given up 3 runs in the 9th game of the season. When it's Dylan Axelrod? I don't find that absurd at all.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 30, 2014 -> 11:47 AM) That supports Ventura walking Harper to get to Zimmerman. Which is exactly what happened. Not to get to Dylan versus Zimmerman...

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 30, 2014 -> 11:14 AM) Not a bad return for the 2014 Masterson. I wonder if Cleveland is picking up mopst of the cash. I would imagine so. Yeah, I was surprised they got that much. Probably tells you more about what teams are asking for then anything.

QUOTE (Downtown518 @ Jul 30, 2014 -> 11:08 AM) Peter Gammons ‏@pgammo 59s The Indians are trading Justin Masterson to the Cardinals For James Ramsey, the Cards 1st round pick in 2012.

QUOTE (LDF @ Jul 30, 2014 -> 08:29 AM) I hope you have his email or know what site he writes for..... I would LOVE to read more of his stuff. Here is probably the most in-depth article, and it has a lot of links and info from other sources of information as well.

I think a lot depends on what happens tonight. If we win tonight, I think we might find ourselves thinking we have a chance to actually compete for this division all the sudden.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Jul 30, 2014 -> 08:08 AM) By most projections even with really horrible injury luck, this team is outperforming what it was expected to do. PECOTA had them projected to win 75 games. I think they finish quite a bit better than that, so either you think the players are really awesome or the manager is awesome or you finally realize that there is no way to attribute wins and losses to one person. It's pretty complex to try and take apart in any meaningful way, but I doubt PECOTA had Abreu where he is right now.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jul 30, 2014 -> 06:25 AM) Jesus. Maybe one. I honestly have no idea how Ruben Amaro Jr still has a job. This is Ned Coletti we're talking about...

QUOTE (SpringfieldFan @ Jul 30, 2014 -> 05:49 AM) I remember right after we signed him seeing (maybe on this forum?) reference to a quote from a scout or someone saying he was the best pure hitter on the planet right now. I was just excited to think he was good enough to warrant such over the top hype but am now second guessing just how over the top it was. There is a guy who extrapolates statistics from the Cuban League to the Major Leagues and his numbers were comparable to Miguel Cabrera's numbers. I think we all sort of held that out as a lofty best case scenario (probably even we expected that was going a bit overboard). As of today, he is outperforming Miguel Cabrera with about 40 less PAs. Unf***ingbelievable.

QUOTE (WhiteSoxLifer @ Jul 29, 2014 -> 11:57 AM) Jayson stark rumblings and grumblings from espn • More scouting sightings: As the White Sox listen to offers on John Danks, they've been eyeballing the farm systems of the Yankees, Blue Jays and Red Sox. http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/page/traded...nder-jon-lester Interesting comment about the Red Sox...

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jul 28, 2014 -> 01:27 PM) You guys have any other western suburbs courses to recommend? I was thinking about playing Ruffled Feathers or Waters Edge. There's too many private courses out where I live. Damn rich people. Orchard Valley? Ravisloe? Prairie Landing?

I think that course is where I tried out for my hs team...either that or it was where I played one of my first junior tournaments...

QUOTE (StRoostifer @ Jul 28, 2014 -> 10:51 AM) Kemp will be 30 in September with over 100M left on his contract. He is exactly the type of player the Sox DONT need. I doubt the dodgers would be willing to kick in enough money to get the Sox interested anyway. Boston trading for Kemp makes more sense. Why?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 27, 2014 -> 09:44 AM) I believe I heard stone talking about him yesterday late in the game. He was, fairly glowingly. I'd sit this one out though. I think there's going to be a bit of an overreaction to teams missing out on Abreu.

Nice to see us putting up some runs a little more consistently.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 21, 2014 -> 07:27 PM) But dungy didn't say he wouldn't draft him because he was going to do an I'll-advised reality show that is obvious personal distraction. It was more generally his being gay that was an unacceptable distraction for him. Plenty of players have all sorts of personal distractions, but only "being gay" is a bridge too far for some. So what are you and Balta out there doing to advance the LGBT movement, other than call everyone bigots on a message board? If you're not very serious activists, it certainly appears that you are bigoted cowards!

Took my first golf lesson this morning. Very pleased because some very minor fixes cleared up some very major ball flight issues. Still have a bit of work to do on the driver, but the irons were flying very nicely. After I feel comfortable with these drills and fixes, I'll go back for a general short game lesson, which is where some major improvement will occur.