caulfield12

That wouldn't be a homer in a phone booth. Oh, well.

That was a strange swing from Engel...too far inside to keep fair. Yet somehow, we still have the best batting average in the AL, averaging 2 runs per game, .248 in this recent offensive slide.

2013-2019 CORPSBALL Actually, I'm assuming we got "good" Fulmer tonight. That, or we're just completely out of synch offensively, and a little bit down as a team after the weekend. Plus, who enjoys going to DET and being stuck in a hotel?

But, they do target teams with the potential to be good/great...all other things being equal.

Does he still do a call-in show from Crate & Barrel?

Stroman is just signaling his intention to sign with the White Sox while still healthy...but wait, is he no longer a FA or he’s just forgoing all his salary/benefits this year?

But more like a Cliff Floyd big back then...

Yeah, remember that...I’m with Big Game James? Fernando Tatis Jr. through 100 career games (444 PA): .320/.385/.625, 30 HR, 20 SB. Tatis is the first MLB shortstop to hit 30 or more home runs in his first 100 big-league games. Also the first Padre to hit 7 homers in the first 15 games of a season, now 8 for his first 16.

When Marco Paddy, the international scouting director for the Chicago White Sox, watched Tatis work out in 2013 and asked him, "What do you want to be?" he offered a top-of-the-class response: "The Dominican Derek Jeter." "I saw all the respect that people have for him, and my dad always preached that to me: respect," Tatis says. "When I see Derek Jeter, I see respect, and that's what I want to be. Just a guy who plays for his team. A guy that embrace what he have. A guy that is going to carry the team, is going to help others and is going to establish himself and be a franchise player." Twenty-three years later (after his father signed for $8,000), on July 2, 2015, Fernando Tatis Jr. received $825,000 to sign with the White Sox -- to be their Dominican Derek Jeter. Back then, nobody could've projected that he would grow into a physical specimen. Tatis Jr. was 6 feet. His father was only 5-11. His aunt Rosie, Maria's sister, still calls him mi flaco -- my skinny boy. He was, in many ways, a classic Dominican prospect, more projection than present skills. In no way did that lessen the family's signing-day celebration. There was a two-layer cake -- one with black pinstripes, the other with red piping to resemble a baseball -- topped by a White Sox hat. Tatis traded his white sport coat for a White Sox jersey and posed for pictures, including one with his father and his grandfather, who had reconciled when Tatis Sr. broke through in the major leagues. Tatis Sr. wore a T-shirt that day with two words in all capital letters: TATIS DYNASTY. Their name is their legacy, and Tatis Sr. wanted his children to recognize that. "In the old times, when they still have castles and stuff like that," Tatis Jr. says, "they used to have a big shield in front of the castle with the king or the family name. That's how I see my family. From that old time. All the power that they have." The Tatis dynasty's sigil, he says, would be a bat, a ball and a Bible. Or maybe four balls: one for his grandfather, one for his father, one for him and one for Elijah, Fernando's brother and an 18-year-old shortstop who signed last year for $500,000 with the White Sox. Before Tatis went stateside for his first season, his father sat him down. They talked about what it means to be a Tatis, about the fragility of the game, about what being Dominican in MLB entails. "Only God can stop him," Tatis Sr. says. "Yes. He can be whatever kind of player he wants to be right now. He got all the skill. He got the determination in the game. Every time he's hitting the field, he only have one [thought] in his mind: winning the game. And he's going to win the game at every level. You cannot blink your eye on him, because he's going to challenge you. He's going to get you." The White Sox traded Tatis to the Padres in 2016 in an effort to bolster their playoff hopes with aging starter James Shields. Today it's easy to call the deal this generation's Brock for Broglio, a trade so lopsided history excised its principals' first names. Just because Tatis said he wanted to be the Dominican Derek Jeter doesn't mean that anybody, even the greatest soothsayers in the player-development community, would have conceived he actually could be. Tatis had grown to 6-2 by the time he left Juan Dolio for the White Sox's complex in Arizona. He was still flaco, but scouts trawling the back fields during extended spring training noticed the development. All of the instincts and actions on which his backers dreamed were turning tangible. Padres pro scouts swinging through the White Sox's complex in Glendale were asked to give Tatis a look. The reports agreed: If a trade scenario with Chicago ever materialized, he was the perfect target. "We didn't make the trade for Fernando saying [we're] ultimately gonna guarantee that he's gonna be this level of player at the major league level," Preller says. "But our scouts did a good job, led by [pro scouting director] Pete DeYoung, telling me that, Hey, we think we have a guy that could be a very important player for our franchise." On June 22, 2016, just 18 days after the trade, Tatis debuted for the Arizona League Padres and went 0-for-5 with two strikeouts. The next day, he got his first hit and drove in two runs. Five days after his debut, he hammered his first professional home run -- against the White Sox's Arizona League team. So began Tatis' rapid ascent to the major leagues. At 18, he grew another inch and flayed the full-season Midwest League, where the average age was over 21. In Double-A the next season, he sprouted another inch and cemented his full-blown phenom status. Tatis ended 2018 hoping to debut in the major leagues at some point in 2019. Before that, he returned home with an even deeper purpose. His father had been named manager of Estrellas Orientales, the Dominican Republic Professional Baseball League team in San Pedro. For a city as rich in baseball history as San Pedro, Estrellas were historically bad. They'd last won a championship in 1968... https://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/29510713/fernando-tatis-jr-bringing-joy-back-baseball

Well, that's definitely another reason NOT to be discouraged. That we very easily could have beaten Bieber and been at least 9-7 despite hitting 2-3 standard deviations worse than the average MLB team with RISP. Has to correct itself eventually. More than 1/9th of the season encapsulated in those horrific numbers.

https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2020/08/10/israel-coronavirus-covid-19-pandemic-schools-outbreaks-gotkine-pkg-intl-ldn-vpx.cnn Speaking of inside, an Israeli school re-opened for fall semester and one child infected 25+ teachers. Uh-oh.

But he does (or doesn't) have Jenny from the block, and he's not fooled by the rocks that she's got. Used to have a little, now she has a lot.

With Anderson, Madrigal, Mendick and Leury all healthy, he has zero role. (Obviously not the case at the moment, although closer with TA back.) He's a "plus" or at least average defender at this point in his career and a MEH pinch runner. He's certainly not going to come in like a Dyson or Gore and almost automatically swipe 2nd and maybe even 3rd.

He once stayed at a Holiday Inn Express ?

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/coronavirus-eat-out-to-help-out-scheme-restaurants-increase-111844379.html Or you have this "EAT OUT TO HELP OUT" scheme in the UK, which clearly has noble goals, we can probably all (or mostly) agree it's certainly a worthy goal to keep restaurants and small business owners from going bankrupt....BUT it's leading to a 14% in people eating out. End result, they probably go right back in the direction of the US in September/Oct/November.

Gates, here, is SPOT ON Not sure how ANYONE could argue with the cogency of the points that he's made...but I'm sure some will try Bill Gates continued his unbridled criticism of the United States’ response to the coronavirus pandemic on Sunday, calling America’s testing system “insanity” and stressing that the country was now facing “a pretty dramatic price” both in human death and wasted money. Speaking with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, Gates said it takes far too long to receive coronavirus test results in the U.S. “You can’t get the federal government to improve the testing because they just want to say how great it is,” the Microsoft co-founder-turned-philanthropist said. “I’ve said to them, look, have a CDC website that prioritizes who gets tested. That’s trivial to do. They won’t pay attention to that. I’ve said don’t reimburse any tests where the result goes back after three days. You’re paying billions of dollars in this very inequitable way to get the most worthless test results of any country in the world.” On the topic of America’s lockdowns, Gates pointed to countries in the European Union that faced the coronavirus outbreak earlier than the U.S. and instituted more coordinated lockdowns. “What’s impressive is that Italy, France, Spain ― who had a wave before us ― managed as they fell off to keep even the parts of the country that hadn’t had the intense epidemic from creating a second wave,” Gates said. ”In the case of the United States, they opened up their bars. They didn’t do much in the way of wearing masks. And so those areas became this second wave,” he added. https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/bill-gates-coronavirus-tests-060944939.html

Right, and it's been perfectly justified with Giolito. Who deserves credit, that's an argument for another day. Not only does he hide the ball better with the short arm action, it's safer mechnically and also causing the optical illusion of the ball jumping up on the batter a tick or so faster. Take Greg775's favorite motion, Nate Jones. It doesn't help if you throw 95-100 if you can't stay healthy and on the field more often than not. Rodon, as PTAC has noted since the day he was drafted, had delivery flaws that would lead to health problems as well as inconsistent ability to throw strikes. He was right on in that assessment. He also strikes me as one of those pitchers who "goes his own way" and hasn't listened as well to the coaching staff with Boras Corp and his wife/family seemingly steering his career more than the White Sox.

Both, SUPPOSEDLY, due to differences of opinion or rifts with the Don Cooper School of Thought. That said, you need to strike gold with at least one or two FA's (see Rangers last year with Lynn/Minor.) And who would have thought that Montas and Bassitt would still be contributing major leaguers at this point in their careers? Not many...

Here's another way to think of it. We have 1/2 of the Cuban National Team, if they were to be reassembled and put back together for an Olympic or WBC run. Robert, Moncada, Abreu and Grandal would be starters. Jimenez, probably for the DR, along with EE as the DH. Mazara would likely be an outfield starter for Puerto Rico. Madrigal for Team USA if they went with under 25 players. Anderson, at least on Team USA at SS (would probably go with Corey Seager or Story.) You can even argue James McCann as starting or at least back-up catcher for Team USA. Leury would likely grab a utility role, as well. That's just too much talent NOT to make the playoffs, as long as they have a decent bullpen, defense and enough starting pitching from spots 3-5. What other team could you make that same argument for, at least in terms of spots 1-9 + DH.

I mean in terms of the trustworthiness of starting pitching prospects over the long term. The previous generation or two of Sox prospects, look what happened to Brandon McCarthy and then Daniel Hudson, for example. Not the greatest track record for investing unless you're a licensed riverboat gambler.

WHO OFFICIAL: "We can outsmart the virus" Or not...? Covid-19 is brutal in its simplicity and its cruelty, but there are things that can be done to outsmart it, according to World Health Organization officials. “When we talk about what is the virus trying to do and the virus being an enemy, the virus doesn’t have a brain. We’re the ones with the brains,” said Dr. Mike Ryan, director of WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme, during a news conference in Geneva on Monday. Ryan described the virus as a simple biologic entity that can enter a human cell and instruct that cell to make more viruses, which can at minimum infect someone else; or in the worst case, kill the person. “It’s brutal in its simplicity. It’s brutal in its cruelty,” Ryan said. “But it doesn’t have a brain. We have the brains. And I think Maria may outline how we can outsmart something that doesn’t have a brain, but we’re not doing such a great job right now.” Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead for coronavirus, elaborated on how this can be done, saying that the goal of the virus is to reproduce, find individuals to pass between but not kill too many, as it Is unable to pass to another person if it kills its host. “There’s many, many things that we can do right now with the tools that we have right now, to outsmart this virus,” she said. While work on therapeutics and vaccines will continue, at this point chains of transmission can be broken, she said. These include social distancing, contact tracing, quarantining infected individuals, the use of masks when physical distancing isn’t possible, and hand washing. “If we do all of these things, we can outsmart the virus, and we can prevent this virus from passing from one individual to another,” she said, adding that everyone on the planet needs to understand that they have a role to play in breaking chain of transmission. www.cnn.com

Robert looking like he belonged among the Top 10 players in baseball, at least on potential impact as a rookie, really amped up the expectations, perhaps unrealistically. Jimenez, Moncada, Anderson, Vaughn and Robert comprise perhaps the best young group of position players of any team in baseball.

Already broadcasting games with the Twins this year...

Why did they need a CFer with Robert there? Clearly, they still needed a RFer or even LFer due to Jimenez’s defensive adventures.

https://www.espn.com/video/clip/_/id/29630642 6 minute video, watch at your own peril Tatis Jr. is bringing the joy back to baseball Jeff Passan traveled to Fernando Tatis Jr.'s hometown in the Dominican Republic in December to find out what he thinks about the pressure of family legacy, and again via Zoom in July, to ask him about the pressure of representing "the future of the game."