caulfield12

Game On. Braves' fans used to so much heartbreak over the years. Will 2021, without two major offensive contributors, turn out any differently? Wonder what the Vegas odds went down to after the Acuna injury?

If you go into the season counting on Romy Gonzalez to start, you’re going to be fortunate just to win the division…

Maybe they can get Rattler, but he’s on the bench for the same reason… In the end, Iowa hasn’t been able to get multi-dimensional QB’s for the same reason they are successful at TE, special teams or line play or sending more than their fair share to the NFL based on recruiting ratings. They were the beneficiary of a boatload of turnovers, and that wasn’t going to stand up, but they did win 12 or 13 in a row after starting out poorly last year in the shortened season. As long as the Ferentzes are in charge, they will always run boring, run oriented offenses with jailbreak screens that define risk mitigating with limited explosiveness on the outside…they are the exact opposite of the wide open style of the BB team. Look at OU, Mayfield to Murray to Hurts to Williams now. That’s four starting-caliber NFL QB’s in less than a decade. And they get all the receivers they want because big-time skill players want to play in huge national t.v. games and get noticed by scouts. It’s really quite simple. Iowa maximizes their results based on their recruiting limitations, but a national title contender without a great QB and a couple of Reggie Bushes they can never be.

At best, you get a reliever for him. He has more value to the White Sox…

I'm assuming you mean Narron, McEwing or Boston then...?

Like Palka and like Vaughn, he just doesn't have the foot speed out there. He's a lot like his father. He belongs at 1B/DH. Rusty Kuntz turned Alex Gordon into a Gold Glove LF, but Gordon has 3X the athletic ability and arm of Sheets. If they choose to go that path with Sheets/Engel, then they're just saying they're happy to be in the post-season every year but not seriously interested in contending for another World Series title. For no other reason than because our starting pitching isn't going to be able to replicate what it did in 2021 without divine intervention. And it's unlikely to be as healthy...despite Lynn and Rodon fading down the stretch, they were both available for the majority of the season.

Welcome to being an Iowa fan. You know every season going in that you have at least a 75% chance of losing 2/3 to Purdue, Northwestern and Wisconsin. Well, it was nice while it lasted...but they just never had the offensive playmakers or play action QB (you have to go all the way back to Brad Banks/2002) to pull this off. Iowa State and Indiana were both highly overrated, and Penn State probably would have won the game last week were it not for the Clifford injury. They're just getting their butts whipped, at Kinnick, in the ABC 2:30 regional game against an unranked team. It should be 24-7 if not for that fumble in the end zone. Well, at least there's always Oklahoma (my dad's univ and adopted #2 team), with Caleb Williams. They might be in for a letdown against TCU after the huge Texas comeback last week. MIGHT.

If the Red Sox do win this series, we're probably sitting at 5th/6th in the American League as the team is currently constituted...assuming Rodon is gone. 1) Red Sox 2) Astros (lose Correa but get back Verlander, who knows what he'll have left in the tank, but never to be underestimated) 3) Rays 4) Yankees 5) Blue Jays/White Sox 7) Mariners/Angels 9) Tigers Guess it remains to be seen what happens with both Ray and Semien, Toronto's looking at a step back and obviously the margin of error in that AL East is so so thin with four really strong teams bunched together.

There's zero point in playing around with fire on a Kimbrel trade when that $16 million would be so much more efficiently allocated (earlier in the free agency process) to rolling the dice on Conforto. (Even Rodon accepting the QO is a bit scary at this point...hopefully that's kind of a wink-wink move and Carlos is determined to go out and get a 3 year deal from Boras, somehow.) And it's not like a 3-4 year Conforto deal doesn't come with significant risk for a mid-market team like the White Sox...on top of the existing ones for Lynn, Grandal, Keuchel, Hendriks, etc. But they simply can't afford to bring Kimbrel back and Hernandez just didn't provide anything remotely similar to the player he was for the Indians, for whatever reason.

Yes, I know that, the way it was phrased, as if Sheets doesn't have anything in common with those other corner guys' profiles... Let's just put it in these terms. Sheets had a nice little run, and they probably don't trade him (because he's still not a guy with MUCH trade value) because they can't be so right-handed. But they also can't run out two players in the bottom 15-20% of MLB on the corners, either. Something does have to give. Put trading Eloy or playing Vaughn only 30-35% of the time doesn't maximize the value of either one of those guys. It's likely that Burger is the one who goes, but that still doesn't "fix" the aforementioned in thread after thread logjams in LF/RF/1B/DH. You also shouldn't count on Engel/Sheets in RF, but somehow I have a feeling we see that...and one of Vaughn/Jimenez traded. Vaughn/Sheets platoon just seems like it puts way too much pressure on the pitching staff, to go along with Jimenez on the other side...not to mention stress on Robert as well. Finally, locking in either Jimenez or Vaughn at DH, you keep Grandal and/or Abreu on the field way too much for players approaching their mid 30's. Grandal should be DHing quite a bit more with a solid back-up instead of Zavala/Collins types.

Down McCullers and Garcia now, and likely tied 1-1 (obviously VERY early still) going back to BOS, I would call this series dead even in terms of who has an advantage... If Houston is able to rally, I think they still take the series, but we shall see.

Burger is LH now...? Or you mean Sheets isn't the same swing and miss, deficiently deficient issue...ala Palka?

That does it...Ron should be permanently ensconced on the Sox Talk banner until we 1) win another WS or 2) he deserts us for the Scrubs. And so much for the Ricketts being willing to spend part...he just might have reverse-jinxed them, just like he invariably does with the monthly anti-Abreu posts. At any rate, if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it…did it really fall?

Abreu is not what's holding this team back...without him, no Robert, and with no Robert, no so-called championship window to speak of.

We have a bunch of players who at best can play one position. Dodgers have Taylor, Muncy, Bellinger, Seager, Turner...had Kike as well. https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/32409208/2021-mlb-playoffs-enrique-hernandez-impressive-performance-drew-praise-houston-astros-manager-dusty-baker

From the Winter Meetings onward….usually beginning of December.

Anything to prevent Ron from that world-renowned “winning the day” championship trophy…it worked? Plus, you’re likable enough.

You need to change your First Base Coach label to “Doin’ stuff” or “Gettin’ Stuff Done”…

Sure, then we have to go back and take away the Red Sox titles with Ortiz and Manny? Seems like the Giants from 2010-14 were the only untarnished mini-dynasty.

Hibbard is one of the more rational, level-headed posters here, and trends towards optimism generally. I do think it's interesting how everyone seems to get triggered by being called out as "soft," it's like it automatically puts people on the defensive. And yet we don't want anything to do with a "hard ass" manager in terms of the preference of most modern baseball fans. Quite a contradiction.

Sure, by extension...because the lack of payroll flexibility that's on the horizon will be directly correlated to our diminishing numbers of cost controlled Year 1-3 players, and the exploding option year numbers in most extensions. We essentially have two more years (with four pending FAs), then a really really tough decision on Tim Anderson in 2024. That's why the Astros losing Springer, Correa and Verlander as well...but going on Year 6 in 2022 is pretty astounding. Little reason to think anyone but the M's can start to threaten them. The Royals and Cubs didn't come close to threading that same needle, with their runs primarily front-loaded.

Correa and Seager are going to get paid...

Why do the Sox good or great teams always stumble right into labor issues periods....?

He was good enough to hold the lead...have a feeling TLR would have left him in against Gurriel and suffered the consequences.

The proper word is eccentric. Well, I guess if you're relatively well off financially.