caulfield12

Probably with 10-15 pitchers over 89 mph...the curse of the junkball throwing lefty strikes again, although CC will eventually go into the HoF, in all likelihood.

Not to mention Yolmer and Davidson. The only cheers are for some of our pitchers, Abreu/Avi/Palka/Narvaez (not defensively) and Engel's getting some short-lived career highlights before he ends up in the minors again, someday.

This is getting to be pretty embarrassing...they definitely need to sit him for a game? Who's pitching tomorrow? Severino? That could be a disaster or get him started, who knows...?

Nailbiter in Ohio...about 200 votes separating O'Connor and Balderson with 91% of the vote in. Just like the Lamb and Jones elections, going down to the wire. Trump won that district by 10-11% I think. Ooops, now trailing by 700 with only 5% of the precincts left to report.

Hitting 99 late in a game is Verlander or peak-Colon like.

99 and then the 83-84 mph slider....great job recovering from that situation, very impressive! Would have gone offspeed after 3 FB's, but maybe that was too obvious.

So much for Sanchez's elite defense this season...maybe he's just not meant to be an everyday player, really seems to be wearing down. Might as well just give Davidson the last 7 weeks and see if he can turn things around offensively.

Well, you pretty much know something bad will happen when you have an offensive inning like that....

Did Garcia have a really bad call on the outside that should have been a walk? Or marginal? And can someone teach Tim how to think situationally, please...?

What about Razz Ma Tazz? Anyone have that in their hometown? Maybe it’s only a Quad Cities deal.

Republicans become deeply offended when you suggest that their party is in the process of adopting a white nationalist agenda, and that many of their voters are motivated by xenophobia. No no, they say, we acknowledge that America is a nation of immigrants; we just want a secure border and all the laws to be enforced. We welcome legal immigrants; it’s illegal immigration we have a problem with. But then you get something like this, as reported by NBC’s Julia Ainsley: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/08/07/trump-and-stephen-miller-are-now-targeting-legal-immigrants-and-it-will-get-uglier/?utm_term=.912639252b0c Can we do the same thing with Trump’s staff?

That’s not quite what happened. Ventura died in a car crash. Moustakas missed a full season due to injury. Alex Gordon completely fell apart, Cain and Perez were injured, too. But they had a similar core for 2016 and most of 2017. A lot of it was bad luck, similar to the 2006 White Sox, although that team had a better record than KC by far. The biggest point was losing rentals like Zobrist and Cueto to FA...along with the position player injuries, and loss of bullpen depth due attrition and just getting too expensive (Davis and Holland over two consecutive years...but also Madson and Blanton.) This offseason, when they Hosmer and Cain, they were already dead men walking.

Madrigal is the perfect #2 hitter. He can leadoff, as well, but his best profile is second (due to always making contact and situational hitting skills we’re typically lacking)...behind a prolific base stealer like Pods, first half 2005 version.

Can we ask the Dash to put that lineup card up for online auction?

Yep, forgot about that one...was listening on the At-Bat app, so it didn’t make the same impression as watching because half the time DJ and Farmer are talking nonsense.

If we went just by physical tools, Borchard, Anderson, Jared Mitchell and Hawkins would be in the HoF...well, at least three of those guys.

The players who hit that profile (not pure power guys who will get AT LEAST 25-35+ homers) that are OPSing above 840 are: Yelich, Benintendi, Markakis, Eduardo Escobar, Bogaerts, Zobrist, Dickerson (he's more of a doubles hitter this year) and Altuve. He definitely needs more doubles/triples and walks, those two elements of his game.

Are they more upset about Sano or Buxton? What do they do next...rebuild AGAIN? They're in a terrible position right now. Not worse than the Royals and Tigers, maybe, but not much better off. Rosario's had a really strong (break-through) year, but can he repeat it? Berrios has been pretty good, but NOT an ace, either.

And yet if you started out with this "spin" the day of the Sale trade...that he would be fighting just to be average, well...that wouldn't have been considered a win. But at least we have Kopech and Basabe, right? Or we can go with Javier Baez's 4.9 cumulative fWAR from 2014-2017, yes? That's even worse than Moncada (pace-wise) today...Baez debuted at 22, right around the same time as Moncada. Of course, there's no comparison in terms of the core of Cubs' players around Baez. Rizzo, Bryant, Contreras and the rest of their young position players picked up the slack and allowed Baez "not to have to be THE man" until he finally broke through this season. Right now, Moncada only has Jimenez to pick up the slack and take off the yoke of expectations and most of the spotlight away from him. And maybe Abreu/Avi, but who is writing their name/s in pen onto the 2020 roster? Now I'm a bit concerned Hahn will pull the trigger on moving up Jimenez and Kopech...to have the season with Moncada tailspinning below a .200 batting average over these last two months would be a PR disaster for the White Sox to deal with all offseason. Hahn will spend most of it defending himself and the rebuild, and promoting those two and Cease whenever he could go on the attack. At this point, it's highly unlikely he would choose to send Moncada down, for the same reason that Giolito has been up all season long.

The comeback is why do the happiest countries in the world (Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Canada, Australia and NZ) have these EXACT same socialist tendencies in terms of education, health care, environmental protection/green jobs and taxation rates/income inequality? The answer will invariably be...well, we simply can't do that in America...it's too big, it's too diverse, etc. That's fine, if we continue on in this current path, lots of Millenials are simply going to give up...keep piling up debt on their credit cards for travelling and "unique" Instagramable experiences...quitting jobs they don't enjoy at least 80% of what they do, etc. If I was 20-25 again, looking at the $21 trillion Federal debt, the increasing costs of higher education and rate of student loan defaults and the fact that Social Security and Medicare would be cut (thanks Rubio, for suggesting we "borrow" from SS for Family/Medical Leave, brilliant!) dramatically or non-existent by the time I retired, I might be tempted to say "screw it!" too. Before we say that Venezuela, Bolivia, USSR or China failed....it was the leadership in those countries, not the system, per se. Unless we're willing to call what China has done the last 30+ years as a socialist/Communist country a failure? In the end, no country is pure 100% free market (Hong Kong and Singapore are usually mentioned) because the government still has tight controls on many aspects of their economies. Same thing is true in Vietnam today. These countries are mostly hybrids, with both tendencies. In some ways, China is just as much a capitalistic as it in a "socialist" country. The key point is balancing the two sides. In America, we've gone way too far to the right the last 40 years (Clinton and Obama were inarguably centrists) and the pendulum is naturally swinging back in the other direction, just as it did in the US after Democrats for 28 years out of 36 (FDR, Truman, Ike, JFK, LBJ) or 32 out of 40 if you add on Jimmy Carter.

I will give him a +1 for the (possible) Lamar Johnson reference, just because it caused me to recall those crazy collared jerseys.

What about his right her?

How many strikeouts would he have to accumulate to qualify as overmatched? Yeah, I know part of it's umpires, called 3rd strikes (even letting the umpire get in that position to make a decision, as Madrigal points out in his interviews)...not being aggressive early, guessing wrong on pitches, being in-between, etc. It feels like he has gotten behind in the count almost every at-bat since the beginning of May (coming off DL), with a few rather memorable exceptions where he's done damage early in the count. But when is the last time he absolutely clobbered an upper 90's fastball? Giles last year? It seems like most of his homers have come again fastballs in the 91-93 mph range. Others who follow gamethreads would probably have the answer.

Byron Buxton, 1046 career at-bats, 4.6 fWAR Yoan Moncada, 712 career at-bats, 2.2 fWAR

Part of it is the whole generational wealth issue...we’ve seen it with Trump, Gates, etc. If his parents weren’t around to invest $200-300,000 into Amazon in the mid 90’s (Now worth $30 billion today), he wouldn’t have ever gotten it off the ground. If you look at most of these guys like Kalanick (Uber), Zuckerberg, Musk...their empathy gene seems to be missing. Most importantly, there’s no reason you should pay workers below market rates when you’re the richest person in the world. If you want to read about the opposite kind of story, read In-N-Out Burger by Stacy Perman, ethical companies that treat employees well but still are immensely profitable do exist in America today.