caulfield12

4 homers at least for Anderson...although a 720ish OPS at Charlotte translates to 630-650ish at the MLB level. Unless he pulls a Trayce, puts up a 900 slash line (that goes completely counter to his MILB lines for the most part) and gets inserted as the 3 hole hitter by Dave Roberts, like last night. There's always hope.

http://www.minorleagueball.com/2016/5/5/11...tate-university Of course, the Cardinals will end up with Dakota Hudson and they'll have another stud on their hands, right?

Indians flying high now. 32-24. CLE -- KCR 2 1/2 GB CHW/DET 3 1/2 GB 7 game swing for the White Sox/Indians since the first game of that DH, and 9 1/2 games since Monday, May 9th (Frazier GS game, Jennings DP). When the Sox were 33-20, the Indians were one game over .500 at 15-14 (net +7), KC 1 game under (net +4) and Det 3 games under. The last four days the Tigers have gained those four games. But the Sox have shed 12 in the other direction.

WAR, WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! Flashback to Chris Rock/Jackie Chan scene in Rush Hour.

Trump simply is a bomb-thrower and the winner of a reality show (running for president) not even he and his advisors planned to win until 2/3rd's of the way through. That said, I can't imagine him setting America back any more than 8 years of GW Bush did.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/c...ticle-1.2663333 Maybe she is the answer for Donald Trump's domestic policy advisor???

Are there any relations of White Sox execs or coaching staff to watch out for this year? It's worth noting that had we selected Daz Cameron (Mike's son) and yet another in a long line of toolsy outfielders, we might not be too happy with the results. http://www.milb.com/player/index.jsp?playe...itting/2015/ALL I'll try to check out a game when I am home to the Quad Cities in July/August and give a scouting report.

The White Sox didn't collapse as much as the Indians went on an incredible run, like the Twins in 2006 in the second half. August 1st, the White Sox were cruising at 69-35, 15 games up on the Indians, who were 55-51. That brings us all the way to the famous Riske/Crede Game on Tuesday, September 20th. The lead had been trimmed by 12 1/2 games to just 2 1/2 entering that night (if the Indians win tonight in Seattle, the shift would be 10 games in less than one month in 2016). Indians went on a 33-11 run, playing .750 baseball for six weeks. The White Sox ended up playing those final two months at 30-28...cruising through the final week after Jenks gave up that liner that ALMOST got over Konerko's head down the RF line and the Indians fell apart (including to the second string White Sox team) and missed the playoffs at 93-69. At their peak, they got to 88-62, 26 games over .500, during that span of time. Historians will tell you that all the momentum in the world of that run by Cleveland was broken by Joe Crede's swing and a ball Grady Sizemore lost in the sun on a Sunday afternoon in KC that really shook up the Indians.

But there is a momentum you can feel when a team puts together a rally with 7-8 two out hits. There's also a negative momentum of continuing to feel more and more pressure and the noose tightening with each blown opportunity with runners on 2nd and 3rd and less than 2 outs. In Abreu's hitting, Sale and Jose's confidence, the entire bullpen...it's like the whole team has been hit by the Zika Virus but Eaton and Frazier were immunized. Heck, even those guys have seen their batting average fall and have not been flawless on defense like the first month of the season.

Deadpool, the obvious counterpoint to that is the Tuesday Rangers' meltdown game, the three consecutive bullpen meltdowns against the Royals (especially the 7-1 loss with 1 out in the bottom of the 9th) and the fact that Chris Sale and Jose Quintana are falling back into "form" or habit in terms of really struggling against AL Central foes. If it was only about starting pitching, then you would expect that we would have won more than just a handful of Sale starts over the last month. You would expect that Jose Quintana wouldn't have the record he does when he was just being hyped for the Cy Young weeks ago. How can you explain that? Random probability? Chaos Theory? "Bad luck" with Cabrera and Austin Jackson being out this past weekend. We had our three best pitchers going in that one, right? So now we're going to face Ross, Scherzer and Gio Gonzalez with our three "worst" pitchers...and you expect we'll take 2/3 or sweep them to save Ventura's job? Even with the Royals, you could just "feel" the momentum completely shifting over to the Indians as they fell apart the final three innings in Game 1. Now they've lost 5 consecutive for the first time in two years. That's not an accident or pure chance. Momentum and team confidence/chemistry go together like a hand in a glove.

Seems like every time the White Sox get swept (or lose three consecutive, in the Indians' series), we keep going in the opposite direction and our opponents use the positive feeling to elevate their level of play. For example, the Tigers are now tied with the White Sox for 3rd place (and technically have the tie-breaker by virtue of head-to-head play) and we finally woke up McCann and Upton, who are continuing to blister the ball tonight. If Brantley's going to be out for even longer and the shoulder won't allow him to hit for any power, the Tigers might be rising to the divisional favorite role if Michael Fulmer can continue pitching so well for a rookie, Verlander's back to 85% of the pitcher he used to be, Zimmerman gets through his injuries and Matt Boyd/Daniel Norris (Jays' trade for Price) can pick up the slack. Because that offense, especially with Upton on one of his streaks, nobody can stop it. Other than the Tigers' bullpen, that is. Well, maybe the Indians, who might have the most balance, overall...that's what it will come down to IMO, Indians' pitching vs. Tigers' hitting. The Royals were 5-1 in their subsequent six games after ripping through the Sox, but they also have lost five in a row now, something they didn't do all of 2015. Cleveland (10-4 overall streak after losing the first game of DH in Chicago), for their part, fell on their faces, losing 3/4 against Baltimore before tearing through the Royals this weekend (play in Seattle now and are just starting a long road streak, like KC)...with a blown game by Ned Yost last Thursday in the series opener carrying all the way over through tonight's loss as all those pesky Piranhas are, not surprisingly, coming back to earth when not facing the White Sox (and Chris Young in the starting rotation giving up more homers, he would break the all-time record by plenty if he even got close to 150 IP). Now we've put Detroit on a roll of their own and given them a needed boost of confidence. It's one thing to go 3-12 in these games. It's quite another to completely revitalize/re-energize our opponents while we deflate ourselves as well as the fanbase.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Jun 6, 2016 -> 02:06 PM) You're right it is quite an experience working in that league. It was worth the experience and really wasn't all that "unsafe." I did it in the early 90's and had a blast and it got me full season work. I would highly recommend it for someone looking to break into professional sports. Although, in the medical field I don't recommend baseball, way, way too many hours for the pay. Yeah, you definitely change your perspective as life goes on...from a 23 or 24 year old who had only been to Canada and Mexico, to having since lived and worked in Colombia, Thailand, the Philippines, South Korea, Indonesia and China (basically the last decade), I would have done that in a heartbeat!!! I wasn't super confident in my Spanish (three years in high school, two semesters in univ) but it would have been an amazing experience, and had a lot higher likelihood of leading to major league work of some kind than laboring in the minors and doing sales/marketing/PR. At any rate, your perspective also changes dramatically when you have a child, too. Things that sound like great adventures for a single person aren't such great ideas for fathers responsible for their families.

At this point, I'm not even sure what you guys are arguing. Sounds like you're just looking at it from your own perspectives and you feel you're both right but there actually isn't any argument to be made, just different equally valid perspectives on the same topic. At any rate, the White Sox have that pitching niche (although not seeing it with Rodon and Carson Fulmer this year yet) and they have that other niche, which is extracting or maximizing WAR by keeping all their players healthy and on the field as often as possible. While you can question the talent selected, at least we haven't had to replace them with a roster of mostly AA/AAA suspects. And 2012 is a good example, we HAD huge surplus value from 11-12 rookies on that roster. We got positive WAR contributions from Youkilis for virtually free for 3-4 weeks there. The problem is that we didn't have the talent overall to beat the Tigers, regardless of our more efficient allocation of resources/WAR. You can argue it was Leyland vs. Ventura or Addison Reed choked or Dunn and the rest of the offense wore down (same with Q in his rookie year). You can argue Cooper got nothing out of Liriano whereas the Pirates figured out a way to completely turn his career around 6 months after Cooper gave up on him and threw in the towel.

On the other side, Tyler Naquin (former high pick) has been been playing very well in recent days, they have a stable of Top 100 hitting prospects all on the way now and they're going to get another solid prospect, Abraham Almonte, back from PEDs suspension.

As we speak, the Tigers are in the process of tying us for 4th place. Meanwhile, their top pitching prospect, Michael Fulmer, is clearly outpitching Carlos Rodon. Actually, I'm not sure who has been the most disappointing between him and Abreu this year (and Carson Fulmer). This last month has been such a downer, but NOTHING compared to that feeling in August/September of 2005 that the Indians were going to run us down from behind. At any rate, that's some DISAPPEARING surplus value.

Well, the odds of the White Sox getting "surplus value" out of their 25 random internal prospects aren't high at all. We all know the surplus value is coming from Sale, Eaton and Quintana, primarily. At a point there, it seemed like Abreu as well, but not so sure that's the case. Rodon, theoretically, as well. Anderson and Fulmer. Potentially Saladino. Lawrie. That's why the White Sox being patient and holding onto Marcus Semien, Trayce Thompson and Montas (worst-case scenario, a very good high leverage reliever ala Herrera) definitely has an argument behind it. I guess we'll have to wait and see what the RETURNING WAR for that 2018 team actually is, and whether the Sox made the playoffs either of these two seasons to determine if the Frazier move worked. (Or the possible trade return, which will be disappointing because it will mean no playoffs YET AGAIN.) We missed a huge opportunity to sign Desmond at $8 million (really, $6 million in this year's resource allocations because you're stripping away that money from the draft pool, which surely JR doesn't mind) and settled for Austin Jackson instead. This is the same player who was offered around $110 million by the Nats less than 18 months ago. But Hahn valued the draft pick (which will help MAYBE in 2020 or 2021 or 2022) and pool money over the short-term. Or was it that he didn't want to have something left to show for the Shark deal and his ego got in the way because they were selling the idea of "long term competitive winner" and "sustained success" for awhile there. Then we just threw it out the window with this 23-10 start, dumped Danks, traded for Shields and reverted back 100% to our old ways.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Jun 6, 2016 -> 03:33 PM) Since 2000, the KW reign only 2 teams have more World Series wins than the White Sox. Boston has 3 and SF 2. There are 7 others that have won 1 like the White sox. So in this timeframe they are better than 20 teams and equal to 7. Now you can say that it is time to move on and change things, which I wouldn't disagree with. However, you can't say that under KW they have done nothing and he wasn't an effective GM. SF has 3. Heck, the Marlins won two in 1997 and 2003, but not sure we want to emulate them. At least through 2012, we could have said we had a Top Five winning percentage in all of baseball from let's say 1990 or 1993 through 2010/12 except for the Yankees, Braves and Cardinals. That was the argument used to justify not teardown...that the White Sox at least have been competitive over most of those seasons...but that argument doesn't hold water with fans anymore, certainly not over the last 3 years and after the disappointment of 2011, 2012 and 2015 all fizzling despite high fan hopes.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jun 6, 2016 -> 02:16 PM) They can't just sign a million of them. They have a limited pool and limited resources in these areas and a farm system that has lacked. What I'm saying is you can't write this guy off because he is so young that he's more likely to bust. Initial reports have been very encouraging and he's the type of kid who has the talent to emerge as one of the better prospects in the system with time. This could be an impact player. Yes, I said could, but when you are trading a guy who could be that for a guy who another team had to eat half his contract and is only slightly better (at his current clip) than your other options at the respective position (while actually still costing a decent amount of financial flexibility), I say that you shouldn't give up that type of piece for said player. That is it. The Sox have gotten lucky that Trayce Thompson is the best guy they have given up in recent years, but he's also the best position prospect the Sox have developed since Joe Crede / Aaron Rowand. Seriously...that is embarassing and it starts with drafting and player development that has failed since 2000 / 2001 (I'm sure I'm missing someone) but it legitimately has been since the Schueler era ended that we have really developed any sort of meaningful positional talent. That, one would think, would be utterly impossible to have happen, but it has. Literally, nothing of any meaning and I don't know what is worse, that we haven't traded away many great position players (yeah, that can make us feel better) but who cares, we haven't drafted / developed any either (who went on to play with us or play somewhere else)) or that we literally haven't drafted / signed a meaningful position prospect this century. Preller knows his Latin American prospects. Just look at the LONG list of players on the Rangers (especially infielders and now Mazara and Chi Chi Rodriguez) signed and developed during AJ's time there. They had too many good prospects, so they traded Herrera to the Phillies and couldn't even find a place to play Profar (once a Top 10 MILB prospect overall) in that line-up. I'd be more worried about Tatis with his (father's) background making it. Surely, they could have asked for Adolfo instead.

QUOTE (CaliSoxFanViaSWside @ Jun 6, 2016 -> 01:20 PM) I wouldn't go so far as to say they are stupid. That is rude and ill informed. It's basically a move for this year and next year. It seems as though many moves the Sox have made have no future beyond 2017 and that's the whole point All have been patchwork moves giving up talented cost controlled youngsters who do have futures that will vary greatly but have a chance to be better. How have all these moves worked out the past few years ? Are the Sox any better now than they might be if they had just kept some of these kids ? Hard to know, but it's just seems as though the Sox are spinning their wheels the past few years while giving the fans nothing to look forward to . RF Eaton 2B Tim Anderson 1B Jose Abreu DH Melky Cabrera (Hayes/Coats) LF Ian Desmond/Fowler/Trumbo or Michael Saunders (trade) CF Trayce Thompson SS Marcus Semien C BLACK HOLE 3B Juan Uribe (Davidson/Trey M./Delmonico) UTIL Saladino Now that team has much more balance, although it's a bit light in homers in the clean-up spot with Frazier removed...seemingly, you've got 5-7 to more than make up for that, and Uribe has occasional pop too, even at his age. And it would have four home grown players as well as one of my personal all-time favorites in Juan Game Winning Uribe. I'd MUCH MUCH rather watch that team from a fan standpoint than what we have right now (much younger, more dynamic/exciting/athletic). The bottom 3 would still be relatively weak, but it would have offensive pop and not be 600-650 OPS weak. Plus, you'd still have Montas in reserve to throw into the bullpen or save having to trade for James Shields. And you'd have a lot more financial flexibility and future years of control, to where you wouldn't have to tear things apart after 2017.

But Hahn at least had numerous connections built up due to his educational background. The "average" twenty-something out there begging for a job in a front office (with a Master's in Sports Admin/Management) or even an internship in broadcasting (that area's 10X more competitive than front office work even) just doesn't stand a chance. Right place, right time. I'll give a personal example. For example, I turned down an internship with the Red Sox for "only" $300 per month back in late 1993 because I knew if I could do sales fairly effectively I could earn, let's say $1000-1250 per month (and free rent) working for a minor league team. Knowing what I know now, I would have asked to borrow money from my dad and figured out how to survive in Boston financially because it's just not that easy to transition from working for a minor league team to a major league front office (unless its owned by a major league team). I screwed up my Cardinals' interview by making a joke about selling complimentary tickets that front office members (even interns) receive...they are super serious about that, and I should have known better. Of course, who wants to work in ticketing? (Yes, I know, I know...there are major league GM's who have started off in even lower positions than THAT). The other path which could have had a positive result would have been developing Spanish skills more and going to work in the Winter Baseball Leagues in places like the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico or Venezuela. I always helped our Spanish speaking players (Jose Guillen in particular, because he always was getting into trouble at age 19)...but you couldn't work as a "translator" full time in the minor leagues, that position simply didn't exist at that time, or even working in one of the baseball academies in the DR or VZ (which was alluring from an adventure side but scary from a personal safety standpoint.) And yeah, back then I remember sending out resumes to every MLB GM and all 130 something minor league teams. About half the MLB GM's responded, or at least their secretaries/admin assistants. Wish I had kept all of them.

Love how LaRaza's name is being thrown out there like a terrorist organization or ACORN. They're much more like the NAACP or Cesar Chavez's/Dolores Huerta's migrant farm workers' association in reality.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jun 6, 2016 -> 12:17 PM) Its things like this that make you realize you really should just stay the hell away from big ticket free agency and focus your resources on cost-controlled players (via trade) and drafting and development and buying out known commodities good years. Missing on this type of deals can totally set a franchise back where as having a prospect bust doesn't necessarily financially jeopardize your team from contending, etc. You see far fewer teams win because of the game of FA then the other way around. If you are going to be a medium payroller and smaller franchise, you really can't intend on competing unless you really nail it on the draft, development and savy trade equation and than playing a little bit of lotto on shorter term / lower profile FA signings which fit defined needs. That's also an argument for why (motivated) players on one year deals (or ideally, one year and an option) such as Fowler and Desmond made even more sense...and still would have resulted in some form of compensation, it just would have been pushed back another year. If you have either of those guys playing instead of Austin Jackson, the White Sox are still out in first place, at least for now. The other problem here was the money was spread out so thinly it left only third-tier options like Rollins, Avila, Navarro, Jackson and Latos that were bound to go bust...which is playing out now how most would have predicted/projected in the offseason. Along with Jacob Turner, a bunch of lottery tickets, the MLB equivalent of Micker Adolfo.

Fwiw, turns out Boston rolling the dice on Moncada is looking much better too. Like they need to ADD to that offense, right? Of course, a team with that amount of resources can have failures from Buchholz, Sandoval and Rusney Castillo without batting an eye. Otoh, just one or two bad (large) contracts has set the White Sox back consistently over the last 20 years or so. Rich getting richer...not that it has helped the Yankees tremendously in this modern era. And the Dodgers/Angels haven't exactly owned baseball, either.

Do you honestly believe that Donald Trump actually believes all those things he's saying? The problem is that there is that "true believer" group...whether it's 15-25% or whatever of the US population, who will take his words seriously and feel that he will represent their interests. One issue is institutional racism...the cases that are VERY VERY hard to prove because the whole system lines up to protect itself and whistleblowers are still strongly discouraged in our culture. It's very subtle and under the surface and seemingly innocuous statements that are "speaking in code." The other is whether there actually can be such a thing as reverse racism....especially if the "victim" (in this case Trump) is the one that provoked a bias in others by his incendiary comments. Can all the residents of Mexico realistically be expected to be fair and unbiased in their opinions on Trump? Would they vote for him to prove they're perfectly capable of being objective intellectually and not racist, as quite a few independent voters supposedly did for Kennedy in 1960 (to prove they weren't anti-Catholic, for Gore-Lieberman in 2000 (not anti-Jewish), Mondale/Ferraro in the 1984 (not anti-female or feminist) or Obama in 2008 (not racist/anti-black).

Callis yesterday seemed pretty sure Senzel and Moniak were both going somewhere in the top 4. They talked about Corey Ray slipping to the Sox. What's the latest with Dakota Hudson of MSU? Still in the running? Callis also said that most of those players drafted last year in the Top Ten....he would still pick all of them over PUK right now, even Carson Fulmer. Also talked a lot about how many HS pitchers there are on the board and how risky they tend to be.