caulfield12

QUOTE (Feeky Magee @ Apr 21, 2014 -> 05:19 PM) Danks only 86-88. Spring Training reports had him at 90-91 without reaching back. Hmm. He has been 87-89 all season. Throwing more cutters and two seamers than previously. 92-93 probably a thing of the past. But he only gave up 2 walks/9 last year.

2 steals all last year against Danks. Got a little complacent, John assuming they weren't going to run on him...had a big lead/jump without a throw.

QUOTE (fathom @ Apr 21, 2014 -> 05:13 PM) Lack of hustle results in DP. Big difference with Abreu coming up with an opportunity to drive a run in. Oh, well.

Danks, 0-5, 6.28 in his last five starts in Comerica.

Why is Danks still at 1B? Great defender overruns a ball by 15 feet? Bizarre.

QUOTE (fathom @ Apr 21, 2014 -> 05:01 PM) Davidson now batting exactly .200 with 30K in 72 total ABs. He's making Hawkins (20 K's in 69 PA's) look disciplined.

If Johnson can be a legit XB threat (not just a singles hitter), you can start thinking about him for LF...because having that speed threat/run creation element in the line-up's a must if you're giving up 20-30 homers coming out of that position. In an ideal world, Semien plays SS and Micah Johnson 2B. No doubt about that. But they've simply got to be at least average defensively for it to make sense. Otherwise, I'd rather just leave the best of those two at 2B and move the other to LF. In all likelihood, it would be Semien at 2B and Johnson in LF, because of Semien's ability to play SS, he clearly is the logical choice to be the better defender at that position (same with Beckham moving off SS).

QUOTE (fathom @ Apr 21, 2014 -> 04:39 PM) The only way it could have a big impact is if he's out for an extended period, and the Sox end up trading Danks. All of a sudden you have Quintana and 4 guys that could be in the minors in the rotation. This is what's happened to the Cubs the last few years, and that's when the losses really add up. It's that scenario, and only that one, where the calculus for trading Sale starts to shift into...maybe. (Especially now that Avisail's been pushed back a year of development). Nevertheless, we're still sitting in decent shape of Erik Johnson is legit, and with the 3 pick contributing to the rotation as early as late 2015. As has been discussed a million times, there's going to be a good 15-25 options out there for a 5 starter when the time's critical that they need a guy who isn't a rehab experiment like Paulino or Hanson.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Apr 21, 2014 -> 03:25 PM) The question is if he is there, could the Sox sign Rodon for slot? That is really all that matters here. And how can you take that risk knowing that Boras won't give you that number until after the selection is made...unless Rodon himself orders it to happen, which is highly unlikely with a Boras client (not unheard of, but still). On the other hand, he's only got a handful of clubs that can give him anything resembling the top dollar number he's looking for, so he's risking another Appel situation that blows up in his face if Rodon goes down to injury next year coming back for the 2015 draft.

QUOTE (IowaSoxFan @ Apr 21, 2014 -> 03:21 PM) The velocity has not been the issue, more of the command. He has had a hard time getting the FB over for strikes, so he is essentially a one pitch guy right now and that won't fly in pro ball even with an 80 slider. As has been cited in this thread, the problems are likely related to his relative mis-use by the NCSU coaching staff. They are trying to win games now knowing they are losing two first rounders and are doing what is best for their program not what is best for Rodon developmentally. I think Rodon eventually works out to the ace everyone thought he was going to be, but it is going to take more time as he develops his other pitches to make them at least ML average and gets his command in check. And there's the biggest question of this draft. Without over-reliance on the slider, can he put up a change/curve/cutter/sinker that will keep them off his fastball without being too similar in speed to his other pitches?...and/or can he learn to vary velocity/location (think Mark Buehrle) with a single pitch or two enough to knock their timing mechanism off just a hair? A good example of this is Danks. When he's throwing fastballs 87-89, he's probably going to get less swings and misses/K's if everything else he's throwing up there is in the 81-84 range. Back to that 10 MPH difference in pitch speed being invaluable. That's ONE reason to be encouraged about Erik Johnson. He's been able to break out some impressive offspeed stuff in recent starts that is compensating for his 2-3 MPH dropoff in velocity.

QUOTE (IowaSoxFan @ Apr 21, 2014 -> 09:42 AM) New ESPN Draft Blog http://insider.espn.go.com/blog/mlb-draft/post?id=1596 Talks about Hoffmans start last week as a 1-1 performance. "The most likely landing spots for Hoffman right now are to either the Chicago White Sox or Chicago Cubs, with the Seattle Mariners being his absolute floor, but if he shows this kind of stuff over the last month of the season, he's got a chance to go in the first two picks to either the Houston Astros or Miami Marlins." Rodon's confounding season: "He gave up just one run on six hits in his eight innings of work, walking three and striking out seven on 115 pitches. Once again, though, his fastball command was below-average, the pitch sat 90-93 mph, and the world-class slider wasn't on constant display like it was against Duke a week ago. It'd still be a surprise if Rodon wasn't the first pitcher to come off the board come June, and it's difficult see him getting past the Chicago Cubs with the fourth pick. " Trea Turner ""There have been days [seeing Turner] where I've thought he looked like a top-10 pick," an AL East scout said. "But there are days where I'm not sure I'd give him much more than a 50 [on the 20-80 scouting scale] grade. " Kyle Freeland from Evansville is a top 15 pick with some of the most dominating numbers (87/4 K:BB) projects as a mid-rotation guy. Questions about his mechanics due to a low arm slot. Brandon Finnegan from TCU is projected to go in the 5-15 range, there are durability concerns due to his size. The final bit is on the race for top C in the draft between Max Pentecost and IU's Kyle Schwarber. Schwarber has the better bat and power profile, but may not be able to stick at the position. He has been splitting time in LF, but scouts don't believe he can handle the position as a pro. Pentecost seems like a lock to stay at C, but there is not the upside of Schwarbers bat. Wonder how much of that velocity drop was due to the 134 pitch outing the week before? Otherwise, you're talking someone throwing the same velocity as a Quintana or Santiago...but with a nastier swing and miss out pitch than either.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Apr 21, 2014 -> 10:32 AM) I don't want to go down this road, but we're not going to win without supplementing the young core. Away from our three long term guys (Sale, Quintana and Abreu) and a few select other players, we have the potential to have a clean slate for our payroll. We would have to spend considerably to just stay even with our current payroll in a time where payrolls are growing across the board. from southsidesox.com White Sox attendance remained fairly consistent throughout the year. The White Sox followed their usual "mediocre in April and May" in 2013. After Opening Day, Sox attendance settled into the 16,000 weekday/28,000 weekend pattern. April and May also happened to be cooler and wetter than normal. In previous years, the White Sox finally start playing good baseball in late May. They usually ride a hot streak into first place before cratering in August or September. When the White Sox get hot, people start showing up at the ballpark. It doesn't hurt that previous Sox hot streaks tended to coincide with the end of school and the arrival of warmer weather. When times are good, the weekday games that typically draw 18,000-20,000 fans start to draw 25,000-30,000 fans. Obviously, that didn't happen in 2013. Family Sundays? 311,965 took advantage of the lower prices for tickets and parking during the 13 Sunday home dates in 2013. 314,608 people went to 13 Sunday games in 2012. At first blush, it would appear that Family Sundays didn't really help. But, it could have kept attendance from falling off a cliff. The good news is that the state of White Sox fandom is fairly strong. 1.7 million fans in a year that was historically bad might be the new "floor" of White Sox attendance. (heading towards 1.45-1.65 million this year) On the other hand, attendance is a misleading stat. "People buying tickets" is just one source of baseball revenue. The White Sox also get money from ballpark advertising, naming rights (not sure where we currently stand with US Cellular/Sprint, theoretically still receiving $3.7 million), skyboxes, Scout Seats, parties in the Patio and Center Field Fan Deck, the Club Level, Gold Coast Tickets Club (gone), Stadium Club, Bacardi at the Park (gone), Chicago Sports Depot, along with their broadcast rights deals with WSCR-AM, WGN-TV, and Comcast SportsNet. Plus, the nature of "attendance" might change. I recently watched a focus group in which a bunch of middle-aged men talked about their sports preferences. They were all fans of Chicago sports, but they considered attending a game to be a tremendous hassle. They lived in the suburbs, and they didn't like the idea of driving to the ballpark, paying for parking, paying for food and drinks, and then driving home. They said they were fine with the idea of watching the games on TV. The final 2013 attendance number is an indictment of the product on the field. The team does go out of its way to be fan-friendly. The "US Cellular Field experience" is a pleasant one, regardless of the outcome. In recent years the team cut ticket prices, added new food items, and introduced craft beer stands around the ballpark. The stadium staff bends over backwards to make sure the fans have a good time. Now it's up to Rick Hahn to give ‘em a full house. NOTE: There's still the XFINITY Fundamentals Deck...do we still have Chicago Sports Depot?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Apr 21, 2014 -> 09:25 AM) Unless attendance and advertising picks up, I am not sure this is a safe assumption. Now you did it. Cue response about "you have to spend money to make money" and how not improving the on-field product will lead to a continuous downward cycle/spiral like the end of the Veeck years. Or that Reinsdorf should sell the team now if he's not going to go for it like Illitch in Detroit every year. It's a bit stunning that the White Sox and Indians are nearly 5,000 behind the Royals for 28th place in attendance per game. That's a pretty significant gap, even if it's just 10 games into the season and the usual excuses can be bandied about.

Arnie Munoz Zach Stewart Josh Stewart Lucas Harrell Danny Wright Felix Diaz Eric Stults Phil Humber Jim Parque Neal Cotts Sean Lowe

I would be shocked to see the White Sox give the equivalent of a Tanaka contract to a 32-33 year old James Shields. He and his agent have already targeted Greinke's $147 million deal. Might not get it (just like Santana didn't get $100 million either), but that doesn't mean he's going to be much under $125. All things considered, with the age/wear and tear concerns, I think Masterson would be much more likely if they could somehow get him for $80-95 million. Shields is the better pitcher of the two, but Masterson's sinker seems well suited for USCF, and he's the younger pitcher in terms of overall mileage and age by far.

QUOTE (Tex @ Apr 21, 2014 -> 08:52 AM) His opposite field home runs were as fun to watch as roof top shots. Very few roof top shots left in baseball....most were at Tiger Stadium and Old Comiskey. http://www.baseballamerica.com/internation...-play-in-japan/ Our next DH, haha? If it's not Viciedo. At least the satellite sales/DirecTV/Dish Network (joking) should be super high for White Sox games in Cuba. Although I don't know exactly how the White Sox are profiting from this obvious marketing connection yet. Actually, when I lived in Colombia in 2005-2006, I had DirecTV. Wonder how many Quintana fans are out there?

QUOTE (chw42 @ Apr 21, 2014 -> 08:33 AM) Lombardozi's also doing well with the Orioles. Dombrowski's made some awful trades this past off-season. Not to mention Iglesias. The Fister one was really dumb, IMO. He should have done a much better job fixing/improving that bullpen. I heard Fuld will change his jersey name to Lew Ford when he plays against the Sox.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Apr 21, 2014 -> 08:39 AM) His early days he had as much power the opposite way as anyone I have ever seen. He didn't get pull happy until later in his career. For some reason, I remember more of his flares/dunks/dinks/gorks into RF that would fall in front of RFers playing him deep. A lot like Joe Crede. Except Crede's would end up as outs or foul outs. Maybe the 1990-1998 version of Thomas, I didn't see much of him on t.v./video from 1992 onwards, when he was really in his prime.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Apr 21, 2014 -> 08:10 AM) I love the Abreu comp's. Thomas could hit those low line drives out and an assortment of balls that didn't clear the fence by so much....more like long pop outs that he muscled out...but I don't remember Thomas ever squaring up a high and outside fastball and hitting it on a line 425 feet to RCF. Still go with Bo Jackson, Puig and Miguel Cabrera for pure RF power. Manny Ramirez used to be able to do that earlier in his career before he got pull happy.

Accompanying Jeff Passan story about Cuban connection/dangers of the current "trafficking/kidnapping-based" system... Highlights Abreu and Alexei Ramirez, among others (yes, Puig's also there in the middle of the story). Nothing about Dayan. http://sports.yahoo.com/news/10-degrees--c...-034704407.html

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Apr 19, 2014 -> 03:32 PM) i think the Nationals are content with the pitcher they got. But even Strasburg hasn't quite lived up to the initial hype of his first season. The surgery, and then more inconsistent since then. Obviously, they're happy....he's not Mark Prior, but he's not quite the best pitcher in baseball, either.

Let's face facts...there are going to be some huge offensive explosions like we've already had twice this season that remind you of 1998-99-2000, and then we're going to have our struggles with inconsistent defense, pitching (starting and bullpen) and fundamentals, guys like Abreu and Semien, for example. Obviously Santana was not going to sign a 2-3-4 year deal at the rates being offered...so he's taking the risk that he can have a dominant season for the Braves and end up with $75-105 million next offseason. And I'm not sure that we can equate success in the NL (Garza, as well) to being able to do the same thing in the American League (see Jimenez in the AL East so far).

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Apr 20, 2014 -> 10:27 AM) Oh look, it is a list of the exact same crap we passed on this year. Wait a second, is Iwakuma really going to be on the open market? He was kind of the sleeper pitcher of the year last season that nobody knows about.

QUOTE (oldsox @ Apr 20, 2014 -> 05:30 AM) No, it was not a smart move, quite the contrary. Expecting him to fail, as you put it, and then watching him fail, is not a smart move. Financially, it was certainly not a smart move. Colossal waste of money. It doesn't do anyone, teammates included, fans included, any good to watch that kind of performance. It makes someone look to be a very poor judge of talent. Not a smart move. Now if he had a non guaranteed conmtract, like Boggs, it might not have looked so bad. The only smart move was by Paulino's agent. It would be smarter to have an 11 man staff, since the FO long ago made the decision to carry 3 FB/DH. If there's any bad move that is even worse, it's Scott Downs. Why pay a LHR that much money when it seem to be much more important to replace Reed than Matt Thornton in the overall scheme of things. Of course, they believed that Jones/Lindstrom/Webb all the ability to be closers (one would assume), but it was still a strange allocation of resources. They could simply have used Purcey, or Veal, or just kept throwing things at the wall until one of them stuck.

DeAza and Ramirez were terrible tonight. Eaton got hurt, tweaked his hamstring again. Quintana didn't have his good stuff. No clutch hitting until Viciedo finally broke through with a two run RBI. Dunn is looking really good, and Conor. Abreu had two really nice at-bats as well, broke 1/25 string.