caulfield12

QUOTE (bmags @ May 4, 2016 -> 08:30 PM) Yes, I'm sure one game has Hahn in a vice. I wonder if he has already received the performance improvement plan, one has to wonder. He's consulting with KW over the big board list right now, as we speak. Speaking of vices, though, one would have thought the "traditional Hahn" would have been in less of a hurry to dump John Danks when there was no clear-cut solution waiting in the wings. The White Sox were still in first place by more games than at any point since mid-June, 2008.

QUOTE (Alexeihyeess @ May 4, 2016 -> 08:25 PM) I think the Sands thing has kind of run its course. He had a few big hits I guess. Like Sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives... Or was it "so go the days of our lives"? They were big hits most definitely. No guessing or vacillating back and forth on the nature of his contributions, lol. Considering virtually nothing was expected of Jerry, and we just faced a knuckleballer yesterday, this became a very real possibility.

Buchholz has not given up a hit since there was one out in the second inning. @RedSox Clay Buchholz has retired 16 of his last 17. Ian Browne Despite all this seemingly negative information, it has a positive silver lining. The pressure on Hahn will increase to get some kind of left-handed help to counter RH pitching.

QUOTE (BigHurt3515 @ May 4, 2016 -> 08:21 PM) I don't think this is our game Too negative. It still very might well be our game, in light of results in the past 27 contests.

Good job, White Sox bullpen!!!!! Limited the damage to only one run when things could have been a lot worse. Robin Ventura's the early favorite for AL Manager of the Year, Adam Eaton's the best defender in baseball and Carlos Rodon just might be learning how to pitch... Is that better?

And, to top the "adding insult to injury" list, we're going to honor Big Papi before tomorrow's game. Hope Erik Johnson gets a good night's sleep.

Still a game. Big Papi 3, Duke 0 this series.

Ventura pushing ALL the wrong buttons this inning. Guess it was due to happen soon or later. He left Rodon in too long against BALT, arguably. Not sure I wouldn't have used Albers there, but hindsight is always 20/20.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ May 4, 2016 -> 08:07 PM) Of course. Ventura has been more in "win the game" mode and less about development this year. That said, Putnam and Petricka are our two weakest relievers and the whole "you can't use your best 3-4 bullpen guys in a game you're behind by just one run, even at home..." rule is going to get a firm test this inning. Especially against Papi. Does Ventura use Jennings or Duke? Probably Jennings...

We scored off O'Day and the Red Sox Japanese reliever who'd just gone 9 consecutive scoreless outings before last night. Hope is far from lost...

Rodon better be on a tight leash or out of the game. Of course, since he's currently on the hook for the loss, I'm sure Ventura will at least give him a chance to get through the 7th and see if they can tie or take the lead in the bottom of the inning.

Buchholz holding RH hitters to a .214 average this season despite a horrendous ERA. White Sox need that big LH bat in a situation like this one.

I saw online where someone compared the Cubs to UCONN women's basketball, how unfair it was for the rest of the National League. They're getting just a tad BIT cocky these days...which will make their eventual comeuppance sweeter, at least.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ May 4, 2016 -> 07:47 PM) He won't survive the 7th. No one ever does. Is Bychol a new remedy for monthly "feminine issues," lol? Well, one thing about our late scoring offense...it makes for more exciting games. Typically, the "old" White Sox teams would pile up a big early burst and then let up on the gas and gradually let the opponent back into the game. This is kind of the opposite. At least it's DIFFERENT. Or that 2005/06 offense that seemed to jump out to early leads.

Buchholz had a sub 4 ERA last year. Seems that he's incredibly streaky. One year, he's very good, the next, you wonder how long the Red Sox can keep throwing him out there as a starter before they have to Danksecute him.

QUOTE (chitownsportsfan @ May 4, 2016 -> 07:40 PM) I'm getting a little sick of Benetti. Can see his shtick wearing thin sooner rather than later. Just call the game, dude. Too many asides, if we wanted that, just bring back Hawk. @jasonbenetti: 42. It's the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. #SoxMath included. #DeepThought Whatever that means... However, if someone said that Carlos Rodon was (potentially) going to be 1-4 and John Danks pitching so poorly he'd be DFA'ed off the squad entirely, would your guess be that the White Sox would have one of the three best records in baseball knowing both those pieces of information?

Rodon has more consistently been 90-93 with his fastball this season. How much of it is a "dead arm" and how much of it is deliberately throwing at lower speeds for more accuracy in the strike zone, only he could tell you. When you watched him with NC State for two years and most of last year in the 2nd half, he was 94-97. His slider also hasn't been as consistent...granted, "plus" pitches end out wiping the majority of collegiate hitters, whereas they get spoiled/fouled off by big league hitters waiting for cookies to drive.

Ooops, that was a definite JINX.

Rodon wanting no part of Bogaerts after giving up 2 hits to him already. Will face Papi. Skating on VERY thin ice the last couple of innings, but he's made the big pitches when he's had to...no big home runs like the O's game in the late going.

I don't blame attendance for the White Sox problem, it's simply a symptom of not winning or getting to the playoffs. They've done a lousy job in terms of talent evaluation (there are exceptions obviously, like Abreu, Sale and Eaton) over the last half decade or so. When you do that, and you have a bottom third (currently) farm system, you have almost no margin for error financially, and that's where the attendance is a legitimate area of concern and consternation. If everything goes perfectly, like in 2005, you can get by with a mid-tier or even third quartile payroll. However, to consistently compete at that level and retain your best young players as well as attracting free agents, you have to possess the resources to do so. Part of it's holding onto young players too long (Beckham/Viciedo/Flowers), the other element is not realizing when to cut bait with veterans (Ramirez/DeAza) and then you have a whole slew of players like Gillaspie who really weren't major league starters, at least not on contending teams. Hahn did a terrible job two years ago in the FA market (other than Robertson), but he's 50% redeemed himself with Lawrie, Latos, Jackson, Avila, Navarro and Austin Jackson completely changing the complexion of the team in a positive way for the first time since 2012. In some ways, you can argue being financially stretched forces you into less risky "value" transactions...which can often be a good thing (look at the Red Sox with Sandoval and Hanley Ramirez). On the other hand, you're often left with no chair to sit down in when the big market teams have swooped in and paid premium prices on free agents. Kudos, also, for some of the new players taking so many more walks than we've seen previously with Sox teams...that's been one other major positive effect of the transition away from DeAza/Viciedo/Ramirez. Higher OBP. Now, BACK TO ATTENDANCE when the number for tonight is announced...

QUOTE (greg775 @ May 4, 2016 -> 04:23 PM) Basically the White Sox have some disadvantages, but now I think it all boils down to winning. Not many people are going to drive to 35th and Shields, not exactly a tourist destination or a fun destination, to pay 20-30 bucks to park and watch a baseball game. However, if you win win win, they will come. I've changed my mind on that cause of the Royals. They had 35,000 for a Wednesday day game today after 32000 last night. Five or six years ago they would have had 8,000 to 15,000 last night and today. I never thought I'd see it, but right now, KC basically sells out every game cause of last season and the season before. If you win, people will pay anything, do anything, go anywhere. Whether that means the fans will catch the winning fever in June and start packing the Cell or wait til next year after the WS victory remains to be seen. And virtually every fan who goes to Royals games has some sort of Royals attire. Hat, jacket if it's cold, T shirt, jersey. It was Kids' Day. Someone said it looked like 9000 buses in the parking lot...so not sure how many of those seats were comped or discounted, but it was a huge attendance turnout, as you mentioned. Even those types of events, if the White Sox gave the tickets away to local schools in their neighborhood and the south/southwestern area of the city....they might fill up some random sections of the upper deck but it wouldn't just be a massive wave of kids like you get when you're in two World Series in a row and won one. That brings about excitement from the parents and teachers/administrators as much as the students themselves to "not miss out" on the opportunity to skip a school day and participate in something cool. Winning is COOL. And being associated with that even from a detached fan standpoint is COOL to young kids. And, in KC, the fans really do feel as if they've become part of the team in a sense, a not inconsiderable home field advantage in tight games. One of the biggest gripes about White Sox games is "it's not a destination location in terms of fun/eating/drinking/entertainment." Well, the two huge parking lots at Kauffman/Arrowhead are the complete opposite of Wrigleyville...it's sterile and antiseptic and suburban and all concrete, but it's somehow become cool again to even tailgate and "pre-party" for Royals games. It used to be just the Chiefs for 8-10 home games per year, or a little bit on weekends for Royals or Wizards/KC football club games, but now it's something EVERYONE wants to be associated with and tailgating has become a "new baseball tradition" there because of the attendance surge.

Thompson's an interesting case, in that he again has a higher than expected OPS. Granted, it's in the NL West, so it's harder to make comparisons. Nobody can argue they'd still rather have Micah over Lawrie, and Montas is hurt (could have contributed as our 5th or high leverage reliever, but who knows what the Dodgers will get out of him this year, if anything...) Frazier took a lot of the pressure off Abreu when Jose was struggling recently and brings a veteran "swagger" we were lacking from all those departed guys like Gillaspie (shrugs) and Flowers...well, Gordon had the swagger without the results to match it, but that's another story. At any rate, if we had Thompson instead of Austin Jackson (who has a negative WAR, by the way), I'm not so sure that Eaton is playing the best RF or, heck, the best defense in all of MLB right now. They might have put Eaton back in CF and had Thompson in RF, although maybe not coming off the shoulder surgery. I have a feeling the presence of all those guys like Frazier, Jackson, Avila, Navarro and Jackson has completely changed the overall team attitude for the better, although there's no way for me to prove that or quantify it in any meaningful way. And, as someone wrote, Thompson's BABIP is due for a huge regression, like Avi last year or Flowers a couple of years ago. Jackson had really poor luck the first couple of weeks of the season and was hitting the ball really well before slumping, so there's still hope for him in general to at least be a 675-700 OPS guy when all is said and done, which would be acceptable for an everyday CF who plays solid defense. As far as Freddie Garcia goes, I'm not certain that 2005 team starts out so well without already having added Contreras and Garcia in the previous season...they got their feet wet, and then something carried over to 2005. It's POSSIBLE he would have selected the White Sox as a free agent because of the Ozzie family connection, but there was certainly no guarantee other than trading for him and extending his deal in 2004. And, obviously, none of the players we traded amounted to anything with Seattle. How good Morse was without the PEDS, we'll never know that either.

Part of it goes along with that argument from Cubs fans that no matter whether the White Sox teams are better, they're drawing more attendance (which of course is 40% a component of regional tourism and the historic nature of the stadium, day baseball, Harry Caray, babes in bikinis, yuppies on mobile phones, etc.) So there's that "White Sox fans are more blue collar argument" as well (according to ESPN's Greenberg, there's a split of about 5% more fans attending Cubs games possessing college degrees compared to the Sox), and then there's the prevailing stereotypes about the relative "danger-ness" of the area around USCF, which mostly goes back to the 70's and 1980's. Greg talks about this a lot, for example. Part of it is/was frustration with the original botched design and implementation of the new stadium plan compared to the other new stadiums like Camden Yards that arrived soon thereafter, as well as the complaints about the slant or rake of the upper deck. White Sox fans, over time, have gotten an "inferiority complex" about hearing these same arguments over and over again...and that's one of the reasons the threads are so polarizing, because the arguments are so predictable (and frustrating). Now you have the typical response that "well, stadium attendance is only 15-25% of typical revenue stream now for an MLB team, compared to the 40-60% it comprised in the past." And yet invariably, the local and national baseball media will note the low/er attendance in their game stories about Chicago and this will frustrate fans who ONLY want to focus on the positive start after three years of wandering blindly in the desert. No matter how many times fans write threads about how "family friendly" the stadium is, how much better the experience is (especially on Sundays), how "much more affordable tickets and how many great deals/discounts are currently available," there's that casual fan who felt burned maybe by their experiences from 2007-2009 (much higher prices after the World Series) and then just became apathetic in general because of no playoffs since 2008 and terrible, painful to watch teams from 2013-2015...which nobody wants to talk about or relive either, not when the White Sox have the 2nd best record in baseball and you can legitimately speculate about the Cubs and White Sox in the World Series again for the first time in nearly a decade.

QUOTE (TheTruth05 @ May 4, 2016 -> 06:14 AM) Lincecum would increase ticket sales exactly how? Guy has barely pitched the last couple years and casual fans barely remember him. The Giants make sense for him, big park and with Peavy/Cain both getting lit up they might as well give him a chance. Giants Nation! Those who were/are unable to get Cubs' tickets the last few years to see the Giants? One would have to think if the casual baseball family who goes once or twice a year were choosing, they at least have heard of Lincecum, compared to Johnson/Gonzalez/Turner. Of course, that's not one of the MAIN concerns to the front office, but they might as well turn over every stone...as long as it also makes sense for baseball operations (see Manny Ramirez acquisition in 2010).

Yeah, I was screening for LH hitters specifically....that took out the closest competition in Dexter Fowler, etc. http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/batting/_/sort/WARBR/order/true Currently at 2.2 with Arenado at 2.0. Ten other players from 1.9-1.5, including the unforgettable Aledmys Diaz. Where do the Cardinals always find guys like that seemingly every season? Hazelbaker? It's uncanny.