caulfield12

If the cost were the same as Jacob Turner, it would probably be mostly paid back in terms of increased ticket sales...but I'm not sure if Lincecum's willing to go THAT low in terms of his desperation level to return to MLB. Then again, John Lackey pitched for a pittance last year and didn't complain TOO much about it. All things considered, Lincecum's got to be in a more forgiving park like KC, Detroit, Minnesota, Seattle, NL West, etc., where he has increased margin for error.

I think the opposite as far as Tanaka. The lessons from contracts like Danks, Dunn, Rios, etc., have shown how much the entire team is hamstrung when just a couple of huge contracts underperform. We simply don't have the cushion there that teams like the Red Sox or Cubs do to overcome it...which has led to a number of bargain signings this offseason (Avila/Navarro, Jackson, Rollins, Latos, etc.) In the end, from our payroll position and without a consistently reliable farm system, that 2005 White Sox approach (or 2013 Red Sox in terms of value FA's like Napoli, Victorino, S. Drew, Gomes, Ross, etc.) has to be the best path forward because of all the health risks of Tanaka blowing up and pulling down the whole team with him in terms of low financial flexibility in the future. One would think they would tend to look at players who are becoming free agents after this season and 2017, with the POSSIBILITY of the right player who would be team-controlled through 2018...but they're going to have to feel very comfortable with the risk assessment. That $111 million to Tanaka would almost 2/3rd's larger than the biggest Sox contract ever awarded...to Abreu.

The US individual tax rates are barely higher than France's... What do we get? Basic services like police, fire, roads, water, decaying infrastructure, an embarrassingly slow internet compared to Japan/South Korea/Singapore, lousy public schools and almost 60% of that money is going to WARFARE, which has actually made the world appreciably LESS safe since 2001. Oh, and all the bank bailouts, with not a single white collar executive prosecuted in the banking or home mortgage industry. In France, you get higher funding for arts, high speed trains, great public schools with 2-3 Michelin** healthy cuisine, free nursing care, free prescription medicine/s, FOUR weeks of paid vacation per year mandated by the government, paid maternity leave (the US is one of only two countries in the world without it, many offer 4-6 months), paid sick leave, free daycare, free college/university and ALL THE BASIC services for just about 5-10% more in taxes. Trump, more than anything represents an end to the traditional/establishment Republican party: The new brand is: 1) Anti-immigration/foreigner 2) Anti-free trade/globalization 3) For protecting entitlement programs and not privatizing them 4) Limited military spending (getting allies to pay higher/fairer share) 5) Not fighting any of the traditional "social/family/religious" values arguments anymore, except for niche issues like transgender bathrooms that not even Democrats/liberals agree upon 6) For protecting American jobs/labor 7) Anti-establishment/at least pretends to be anti Wall Street to some extent because of his own money If you strip away some of the hateful parts of Trumpism, it will win you all those states like West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana that were in Hilary's column 8 year ago (and anti-Obama) but have now also turned anti-Clinton/establishment

Eaton was referring to the two prior seasons he was on the team...so he couldn't have included 2013 since he wasn't around. "Well, they had a surprising year in 2012 and almost beat the Tigers and then sucked eggs the year before I arrived..." Wouldn't go over too well. All he can do is speak from his experience with the team/organization. Benetti, for one, is going well out of his way to be complimentary...it's a refreshing change from the same tired old tripe from Rongey. Connor McKnight has also brought new enthusiasm to his position, everyone was just kind of in a rut, Hawk (especially) included. That said, we can see with our own eyes what's going on...we don't need to be beaten over the head with a new stat every 32 seconds to tell the story of this 2016 team. The real question is why they didn't actually start valuing defense more and making definitive decisions on players like DeAza, Ramirez, Beckham, Gillaspie, Flowers and Viciedo much sooner.

Rollins is in negative WAR territory...hope they're patient with Anderson, unless they absolutely feel he's 100% ready to deal with the pressure of a pennant race. Otherwise, the three-headed monster of Rollins, Saladino and Sanchez, at least temporarily.

The White Sox aren't going to DFA Danks and then bring in Coats or Danny Hayes. Chris Carter Ryan Braun Kemp CarGo Rasmus Beltran or Gardner Justin Bour Freeman Markakis Bruce Reddick Carlos Gomez Logan Morrison (might be DFA'ed soon) Those are the type of names they're looking at...players with significant MLB experience, preferably in the AL.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/batting/_/han...ARBR/order/true Adam Eaton handily leading the majors in WAR right now.

Okay, so what are you willing to give up for Rasmus? If it's going to cost Adams + _________ (someone else between 6-15 in the system), do you still do it? There are a lot of names out there still, but most of those longer-term contracts will involve even more complicated contractual considerations or possibly another three-way trade. They'll give you Carlos Gomez for free right now, do you take that chance? Don't answer, Hawk. What about Marisnick, Tucker or Singleton?

Dick Allen, please don't blame me for this particular thread. Btw, you jinxed Papelbon and the Nationals earlier today with your comments. Pete Abraham@PeteAbe Crowd of 15,025 in Chicago for two 1st place teams. Maybe Robin Ventura needs a zany suit. First time the White Sox have been 4 or more games ahead in 1st place since JUNE 19th, 2008. Nearly 8 years.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 3, 2016 -> 08:30 PM) Japanese pitchers are way more abused than American ones are. Which is why they typically end up as relievers in the US. At any rate, with Maeda, Tanaka and Darvish, we'll have another test group of three front-line starters/aces to study and see how they respond to injury set-backs. Iwakuma and Chen (Taiwan) have more than held their own. We also don't have nearly as much research about Japanese pitchers going through TJ surgery in the US, compared to the US-born and Latin American pitchers.

QUOTE (whitesoxjr27 @ May 3, 2016 -> 08:54 PM) I'll I'm saying is if we still had corpse ball fever, might of drew 7k tonight. Weekend should be good I hope Except the Twins aren't exactly a draw right now, either. Or the Indians, although they're a lot more fun to watch at least. In the ALCD, it takes the Tigers or Royals to draw 27,500+ on non-summer weekends...unless the weather was simply picture perfect/pristine.

Pretty amazing just to make contact on an 89 MPH change-up after 98 MPH heat...good battles this inning, not sure if it will lead to success but we're contesting every pitch at least.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ May 3, 2016 -> 08:49 PM) What happened to all the Red Sox fans that used to invade the Cell? Those games would have minimum 30k. One factor was the dynamic/premium pricing for awhile. Then the fact that 3 World Series titles maybe was getting boring for fans (Braves' Effect), haha. You'd think they would all want to come out and support Big Papi in his final season. I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't have more Tigers or Royals fans in Chicago...and then there's always the Yankees, the most reliable draw although maybe not so exciting for their fans with so many aging veterans past their expiration date/s.

Scott Merkin@scottmerkin Apparently the Raptors didn't win with that Lowry shot. I'm always the last to know. My apologies to @Alden_Gonzalez for knocking the Heat. Nice job, Merkin! Need a big two-out hit. On the other hand, hard to feel more comfortable with any other reliever and a 4 run lead, as opposed to Robertson (who needs the work still) with a save situation.

QUOTE (greg775 @ May 3, 2016 -> 08:41 PM) The human factor ended in that Tiger no hitter. Armando Galarraga

QUOTE (whitesoxjr27 @ May 3, 2016 -> 08:33 PM) Have they said how many at the cell tonight? 15,025 Tazawa had nine scoreless outings before tonight. Nice to return the favor to other teams after Albers lost his streak thanks to some shaky play behind him.

QUOTE (flavum @ May 3, 2016 -> 08:32 PM) Q should be done now. I'm a big believer in keeping guys in for 1-0 and 2-1 games unless the pitch count is way up there. Agreed. Now of course you create that uneasy situation where the closer has a 3-4 run lead and then pitches his way into trouble invariably. (Or maybe it's completely blown wide open the way this is developing.) The challenge is finding the right reliever (one would think Putnam or perhaps giving Petricka another shot) to finish the game if it's not 4-1. Albers has been used quite a bit. Of course, the other options would be Duke or Jennings. Or maybe Ventura wants to give Jones more experience in the 9th inning. Lots of choices, but not easy to decide on one.

Who's starting for the White Sox tmrw? The rotation now is Quintana, Rodon and Johnson? Sale or Latos going Friday, or will they give Latos an extra day of rest? Sale, for his part, had a "workmanlike" effort Sunday, very early elevated pitch count...a bit lower velocity, they might be better off starting him Saturday, but just IMHO.

Just doesn't make sense to take on a pitcher with that amount of wear and tear with 3 more years remaining on that contract. If they had it do all over again, Maeda or perhaps Iwakuma would have been the moves. We need all the marketing help we can get, so adding a Japanese pitcher would have added another revenue stream. Granted, the track record with those guys hasn't been so great, going back to Irabu, Dice K and Igawa, to name a few. Darvish settled in as perhaps the best of the bench and then he got injured. Roll of the dice. Seems the next "niche" market will be Korea with the success of a group of hitters now over the last season plus.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ May 3, 2016 -> 08:21 AM) How many teams lost their 19th-23rd games of the season and still made the playoffs? I think that is as legit of a stat as one where the team lost it's first 4. Statistically, getting crushed early in April has had much more predictive validity, I'll let the statisticians or Hawk Harrelson explain with "you can't win a pennant in April but you can certainly lose one." Since you want to belabour this point, KC is probably out of the AL Central Division race already because you said so, despite their 8-2 start. For that matter, cross the Indians off too, because they've had a similarly bad stretch of one run losses and are sinking under .500. Nice to know we only have to worry about the Tigers now.

Someone please pretty please close/lock/disappear this "obnoxious" thread. We wouldn't want to offend Dick Allen's sensitive nature.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ May 3, 2016 -> 08:04 AM) Says the guy who calls it a season after 4 games. And the same guy who told us time and time again how important it was for the White Sox to get off to a fast start, probably because you thought there was no chance they would. Your Royals lost 5 in a row. How many teams lost their 19th-23rd games of the season and still made the playoffs? They might be done. Back up the truck. And that statistic, as statistics often are, did turn out to have predictive validity, because the White Sox didn't come close to making the playoffs last season, as almost no teams that started 0-4, 1-4 or 8-14 have accomplished. As far as what happens with the Royals this season, I'm not going to bother with that favored bait. I'll allow Greg to make any comments he'd like in my stead, by proxy. As far as ZIPS goes, as of this past weekend, according to ESPN's Symborzski, the Cubs and White Sox are going to meet in the World Series and the Cubs will win. Not sure if you want to go out and bet now or not.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ May 3, 2016 -> 07:55 AM) What are the Cubs prices? And for a guy who gets all his info on the internet, you could do a little research to show how you could actually park for free. The $.50 extra you have to pay for a hot dog compared to what it may cost in KC is a killer, I'll grant you that. Although you could go to Portillo's before the game. But try to divert the attention off the White Sox results. It isn't going to work. Everyone knows your deal now. The team is 18-8 best record in the AL, and you bring up moving to SA in 2029? You need to go lay on a couch. If you remember, the White Sox were ONLY 4-2 at that time and tied for first when the post was made. But thanks for giving me credit because somehow "my attendance deal" caused the team to go on a 14-6 run and sell an additional 100,000 tickets, so I'll gladly take it.

QUOTE (OmarComing25 @ May 2, 2016 -> 10:33 PM) Twins crush Keuchel, who isn't getting the borderline calls he was getting last year, so he's walking everybody this year. Astros are screwed. It's all about "pitch framing" repercussions...

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ May 3, 2016 -> 07:39 AM) Exactly how many pro sporting events have you been to where the concessions weren't "pricey"? Moving to San Antonio? As predicted, a good Sox run and you are melting like the Wicked Witch of the West. "Ahhhhhhhhhhh!!! You cursed brat! Look what you've done!! I'm melting, melting..." You nailed it. His Watch is over. https://www.teammarketing.com/public/upload...014+mlb+fci.pdf Parking is still 33% above the major league average. Beer, hot dog and a soda are about .50 cents higher in aggregate.