caulfield12

Unfortunately the best are loyal to Mozeliak, with Luhnow in Houston or no longer viable due to their connection to the hacking/FBI scandal with Houston. They did bring in Hostetler from the Braves' organization to basically replace Laumann at least.

QUOTE (SouthSideSale @ Oct 24, 2015 -> 09:31 PM) Sure it does. But that's how teams get really good talents for the most part. Astros wouldn't have gotten Coreia at like 10. They were 3? Happens. Sucking so bad will get ya top talent. No matter the sport. I was really happy with Rodon. Very lucky The main point is you're expected to hit more often than not on Top Ten picks. When they can consistently get yearly positive results from lower rounds (Buehrle, Reed, Nate Jones, Petricka, Santiago, etc.) like the Cardinals do, that's the hallmark of great scouting and development. A high standard, but no choice since they can't spend their way out and aren't developing any position players that we can project to be above replacement level starters with a few exceptions.

Unfortunately, the nationwide expansion of Steve Jobs isn't panning out as expected. After two successful weeks in platform release, the strongly reviewed film earned just $2.43 million on Friday from 2,493 theaters. To put that into perspective, it falls below the $2.6 million opening day of the Ashton Kutcher-led Jobs back in August 2013. With the aforementioned critical response (86 percent) and positive early reactions from audiences (81 percent), it's clear that demand for yet another film about the tech icon just wasn't there among most paying customers despite a strong ensemble cast led by Michael Fassbender. The film's buzz could create some back-loading as it still hopes to contend during awards season, but it will need some help from casual audiences going forward. Universal itself is projecting close to a $7.1 million weekend. Boxoffice.com So two movies that were early critical favorites, The Walk and now Jobs, are bombing. Wonder how much that has to do with earlier incantations (the Ashton Kutcher Jobs actually outgrossed this version) have to do with that, because Sorkin's an excellent writer. Jobs and Apple burnout? On the other hand, The Martian was great. Not as visually exciting and thrilling and preposterous as Gravity, but just a very solid movie that I enjoyed much more than Interstellar. Reminiscent of Castaway and The Life of Pi in many ways. Damon really carried this picture. Daniels and Chastain were good in supporting roles, but this was a Damon tour de force.

Sure, but having three consecutive Top Ten picks tends to help as well. The proof will be in what we eventually get out of Beck, Johnson, Danish, Montas, Adams, Fulmer and about 3-4 others. They pretty much lucked into Rodon because of Kolek and Aiken both going in front of him. Carson Fulmer has more risk attached to him in terms of his delivery. For Carlos, the biggest issues will always be control and the development of his change-up.

QUOTE (SouthSideSale @ Oct 24, 2015 -> 08:56 PM) There's a couple options offensively. Anderson next season. He's as close to a sure thing as we've had. 3B Trey M is a good young prospect but is probably 2-3 years away. That third sentence speaks volumes for how far our minor league rebuild still has left to go.

1) Seems Duke is always involved in some crazy games. 2) Thanks to GaTech and USC for pushing Iowa up in the rankings...but I have this sneaking suspicion that they will be tripped up at Indiana next week. Jimbo Fisher, you and Nick Saban are everything that's wrong with college football. 3) Poor Nebraska...growing up with Oklahoma as my second team because my dad went to school there, I can for the first time ever say I'm starting to feel sorry and pity for their great fanbase. They definitely deserve better. That program was so good that they were like the Patriots of twenty years ago, and for most of the Osborne years.

There are two ways of getting a point across about the current state of the White Sox. One is to follow in the wake of Thad Bosley (including the 35 years line repetitively about JR), or to mirror Lip, Balta (preseason/preparation, etc.,) Flash Tizzle...which gets kind of boring and redundant since that leads to endless nobody can prove quantifiably that Robin Ventura isn't a good manager OR the lack of loyalty from White Sox fans (and not the ineptitude and lack of a clear vision from the front office) endless black holes. So at least I can praise teams that are doing things right because, in and of itself, that's inherently more positive and optimistic (hoping your favorite team will eventually wake up) than endlessly whining. Blind faith, hope and loyalty doesn't cut it for 98% of White Sox fans. Trust has to be earned. If I wouldn't have lived in KC for a decade, it wouldn't have mattered. The whole time I resided there, the White Sox just ran over the Royals, like the Globetrotters and the Washington Generals. So I suppose if it was the 90s Indians, the 2002-2010 Twins or the 2011-2014 Tigers, I rooted against those teams because I hated them for beating the White Sox so consistently and bringing out every frustration possible as a fan. Because the Royals were so terrible, it almost forced you to empathize with them when the Yankees or Red Sox would come to town. KC was flyover territory, irrelevant to everyone on the East and West Coast. As a native Midwesterner, this mentality of pity, disdain and ridicule from afar (pretty much any reference in the movies to Iowa or Kansas is poking fun at you) almost forced one to pull for the underdog against the big, bad bullies.

So is momentum, keep/ing the line moving and clutch...but try to convince players and managers these concepts don't exist and are just random statistical anomalies or white noise.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Oct 24, 2015 -> 11:00 AM) Yeah, you know how those season ticket holders get when they the WAR projections! I am not one that puts a lot of weight into projections but I think there's reason to believe we can get 25 WAR out of Sale/Quintana/Abreu/Eaton/Rodon. It doesn't help that last year our entire pool of position players sucked away from Abreu/Eaton. There is going to be improvement, and very likely across the board, despite what your doom and gloomers say. Are you willing to guarantee even a .500 team next year? If they can't do that, playoffs or bust in 2017 is a stretch because then we'll also be dealing with the Twins and Indians.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Oct 24, 2015 -> 01:04 PM) I had to blink three times to confirm this wasn't a caulfield post. Why are you undervaluing Jose Quintana so much? He was 14th in pitching WAR this year, has a strong track record, & is under contract for the next five seasons at $8M per. He's without question one of the most valuable SP assets in baseball. The fact that you think Theo wouldn't trade Javier Baez, a guy who hasn't proved anything in the majors and has a history of contact issues, straight up for Quintana is beyond mind boggling IMO. Are you actually suggesting Baez is the more valuable asset of the two? And are you actually suggesting they might not trade Scwarber or Baez for Sale? If so, wow is all I can say. I'd say that's even more extreme than Schwarber, Baez and Soler for Sale...with the hope of getting Russell included over Baez but it being highly unlikely. The Cubs have to realize they need some pesky contact hitters in that line-up. All or nothing was exposed by the Mets...their inability to manufacture runs via any method but xb hits.

QUOTE (Soxfan90 @ Oct 24, 2015 -> 02:34 PM) I can't see the Royals blowing it this time. I think they need to win this year since the odds will be against them getting back to the World Series next year. Why? Because of Zobrist, Rios, Gordon, Cueto and likely Infante (salary dump) leaving, or mathematical odds/probability going against them? The Blue Jays will have the same one year window before they start losing their core players, and will also have to replace Price and Buehrle, not to mention being careful with Stroman's first full year back in terms of innings. Tulo always manages to get injured, and NY and especially Boston and Baltmore will be motivated to knock them off. In the AL Central, it's hard to imagine Minnesota and Cleveland going after splashy free agents. The Twins were in a difficult financial position largely because they emulated the Sox, signing Erwin Santana, Nolasco and Hughes from that second tier line of starting pitchers.

I'm starting to wish the Cubs had actually made it just to see the existential angst around here with two teams who did rebuilds correctly putting the microscope to what we've so glaringly failed to do. Would you really root for the Cubs over a team from the AL and your own division?

QUOTE (raBBit @ Oct 24, 2015 -> 01:57 PM) I find that whichever team sucks is classy. Indian and Twins used to be horrible fans to deal with. Last few seasons they've been fine. Royals were always the best fans in the division (both at USCF and Kauffman) and now they're the worst. Detroit's been bad pretty much my whole life. Even when they sucked. As far as this thread, not sure why that many people would vote for KC or why caulfield would expect it to be split since KC is in the Sox division. Plus, it should be "couldn't care less" not "could care less." That's a pet peeve of mine. The double negative police out in full force. But if you could not care less, by definition, you can/could only care more than you already do. Antidisestablishmentarianism must really really rile you. The fact that the Royals are more like the hated Evil Empire/New York Yankees in getting AL fans to actively root against them shows exactly how far they've come as an organization in the last three seasons. Before, a majority of MLB fans used to feel sorry for them (except for Sox fans because they beat us even before they got really good and knocked us out of the playoffs as recently as 2010 and 2012 in a way.) They had the longest stretch without a post-season appearance (now it's Seattle I think) of any team in baseball. The demographics charts showed a majority in every state in the US and more than half of California (due to Dodgers and Padres and Angels fans rooting against them) cheering for the underdog, small market team last year against SF. Now the Royals are the bully team (despite having the smallest media rights revenues of any team in baseball) and a team from the biggest media market is the cinderella team somehow. Maybe this quote from pitcher Chris Young in Jerry Crasnick's ESPN article partially explains it. "I was the late guy, showing up March 6th or 7th, and I walked into the clubhouse and I could feel the hunger from day one,'' Young said. "I called my wife and I said, 'This team genuinely wants and believes they're going to win the World Series.' I told her, 'I've never been around a group that has that hunger this early.' And here we stand 6½ months later with this opportunity to go and represent the American League. It's remarkable.'' So we have the same amount cheering against the Royals as would be cheering against the Cubs, and yet almost 100 pages about the Cubs. Yet very few posters even cared enough to post in those postseason threads in the series the Royals were playing in...whereas if you mentioned anything about the Cubs possibly coming back, that was a potential jinx. Somehow I can't imagine the same number of Big Ten fans (say OSU, MI, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska) cheering against Iowa in a potential national championship game against LSU, Baylor, Utah, TCU, etc. Interesting...especially in the sense that you know who Hawk Harrelson is pulling for in this one, as a lifetime proponent of the AL and teams like the Twins and Royals that play the game the way it's supposed to be played.

All Wieters needs with Boras as his agent: 1) a dearth of veteran, experienced catching talent on the market 2) at least 10-15 teams looking to upgrade that position He will get more years and total dollars than most around here are expecting. Supply and demand. This is not Stephen Drew or Kendrys Morales we're talking about, but a talented (albeit enigmatic) catcher fairly close to his prime years.

Of course, one of the main Sox players in the middle of all controversy that was Shark, not exactly the poster boy for excelling expectations or leaving on good terms.

Relying on an unproven Korean hitter who pales in comparison to Kang and Choo is pretty out there. We can't afford to guess via video like we did with Iguchi and have another Keppinger or Bonifacio sunk cost.

QUOTE (OmarComing25 @ Oct 24, 2015 -> 08:48 AM) How was the Jays' offense not balanced? They were elite in literally every offensive category, including baserunning. It's Donaldson, Encarnacion, Bautista and Tulo, with Martin to a lesser extent. Those four are much better than any ind. hitter on KC, but Tor doesn't have guys like Perez and Gordon hitting 7th and 8th, either. Opposing pitchers can relax more with Collabello, Goins, Pillar and Revere. Toronto strikes out a lot more....the Royals thrive on making contact when they get in two strike situations. They also don't have as many basestealers, more station to station with exceptions in Revere, Pillar and Pompey. Losing Reyes hurt quite a bit in that category.

So basically the White Sox need to be more allocatively efficient. Sign Morales instead of LaRoche, Volquez/C. Young/Medlen instead of Shark...develop their own hitters (Hosmer, Moustakas, Gordon, Perez), get the right assets back when you trade star quality players (Cain, Escobar and Odorizzi for Greinke, then Odorizzi/Myers for Shields and Wade Davis) and trade surplus minor league assets for guys like Cueto and Zobrist. The Royals made bad decisions with Rios and Infante but were still able to cover for them. Some of their young starting pitchers didn't take the next step either (Ventura/Duffy), but they still were a better team than last year. Finally, Cueto wasn't as good as he was hyped to be in transitioning to the AL. Quite a few things went wrong but they still had depth at both the major and minor league level to keep the wheels on the bus turning.

Carlos has a better slider when he's 100% on his game. Equally confident bordering on cocky. In the future, maybe you can say he's cooler under pressure, perhaps...physical build/stamina in his favor as well. Chris' offspeed stuff isn't nearly as hard breaking but it can be equally effective. More like a slurve at times. And Sale is in a different zip code in terms of control of his full repertoire.

On one side, the Royals have homefield. They've got the balanced offense to manufacture runs instead of scoring in bunches. Teams like the Cubs or Blue Jays would be even more susceptible to dominant pitching. The Royals make a lot more contact and they have experience From lasy year as well. Basically, it will come down to the Royals' pen vs. the Mets' starters. Obviously the Royals have to start out 2-0 or 1-1 or they be in danger of getting blown out of the series early. Volquez, in particular, hasn't pitched well against the Mets in his career. Cueto's around a 4 ERA in 65 ip. Volquez is closer to 6.

QUOTE (High Mileage @ Oct 24, 2015 -> 04:41 AM) Eeeewwwwwwwwwwww. Well, at least you have one good team to cheer for... You might have to change to Sporting KC or KU basketball from the doomed Chiefs, though.

Haha. I wonder if the White Sox were playing the Mets whether more Royals or Tigers fans would go against their fellow AL team allegiance. I mean, we do generally cheer for the AL team in the All-Star game even when the Sox suck, right? Can't imagine many preferring the Cubs to the Royals...Harrelson would scold those fans, in particular. http://www.nj.com/mets/index.ssf/2015/10/m...anti-gay_b.html Cheering for the Mets and Murphy is like cheering for the Braves and John Rocker...this is getting into an interesting area of psychology where people have become so sensitive we can now retroactively criticize someone from a political correctness standpoint in their fifteen minutes of fame for something they didn't say recently. So all of a sudden cheering for the Mets means tacit support of anti-gay bigotry when Matt Damon said even more controversial things about gays in Hollywood (Rupert Everett) recently and nobody is boycotting The Martian.

Discuss. I'm going to predict a 50/50 split.

I thought High Mileage was a Twins' fan? Maybe confusing him with someone else.

I know Greg will pick the Mets just to show his anti-anti KC bias, haha. Four or five houses lost and counting. It would have been weird to see everyone cheering for KC against the Cubs. Now we'll have a 50/50 split I'd guess. And 20-25% of the thread post counts. Davis collected the save after sitting out more than an hour because of a rain delay in the eighth inning. He helped camouflage a colossal blunder by Yost before the rain came. The eighth inning was a catastrophe wrought by inclement weather and ill-advised bullpen usage. Holding a two-run lead heading into the eighth, Yost chose Ryan Madson to pitch instead of sending in Davis for a six-out save. Yost did so despite a sizable layoff for Davis, who had pitched only once in this series. Yost did so despite Madson’s pitiable history against the Blue Jays, who hit .600 against him in four regular-season games this year. Yost did so even though Davis already recorded one six-out save this postseason, in Game 4 against Houston, and even though a victory allowed for three days off until the World Series. At this point, the rain intervened. The game entered a delay that lasted 45 minutes. The weather may have played a role in Yost’s thought process, as he did not want to lose Davis for the ninth inning due to the weather. Even so, he still chose to expose Madson to the best hitters on Toronto’s lineup, rather than deploying Davis, an All-Star and perhaps the best reliever in the American League. Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/sports/mlb/kansa...l#storylink=cpy Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/sports/mlb/kansa...l#storylink=cpy Imagine the treatment from local beat writers if they'd lost?