caulfield12

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 6, 2015 -> 07:08 AM) 15th in payroll 20th in record 26th in attendance 30th in TV ratings http://www.statista.com/statistics/196644/...sox-since-2006/ $227 million in revenues last season (2014). Tied for 18th. Well up over 2013 despite a poor product. Revenues generated outperformed team record in the standings in 2013 and 2014. 16th in overall team valuation according to Forbes. Revenues should have risen to the middle teens to meet the offseason growth of season ticket plans sold this year. Seems we are exactly where we belong, all things considered. http://www.statista.com/statistics/193645/...-teams-in-2010/

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Oct 6, 2015 -> 06:48 AM) TV markets also weren't much of a thing back then. MLB would never move a team with the massive tv market of chicago. Of course, at that time NY was even bigger and you had three teams sharing it, with Boston and Philly not too far away. The biggest purpose of those moves, of course, was opening up California for MLB. Unless they move to another country (Cuba, Mexico, S.Korea or Japan), the White Sox are unlikely to be relocated inside the US.

The shooter asked everyone their religious beliefs, but apparently it had nothing to do with who he ended up shooting or not shooting in the end. He also deliberately shot someone in a wheelchair, so there's not much of a pattern here to be seen...even the one witness/hostage who was spared has no clue why he chose him to leave a message for the police. This wasn't one of those cases like in Nairobi, Kenya, two years ago where Somali militants were killing all "infidels" who couldn't quote from the Koran/Quran.

QUOTE (SCCWS @ Oct 6, 2015 -> 06:25 AM) Havana White Sox. Does Jerry smoke cigars????............................. Yep.

QUOTE (captain54 @ Oct 5, 2015 -> 11:57 PM) I don't think you are going to see any significant increase in viewership or attendance, unless the Sox come up with a strong April and May of 2016, and play without the bonehead mistakes, miserable defense, and non existent offense..I think the FO is deluding themselves if they think a roster reshuffling in the offseason is gonna bring fans back like it did in 2015 Let's imagine a best case scenario where they approximate the Twins' season this year. Virtually nobody will be predicting them to finish anywhere but 4th or 5th, so even being 8-12 games over .500 early in the season, that's not going to be enough unless they are just throttling everyone and pulling 5-7 games ahead in the division. With our lack of offense, it's hard to imagine that happening, so that means the defense and bullpen must be extraordinary to win a bunch of 1 and 2 run games. That seems inconceivable right now. The ghosts of 2012 are too close as well...with all the accumulated skepticism towards that team/manager getting rolled over to future teams. Except, instead of Detroit, it will be the Royals, Twins or Indians that will be waiting in the weeds to blow us away in the 2nd half. At any rate, if they followed the same exact track as the Twins this year, they MIGHT get about half their lost attendance (due to season ticket holders throwing in the towel) back but would still finish behind 2015, meaning 27th/28th/29th/30th in the league. And that's the sort of optimistic, 3-7 games over .500 for most of the year and peaking at 10-12 games over version. Without major changes, we're not going to have that team until 2017.

We had Trayce Thompson batting clean-up quite a few times down the stretch. Anything's possible, although Heyward's going to be way too expensive when you need to stretch that money over 3-4 players. The problem with guys like Gordon and Zobrist, though, is they're getting older and you're still at least in a holding pattern until 2017 to be competitive, so that essentially leaves Gordon/Cespedes/Upton, with all three of those guys either out of their price range or entering their downsides from a physical standpoint. So basically, nowhere. Depending on how KC finishes the post-season, they're going to definitely make a run at keeping Gordon around if it's remotely feasible, because they saw what happened going cheap (Rios)...they ended up having to trade more prospects to shore up the offense with Zobrist. You pretty much are forced to look at 3B and catcher for upgrades and probably have to be contented with the idea that Thompson might supplant Garcia in order to improve the outfield defense, Sanchez will be at second again and undoubtedly Ramirez will be back for one final year since they don't have enough confidence in Saladino to hold down the position as a full-time player.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Oct 5, 2015 -> 10:40 PM) If we are gonna keep Robin, Jerry should at least demand somebody like Luis Aparicio (if we need to keep it in house) or Cal Ripken come to spring training and teach the guys how to fricking bunt! I can't remember but Cal was such a solid Hall of Famer I assume he was a good bunter. I mean, baseball is not THAT physically demanding a sport. Have the guys out there an hour early each day, Robin, and make them learn how to bunt. I've seen batting practice. They normally make a couple half-assed attempts at bunting then start trying to pull home runs instead of fricking work on their swings. But seriously Robin calls for the bunt and these stiff cannot bunt!! Make them learn how to bunt with Cal Ripken JR.!! Hire Cal as consultant. Then bring in Tim Raines and pay him some spring training money to teach these bums how to run the basepaths. Again ... make these millionaires spend AN HOUR A DAY running the bases and make them learn how to do it! That's two extra hours a day the millionaires must spend on the field. Tell them, "Maybe next spring we won't have to do this if you guys f***ing lay down bunts when called on and actually run the bases well this season!" So bring in Ripken and Raines next spring. Finally, fire Steverson's ass and bring in another hitting coach (Seitzer? Ripken? anybody) who preaches hitting to all fields. Tell the millionaires that hitting into the shift is selfish and sickening and they need to spray the baseball to beat the shift. Tell LaRoche that his 12-home run season forfeits the right to hit into the shift. Since he cannot pull the ball over the fence, DEMAND he go with the pitch or not play in the final year of his contract. Yes, bench him if he hits into the shift. Finally bring in motivational speaker Tony Robbins to talk about TEAMMORK and WINNING. Or Donald Trump to talk about WINNING. That.Is.My.Suggestion. They've already hired and fired Raines once. That's even less likely than Ozzie returning. Ripken wasn't much of a bunter and still has strong ties to the Orioles...bringing in the all-time leading HR hitter at SS wouldn't be far removed from Frank Thomas. Might as well use Karkovice, Lance Johnson or even Guillen or Cora for that clinic and save some money. Or Buddy Bell, haha. Tom Emanski? Come to think of it, Frank White would be a great choice. His relationship with the Royals is still strained and he clearly wants to be involved in the game, still.

It's quite sad in the modern day, where there are millions of ways to measure receptivity to your product, that this organization has suddenly become so tone deaf and stubborn.

If Rongey is a bigger part of radio broadcasts or gets an expanded tv role, we'll know the marketing and broadcasting groups are completely tone deaf. As it is, the fans are already voting by their lack of interest...worst ratings of all 30 teams. I'm not even sure they were doing that in the 70's and mid to late 80's.

1972 Munich Olympics

QUOTE (ewokpelts @ Oct 5, 2015 -> 04:26 AM) you do know that the cubs and sox negotiate their own contracts for tv, right? theo and tommy boy are banking on the big money of going on their own, but signs point to a burst in the rights bubble. Sox will likely stay on csn with a richer deal, along witht eh hawks and bulls. Houston had two bad teams at the same time, the Rockets and Astros. Yao Ming had just fallen apart. The Astros were at the end of the Killer B's time period and 4-5 years from contention. Bad timing. The problem in LA is/was that the contract was TOO generous and wasn't well thought out in terms of the assumptions being made that fans would "force" their cable and satellite companies to carry the Dodgers. Even the Mariners got nearly $120 million per season in the midst of being a doormat (and without Ichiro) for going on nearly a decade now. A lot of that was also based on the addition of Cano, which turned out not to be an automatic ticket to the playoffs, nor was Nelson Cruz, despite the numbers he put up this year. At any rate, you have the White Sox with arguably the lowest or next to lowest ratings of any franchise in baseball in terms of tv and probably radio as well this year. The Cubs are trending in the exact opposite direction. Unless that organization completely falls apart from 2016-2018, their new contract will be huge...and if the White Sox continue to suck, that will create an even more profitable supply and demand bubble for Epstein and Co. to take advantage of.

Although, from a marketing persoective, Puig would at least stabilize the expected 20-25% dropoff in renewals after this season. You bring back the entire roster pretty much as is, along with Ventura, amd it could get as ugly as 30% lost.

QUOTE (Lip Man 1 @ Sep 30, 2015 -> 11:59 PM) Found this at another location and wanted to share it. This will be the 7th year in a row the White Sox have missed the postseason. Out of the 122 professional franchises in the 4 major North American sports, here are the only teams that now have longer postseason droughts than the White Sox: 1.) Buffalo Bills, 15 years 2.) Seattle Mariners, 14 years 3.) Oakland Raiders, 12 years 4.) Cleveland Browns, 12 years 5.) Miami Marlins, 12 years 6.) Minnesota Timberwolves, 11 years 7.) St. Louis Rams, 10 years 8.) Edmonton Oilers, 9 years 9.) Sacramento Kings, 9 years 10.) San Diego Padres, 9 years 11.) Houston Astros*, 9 years (still alive this year.) Solid company. And as yet another poster pointed out a lot of the teams on this list play in smaller markets than Chicago. The 3rd largest market in the U.S. This franchise is in as bad of a shape as the late 60's / mid 70's. Obviously that's not good. Mark As a Dolphins fan who lost interest fifteen years ago....you have one Wild Card game loss in 2008 and that's basically it for fifteen years (assuming 0-3 start dooms them again this year). It's hard to imagine almost thirty years like the Royals, but 15 for the Sox would still be a killer unless that success was sustained for at least 3-5 years (as opposed to a one year or temporary blip). We'd also get little or no advantage from the new tv contract that will set the Cubs up for another generation financially.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 12, 2015 -> 01:36 PM) I would imagine if they go to an INTL draft, they think up a penalty, such as no first round pick, no first and second round pick, etc, which is commisserate with how far over the cap they went, remembering that there are few different levels of being over. The first level is a just a fine. Commensurate Commiserate is what we'll be doing when another year of (young) impact players from abroad has passed us by...

Used to be we would scoff at Cubbune stuff and only post the Sun-Times, Daily Southtown or Arlington Daily Herald.

QUOTE (harkness @ Oct 4, 2015 -> 11:09 AM) He got fired after that 4th season and didn't manage again for another 4 years. Oops. We've contributed a lot to the careers of LaRussa, Dombrowski, Lamont, Leyland and Francona...but mostly with other organizations, unfortunately.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 3, 2015 -> 09:08 PM) 15th in spending, 26th in attendance. And still undoubtedly 15-18th in total or overall revenues generated... When attendance has moved to the 15-25% level for most teams, it's pointless to keep looking at that as the sole indicator and then intimating White Sox fans should neverthless support the spending of millions of dollars on Cabrera (peds), Keppinger, Danks, Dunn, Downs, Belisario, Paulino, Duke, Samardzija, LaRoche, Bonifacio, Beckham, Robertson, etc. When you've made just one really good acquisition in half a decade that was a clear win in Abreu, there's bound to be problems. Besides, the White Sox had their best team a decade ago with only a $75 million price tag. They've yet to come close to a .500 record in 2 1/2 years of rebuilding and their top three prospects (Anderson, Fulmer and Montas) all have major question marks attached. In fact, we're closer to the cellar of the AL Central going into 2016 than when we started, so there's basically only Rodon and Fulmer to show for those fatally flawed, difficult to watch past August teams.

Realistically, this team's not going anywhere in the future without Tim Anderson playing a role at SS or 2B. He has to be a dynamic player...because you just know that there's no way to fix 3B, 2B, C, RF and DH in one off-season anyway. At least this way they're pretty much forced to find a 2B from among Sanchez/Johnson/Saladino and give Garcia and Thompson a year to battle it out and/or eliminate themselves from 2017 contention. The problem keeps coming back to those two critical positions, 3B and C...and whether you can count on Johnson/Montas/Fulmer (and there might be no choice) enough to trade Quintana or even Sale. Logic says that trading Quintana is the best way to have a chance to win it all (keeping Sale as #1)...but the odds of making the playoffs are much higher with the talent you'd be getting in return for Chris versus Jose. Neither one's a good alternative, obviously, but both are better than trying to miraculously patch this thing up through mid-tier free agent signings. Even if we added Zobrist/Heyward/Gordon/Cespedes, it wouldn't do much more than make us a .500 team in all likelihood, and that would push the budget to the absolute limit for those last three. Therefore, a trade's the only way to fix (potentially) 2-3 problem areas at once.

Kang obviously would have been a very nice get, too. Since we just know KW wasn't going to get Donaldson anyway, it's pointless to even think about.

Kang obviously would have been a very nice get, too. Since we just know KW wasn't going to get Donaldson anyway, it's pointless to even think about.

We can't even quite be bad enough to know when to lose. The funny thing in all of this is that it will wipe out a decent percentage of moves that Hahn and Co. might have been tempted to make, so that's not a bad thing. The biggest concern has to be that taking some of those options off the board will force the White Sox to make a trade like the proposed one for Todd Frazier that will end up causing the team to not only tread water, but really push contention into close to fantasyland and force the inevitable trades of Sale and/or Abreu a year or two down the line.

QUOTE (fathom @ Oct 3, 2015 -> 10:04 AM) Yep, Betts quietly had a great year (5 WAR). I've said all along it would have to be a package of something like Betts, E. Rodriguez, Swihart and a good prospect. Unfortunately I don't think Boston would do something like that. Nor should they, with all their abundant resources, the number of pitchers on the market this year...they're essentially in the same position as the Cubs last off-season. As badly as the Porcello, Ramirez and Sandoval moves went for them, they're always one great off-season away from being back in instant contention again, although Toronto's going to be a tough out for the near future.

http://www.southsidesox.com/2015/10/3/9443...t-robin-ventura Says it better than most could on the subject of Ventura. Also, it's not clear that Ventura received an extension of any sort, just that he's being "retained" as the manager for next season...with the obvious concern now that the new bench coach (let's say, Jose Valentin or McEwing if he doesn't go to the Mariners) then automatically starts out as the back-up QB and the pressure's going to be immense on the team (regardless of what they do in the off-season) to get off to a much better start than in 2015. As things stand right now, they're going to be picked for last place (behind DET) by about 80% of the baseball writers out there. And that woul be the case even with Yasiel Puig and Iwakuma/Latos coming on board, possibly.

Bumgarner has a decent chance to merit consideration for the Hall of Fame if he can sustain his recent level of pitching another five years, but guys like Cain, Hudson, Peavy and Lincecum became shades of their former selves and they still won. Sure, they had Sandoval as well, but it will be hard to name more than a couple of position players from that starting roster a decade from now. What will stand out is the pitching, Posey and Sandoval.

Saying someone is evil is a little over the top. You can take pretty much every politician apart other than Jimmy Carter, and he was arguably one of the five worst presidents of all-time. Taking a quote from a Secret Secret agent (probably with an axe to grind, maybe he was relieved from her detail or caught up in one of the numerous scandals over the past couple of decades?) isn't going to convince anyone to compare her with Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Hitler and Joseph Goebbels. It's not a popularity contest. For every good trait of Bill Clinton as a politician or intellectually, there are just as many "evil/manipulative/lawyerly" ones that always worked to his detriment and will forever stain his two terms in office. Let's face it, the same characteristics in men...women always get described as "b----es."