caulfield12

83 pitches now. Bullpen countdown should be starting soon... Cabrera throws out his 2nd runner in the last week. Not even close at 2nd. Now 10/18 against Q...but 1 for his last 17 overall with 8 k's. Slumping. Streaky hitter, obviously. Almost hit it out, gave the fans something to cheer. Quintana sitting on 85 pitches going to the 7th.

Yeah, KW's current popularity with the fanbase is somewhere between Omar Minaya's in PHA (although he actually made some good moves there at the end trading for prospects) and the two main presidential candidates in 2016.

90 and 91 mph sliders making Erik Johnson, John Danks, Putnam and Zack Duke jealous. Somehow Alex Avila has only 2 RBI's in nearly 70 AB's. That's not so good. Quintana at 73 pitches. Probably 2, 3 innings tops left in his arm. Then who knows what fates the gods have in store for the Sox faithful.

Take that back. Harvey 14 1/3 career IP now against Sox, no runs yet. Ty Kelly with his first MLB hit...over 3000 minor league plate appearances, 27-28 year old rookie journeyman.

When it rains, it pours. Meanwhile, the rest of the AL Central is creating their own good luck in recent weeks to all get back in it. But at least Lawrie has pink vampire fangs. Good giveaway item for the Sox promotions department if there are any fans left in August and September.

Yeah, they had guys like Zumaya and Rodney, but they rarely all functioned together as a unit...that was Detroit's biggest Achilles' heel over the last decade. Greg Holland didn't have dominant stuff, as well. You don't have to throw the ball through to be effective. Obviously, Herrera throws hard, but guys like Hochevar and Soria don't throw any harder than Albers/Jones/Kahnle/Petricka.

Sisco, Masset, Aarsdma, MacDougal, etc.

QUOTE (Condor13 @ May 30, 2016 -> 12:01 PM) Perfect through 4 for Harvey....anyone not think this was gonna happen He was perfect through 7 in his only other start against the Sox in 2013. 1 run surrendered in 11+ IP.

15 of the last 17 White Sox games decided by 1 or 2 runs. Cespedes now 10/16 career-wise against Quintana...including 4 homers with DET (think they were in consecutive at-bats over a couple of games).

QUOTE (Lip Man 1 @ May 30, 2016 -> 10:43 AM) For right or wrong JR has never cared what the media thinks, what the agents think or what the fans think. And some of that is certainly good, as a business he has to look at it this way. But historically under this ownership there has always been a streak of arrogance, 'we're smarter than all of you...' 'we know what we're doing, you don't'. It goes all the way back to EE and his comments about 'building a first class organization' on the press conference the day they took over insulting the Veeck family. History again shows they really haven't built a 'first class organization' based on the on-field record. Plus Kenny is about as arrogant as they come. The former PR / marketing director Rob Gallas was as arrogant and taciturn as they come. This can't really be called a 'fan-friendly' organization not based on the record and comments about said fan base over the year particularly from Kenny and Cooper. Mark Thankfully his son Chris isn't quite as bad...he used to work in PR/media with the Hickory Crawdads about 20 years ago when they were the White Sox SAL affiliate but not sure what he's up to now. Taciturn is being too generous.

You can buy Albers being tired...Ventura has burned him to the ground with the absence of Petricka. Other bullpen pitchers, they've just been ineffective or used in the wrong moments. Harvey at 97-98 MPH? Wonder if the Mets cranked up their gun to make him feel more confident in his stuff...? Does anyone know if it's normally that hot? Hitters are 16/43 against Harvey's sliders....last year, it was around .160 over 100 ab's. Hanging some offspeed stuff. Lawrie hit on the hands but swung at it in self-defense...?

http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/batvspitch/_...8/jimmy-rollins There's Ventura's argument for the presence of Rollins in the line-up. Kind of hard to argue with those numbers, and the amount of familiarity he has with the NL in general for so many years.

They just got rid of Kahnle...he was the hardest thrower on the team. Also tried Miguel Cleto. Velocity doesn't mean anything unless you have two pitches you can throw for strikes. And the confidence to throw either one at any time in the count. In many ways, Zach Putnam has been one of the most effective relievers in baseball the last 2+ years with relatively pedestrian stuff.

Not to mention Rollins isn't exactly dominant against RH power-pitching types...of course, Harvey's only been in the 93-95 MPH range in recent games, compared to the mid to upper 90's. I guess the argument from Ventura's going to be that Rollins is more familiar with the NL East and NL in general that Saldino, something along those lines...doesn't want Rollins to get out of his offensive rhythm, etc. David Wright the to the DL (back again?) James Loney will join the team for Monday's game (probably also sitting because of Q Monday)

So Jerry Sands was DHing and hitting 5th...now it's Shuck in the middle of the order? Really? Jackson's day-to-day I take it? Poor Kahnle, Ventura didn't do him any favors at all on Satuday, and then he's the one who has to wear it. Do we really need three lefties? I guess so...but it would be more helpful to have another RHR we could rely upon about now. As it stands, Zach Putnam's the best available option until Hahn can make another move. And we're really not going to give Saladino more chances to play at least 4-5 times per week with how good he's looked recently? Hmmmmm....

http://nypost.com/2016/05/30/jeurys-famili...rights-harveys/ Mets' closer Familia also had two very rough outings this past weekend against the Dodgers and Chase Utley (making a late charge for HOF consideration).

http://chicago.suntimes.com/sports/white-s...ventura-chants/ And that it applies to the Bulls/Forman as well. Kind of disheartening, in a way. On one hand, they shouldn't do something just because it's popular with fans...unless it will also lead to a better performance overall from the team/organization. That's laudable, not to be overly influenced by the day-to-day noise of a season. On the other hand, it's a HUGE reason why the fans over the last decade have started peeling away or looking for other sources of entertainment. It's kind of, "take it or leave it," and that's not exactly the best way to build a brand...this defiant type of pose, "you're stuck with us" and if we want to hire managers with no big league experience that don't even seem that interested, if we want to sit out the free agent market when there's a plethora of good options or even not spend the "LaRoche dividend," that's the way it goes.

http://www.southsidesox.com/2016/5/30/1181...st-k-c-meltdown Would challenge the remaining Ventura defenders to listen to minutes 10:00-20:00 and roughly 24-30:00 and give a rebuttal. The first section is about the pro's and con's of keeping Robin, why they might be waiting (team is on the road, Memorial Day weekend, KW/Hahn haven't been able to get to NYC to figure out or diagnose what's going on, whether it's just a KC Royals thing or are they going to struggle with the Mets and Tigers on the road as well?) Then they bring in Chris Cwik from Yahoo's Big League Stew to give an "outsider's perspective" and pretty much agreed with everything he said. No, firing the manager isn't always a panacea...a lot of times, there's no appreciable difference in team performance, it's more to pacify fans, etc. On the other hand, he takes Ventura and Hahn both to task and says their jobs should be on the line, which is also where many Sox fans are (although I think at this point Hahn has more defenders, KW's meddling, they believe he's finanically handcuffed by Reinsdorf, etc.) As far as the Ventura thing goes, though...there just aren't many compelling arguments left to make for why he should keep his job. From a White Sox historical perspective, this kind of losing is unprecedented...while some was due to rebuilding and bad Hahn decisions, he's blown opportunities in 2012, out of the gate in 2015 and now here again in 2016.

The problem is there's almost no deception in his delivery and once hitters can time his fastball and just watch sliders go by, knowing more are likely to end up as balls...eventually they'll time one.

Guess we get another chance with the Tigers this week...not going to be easy to get more than 1/3 in Comerica. On the plus side, we should have Sale and Quintana in that series.

Back to Saturday's game The other thing about this plate appearance is that I watched it twice, plus all the replays, and I've never once been 100% convinced Cain was actually safe at first. I understand the White Sox still had the lead here, but they had to be feeling like things were starting to get away from them, and if Cain was out, that's the end of the game. I can't believe they didn't even ask for a moment to check the replay. If I was them, I'd've asked for an umpire review just on general principle here. They had nothing to lose and everything to gain. Saw this on-line....why didn't Ventura challenge? (I was sleeping through this whole episode at 4 a.m. in China)...was he out? Why didn't Ventura at the very least go out and try to break up the momentum of the Royals somehow at that point? The other weird thing was that the game-winning hit by Eibner had been in play for three consecutive hits for the Royals before Eibner was the fourth one to get a hit. Why didn't Kahnle throw it out or just feel that ball was "bad luck" and follow the typical baseball superstition/s when things are going against you?

Ummm...if Anderson didn't average 88-90 MPH with the fastball and had stellar/pinpoint control, sure. He's not much better than Scott Carroll. In fact, Carroll mentally might be better suited to the long man role than Johnson. And this is one area where the Montas trade hurts us (of course, he's on the DL for LAD)...but he or Fulmer or perhaps Tyler Danish all looked like ideal candidates to pitch out of the bullpen at some point this season. Webb/Beck being disappointments has also been a pretty big blow to bullpen depth.

Not sure what conclusion to draw from that....two of the Top 10 players in baseball this year support Drake LaRoche? At the rate they're going, they might have to bring him or Adam back, lol.

You can forget about Robertson going anywhere with that contract. And, in fairness, it's probably not the wisest move in the world to put your closer in a 6 run game in the 9th...because he's not geared up for pitching in that situation typically. The White Sox manage the bullpen correctly in the first game of the series, Robertson notches the save and they aren't forced to use him in a "non-save" situation on Saturday. Traditionally, the bullpen hasn't been the problem...we managed to use 11 rookies in 2012 and nearly won a division behind all that depth. Of course, if you look at the remaining members of that pen, almost all of them are already out of the majors leagues. In other words, it wasn't sustainable, at least not anymore than the 2005 pitching could hold up all the way through 2006. It also just goes to show you how having one member performing poorly on injured can throw off the whole pen. In this case, Petricka gave way to Albers and everything was fine again until Albers started to implode beginning with the Orioles' series. Then, once you have uncertainty in the 6th and 7th, it starts to roll downhill and affect the rest of the bullpen adversely. We also haven't done a great job signing lefties, with the likes of Duke and Kelly Downs struggling mightily. Belisario also comes to mind. Theoretically, with the addition of Nate Jones, the pen SHOULD be better because you were using Petricka and Putnam more the last couple of years to get through the 7th and 8th. And, as we've seen with Kahnle, just because you can throw 97-99 doesn't mean you can get away with just throwing that one pitch for strikes.

It will be Renteria THIS YEAR or nobody. Although somehow they might try to blame Thigpen as the bullpen coach... PITCHING MATCH-UPS for Sox this week Memorial Day (early start), Quintana vs. Harvey Tuesday, Latos vs. Matz Wednesday, Gonzalez vs. deGrom (uh-oh) Texas at CLE TB at KC Detroit at LAA