caulfield12

Shades of Juan Uribe/Bobby Jenks vs. Orlando Palmeiro...

Gonzalez hitting LHP at a .323 clip so far this year. Survived. Hard to believe that Duke is getting paid to retire lefties when they're averaging over .230 against him. You should have an average below .200 against lefties and high .270-.290 against RHB with that profile.

Hahn's going to have to find another reliever somewhere... This is going to start to hurt the collective psyche of the team if there's nobody to place confidence in OTHER than Robertson at the back end.

That's fine, but Albers can't pitch two innings (at least, it would be extremely ill-advised).

Now we have a problem figuring out who is going to get us to Robertson. At least it's still tied for the moment. Don't trust Duke at all, and Jennings is largely untested in high-leverage situations (at least with the White Sox, and when the team is in first place).

Zobrist broke up the no-hitter.

Why didn't they just work around White with a 3-0 count and the bottom of the order coming up...? Eaton came to play tonight. Good defense there, it's become a shocker when there's a misplay (like the ball in NYC that got over his head off the bat of Aaron Hicks).

Well, the big plus is we don't get another blown save added to the four from last week... You just have to go out there and shut down the opponent when you take the lead like that (especially w/ four two-out hits in a row). Not to say we're going to lose, obviously, but discouraging nonetheless.

Abreu has been struggling all season long with those RISP situations, especially with two outs. (I guess he did have one really hot two week stretch where he was mostly hitting singles and doubles...so there was that.)

Gonzalez/White/Castro for the Astros. Rodon will be pitching batter to batter. Some will argue they should have just started the inning with a reliever if he does give up a big hit or walk.

There we go...the White Sox "keep the line moving" offense from a couple of weeks ago.

Warning track power from Jackson. White Sox have hit some liners tonight at fielders but you also have to make or force your own luck sometimes.

Got out of it, but, thanks to Jackson, Saladino and some self-inflicted damage...almost 95 pitches and we're just through 5 innings. Obviously, this brings in the troublesome part of the White Sox bullpen. Will be interesting to see if Ventura plays this game like he has a tie/lead or goes with the second unit. Thanks, Twins' pen. Looking like the Indians, Royals and Tigers are all on their way (at least so far) to victories if things stand.

Speaking of defense.... Rodon threw a couple of fastballs at 96 and 97 there. "There's danger/trouble here Sheree." Paciorek

At least Rodon seems to be pitching much better tonight...(hopefully that won't jinx him).

Dreaded "hangover" game effect. 4 blown saves last week and Frazier out of the line-up, offense might be hard to come up with even against Keuchel. Looking at that line-up, it feels like the 2012-14 all over again. And the defense just hasn't been as sharp, even though some of these plays aren't turning into errors (see Sands in LF a week ago)...Jackson, Eaton, etc. Not playing terribly, have been in every game, but playing just poorly enough compared to the season's earlier standards to lose these games.

Applebee's has wood-fired grills now, not sure about Lawrence, KS yet. My issues with Obama: 1) Guantanamo Bay took forever 2) We never really forcefully went after anyone on Wall Street or limited the control of the banking industry 3) His foreign/war policy in terms of drone strikes increasing and for half of his presidency not being distinguishable from Bush He does deserve a ton of credit for pushing through the automakers bailouts...that was a huge win, that Trump would never give the Dems credit for. In fact, that's a weakness for Trump, all Hillary has to do is ask "Donald, wouldn't you have done the same you did four times in your business career and allow Detroit to go bankrupt?" Hard area for him. You keep talking about wanting to keep jobs in America? Do you see the inconsistency? Forcing hard-working Americans who can't afford health care to pay fines...that just doesn't seem like something a Democrat would or should do, it feels a little harsh and cruel. He also deserves SOME credit for pushing the environmental aspects as far as they can go...although progress against entrenched interests is a tough one. Did he deserve the Nobel Prize? I'm sure the committee in Oslo, if they could go back and do it over again, would say that was one of their most dubious selections in recent decades.

I forgot Phegley and Bassitt, although he's also on the shelf. As to Kylo Ren's point, no, it's not about what we missed out on now. It's the fact that our farm system is actually producing some positive results at the major league level for the first time in what feels like a decade. That's a good thing. It means other GM's will trust acquiring our talent more than in the past.

We're almost to the point where we can field a team of former Sox prospects. Trayce Thompson OF Micah Johnson 2B/OF Montas (granted, he's injured) Chris The Dragon Devenski SP Gio Gonzalez SP Marcus Semien SS Daniel Hudson Closer Chris Young OF Chris Carter 1B/DH Josh Phegley C Chris Large Mouth Bassitt, SP

QUOTE (SCCWS @ May 17, 2016 -> 04:09 PM) Houston is a bad team. So hopefully rodon dominates them and rights his funk. Sure, but they just went toe to toe with the Red Sox...and their offense is really starting to come alive. Pitching, yeah...that's an issue. But this won't be an easy series.

Wouldn't count on the Indians losing this one tonight. Salazar has the 3rd best ERA in the AL, among the nastiest stuff, lowest BAA...4-0 Indians in the second inning. Ironically, Simon was 4-0 against the Indians last year.

There's 25% in America that just hate Obama and won't give him a chance because of their racial OR political views or both. I do think he was under-prepared to deal with the partisan rancor and ended up using a lot of his power up the first 2 years...I'm not sure even if he was more respectful towards the Republicans in Congress that it would have made a difference, since their philosophy has always been to obstruct/deny/tear down the country while there's a DEM in office and wait patiently for another opportunity. But a lot of those who dislike Obama because of his race won't come right out and say it so directly. That's why they love Trump. Obama isn't patriotic enough (didn't wear the American pin). We gave away everything to other countries (the free trade agreements started with NAFTA but are mostly a Republican conceit which has decimated the working class/unions...Obama does have some culpability there). Obama acts white/is an Uncle Tom. Obama's a Muslim. Obama is a foreigner. Obama hates America and loves to apologize for our unique American greatness to the rest of the world. Obama's made our enemies more emboldened (Donald Trump will magically show up and just do "better" deals, like Iran, for example). Obama hates Israel. Obama's wife wears the pants in that family. Obama's all talk and no action, "si se puede/yes we can" hasn't led to any real, meaningful change. America's more partisan than it ever has been because Obama's too arrogant and disrespectful to Republicans. Obama plays too much golf. The list goes on and on and on.

And it's not just the WGN TV aspect. Look at the Braves, they had the same advantage with WTBS/TNT and even branded themselves, "America's Team." They even had that incredible 14 year playoff run (albeit only 1 title), but I doubt the number of current Cubs' fans vs. Braves' fans nationally (especially outside of their home viewing regions) must be running something like 10 or 15 to 1 in favor of the Cubs over the Braves for favorite team. Part of the falloff, imo, was due to Ted Turner selling the team. He was an iconic owner (and memorably, manager for one game).

QUOTE (Greg Hibbard @ May 17, 2016 -> 02:09 PM) LOL at what this thread became, and LOL at "2 playoff appearances in 15 years." I guess we will just forget that one of those two won the world series, and that 2006 sported a 90 win team that finished in 3rd, and that there were a few other very near misses with 86-88 win teams. During the first 12 years of this front office, the Sox averaged 85 wins a season. The last three seasons have been the definition of retooling, largely due to LH power hitters named Adam crapping the major league bed in an unforeseen way. I think it's more accurate to say that almost every young hitting prospect we've brought up through the system (along with Viciedo and eventually Ramirez) just didn't get the job done. The players we selected to fill holes (Gillaspie, Flowers, Beckham, DeAza, Avi, Viciedo, etc.) were fundamentally flawed either offensively or defensively. The players we traded brought us largely disappointing returns. And the lack of offense, speed, defense, fundamentals and bullpen caught up with the team and induced a losing environment. Then we had hugely disappointing performances from our free agents last year, other than Robertson. We survived simply because of Eaton, Abreu, Sale, Quintana and Rodon, but those five players weren't enough to counteract all the bad. To blame it all on either coaching/managing, talent or Dunn/LaRoche...it just was a combination of systemic failure across the board.

GreenSox, almost all of those players acquired for the 2005 team were "veterans" or in their prime guys. Not young players, unless you count Uribe from 2004. Contreras, Dye, Iguchi, Pods, Vizcaino, El Duque, Hermanson, AJ Pierzynski...they were all 28-32 year olds. They certainly weren't building a YOUNG team, other than homegrown players like Crede and Rowand. Everett was another veteran. Jenks was a waiver claim. And then you had McCarthy come up at the end of the year and Brian Anderson as the top prospect. Freddy Garcia was technically young, but had a ton of wear and tear on his arm by the time we got him from the M's. Luckily he had his good stuff for 1 1/2 seasons.