caulfield12

And Hoiberg's the automatic solution?

QUOTE (chitownsportsfan @ May 14, 2015 -> 06:47 PM) yea any talk of "scapegoat" is ridiculous. He's been historically awful. You can't have that. Let's just put it this way. They have zero solutions for the defensive struggles of Eaton, Flowers/Soto, Avi and Alexei in Charlotte or BIRM. They DO have the option of playing Beckham, Bonifacio (not that he's a Gold Glover, either) and Sanchez more often at 2B and 3B. (And no, bringing up Rondon to play SS isn't a solution, either.)

Doesn't Paciorek live in Atlanta? I could be wrong. Or Detroit? I wouldn't want to make that long trip either, unless I was already out in California. Jack McDowell has been on the periphery a few times as well, but perhaps he's too outspoken/controversial for JR's taste.

QUOTE (fathom @ May 14, 2015 -> 07:02 PM) Lots of good arms, but now with Rodon called up, who do you project to be a starter at the big league level? To me, Montas is absolutely a reliever. Danish is 50/50, as he's going to have to find a way to get lefties out. Adams is likely a starter, but he's a long ways away. Nobody besides the iffy possibilities of Erik Johnson and Beck (also more likely a reliever). If you start talking about Winston-Salem, more possibilities but 1 1/2 - 2 seasons away. Actually, other than Fry....not much to be excited about. Dykstra doesn't have overwhelming stuff. Wheeler and Ynoa have their fans, too...but, once again, nobody's projecting Ynoa as a starter anymore.

Is there ANY example over the last decade where we've handled young players extremely well (and, no, the response had better not be Alexei Ramirez or Jose Abreu) in terms of their promotion schedule and development.....??? This feels like 2006, where Anderson's offense suddenly became a problem in the 2nd half when the rest of the team started struggling. Micah became the scapegoat for the bad D, instead of guys like Eaton, Flowers/Soto, Alexei, Avi, Conor, etc. It also feels like a repeat of last season, when they pulled the plug on Semien. The problem is that the young player always suffers when we're selling the fanbase that we're competing...whereas the even bigger problems are never addressed. Oh, well.

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/gameday/index.jsp?g...&mode=video Trout robbed a home run and then made an even much better play catching a flare and then gunning down Carlos Gonzalez at the plate from medium-depth CF while off-balance. Defense wins! (Poor Rockies, 11 losses in a row now).

The new Mad Max movie has only 1 negative review out of around 120 at RT (and yet there doesn't seem to be a huge buzz about it...maybe Tom Hardy just doesn't have a big enough fanbase/awareness yet?). Pitch Perfect 2, which is widely expected to win the box office battle this weekend, is around 75%, which is still not too bad for a sequel.

It was very hard to pick up in the Quad Cities...especially at night. Nothing like the days of 670 WMAQ.

This move is fine, whatever. They should never have tried it from the beginning in a year they were attempting to contend, though. Everyone throughout the offseason said he didn't have enough AAA success or experience, so why the rush when the defensive fundamentals just wasn't there yet? My biggest concern is that Beckham and Bonifacio play a lot now....the team finishes 5 games under .500 and the organization still has no clue about who should be playing 2B next year and ends up picking up Emilio's 2016 option, lol. Hopefully it's very clear at the end of the year who should be the starter...not one of those situations where we're hoping and praying, like with Tyler Flowers and Conor.

http://screenrant.com/avengers-age-of-ultr...ding-explained/

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 13, 2015 -> 07:59 PM) I've decided that I think it needs another 20-30 minutes, I think it was just too heavily edited. Make that a 2 hour 50 minute movie and they can suddenly delve more into the Stark/Ultron relationship, they can actually tell something about Thor's vision (My word that was underdone), etc. I'd really like to see a "Director's cut". That whole thing with Thor and the cave was seriously just a blip on the radar....Whedon fought for and forced it into the story, they wanted to cut it and it turned out being yet another plot-line that didn't go anywhere because of costs/corporate editing. It almost seemed like Thor wasn't even in the movie, except for some one-liners. (Actually, my wife remarked that the sense of humor was missing from this one as well...all things considered, it's a highly profitable missfire that will be looked at historically as simply setting up the Civil War movie, mostly pleasant looking and mildly amusing filler). The whole "Hawkeye domestic bliss" and "Hulk/Widow" thing didn't really work, either. The first five to ten minute sequence, I thought I was in a virtual reality 3D movie with 360 degree perspective...which was COOL, but it just felt like an excuse to show off new tech rather than an integral plot point.

When will Wright be back? I noticed that Neuwenheis or whatever his name is was hitting more insects with his beard than putting balls in play.

Except it's pretty hard to argue that letting Ramirez go and/or trading him is going to lead to a better team next year. We'll forget about Semien for the moment. Anderson, Carlos Sanchez, Saladino and Leury...none of them are equipped to be an everyday SS next year for a playoff-competitive team. They'd have to get extremely fortunate to spend less than $10 million on the problem, IMO.

Peralta breaks up no hitter. 15 k's through 6 2/3.

QUOTE (ptatc @ May 13, 2015 -> 06:11 PM) Hopefully he'll get it, the no hitter jinx takes effect and he'll be bad the rest of the season. Well, he was pretty bad (compared to last year, ERA around 4 and no wins/run support) for the first 6 starts this season, so I wouldn't count on that happening.

Furious 7, I'm sad to say...was actually more entertaining than Avengers 2. Just too many storylines, too much CGI, no Coulson...it was just lacking something in the chemistry department. Too disjointed? You don't go Marvel movies these days for cohesive/logical plots, but I would watch Furious 7 five times before I'd want to watch Avengers again. Was a bit too reminiscent of IM 3. The self-created villain was just too convenient, too, although Spader's voice work was great.

QUOTE (LDF @ May 13, 2015 -> 05:39 PM) Beane did it with a stricter budget than what was given to the sox and did well. Balti has done well with an owner who only see the budget worst than Oak Alt been doing good without the idea of how much money they have, where they are going to play. basic 3-4 yrs of an uncertain know entity, the backside of Alt baseball. look at the big picture, not what the final line is saying, but the whole story. Baltimore has spent a ton of money under PETER Angelos, just not wisely until the last 2-3 years (part of it goes to Showalter).

QUOTE (Brian @ May 13, 2015 -> 05:43 PM) You can't walk off in the top of the 9th! Newwwwwb Fine...you might want to watch what's going on in CLE right now anyway.

Addison Reed just gave up a walk-off Grand Slam to the Nationals' stellar young CF, Michael Taylor.

QUOTE (LDF @ May 13, 2015 -> 05:26 PM) i was talking to my family and was mentioning that the sox, instead of raising the prices, they should have lowered it a little across the board, and fixed the bad PR they got with the ozzie and son thing. no matter what, part of the major problem is the money and the so called not having it..... the biggest problem i thought the sox had was / IS the mismanagement of the FO!!!!! they need someone like Beane, the pres of Balti, someone... even look into the success Atl has done. Beane went through almost a decade of rebuilding, Baltimore 25 years....Atlanta will be rebuilding for 3-4 years while waiting on the benefits of their new suburban stadium.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 13, 2015 -> 05:18 PM) Didn't arrive in Detroit until 2008, was a Marlin. I just remember Verlander's impact, more than anything. I-Rod and Ordonez were the two best "name" hitters, looking back. Thames, Granderson, Monroe, Inge (27!) and Carlos Guillen (monster OPS) all had 19 homers or more. And Chris Shelton was hot for two weeks, lol.

QUOTE (LDF @ May 13, 2015 -> 05:12 PM) i don't know if it is me, but one of the other reasons i got to dislike the owners of the sox is the backhanded insult they have made regarding the fans. like you mention and the other time of the sox are not fans if they do not support the team. i may be paraphrasing this last one, but the point is, we, or i have been a die hard fan and i will support it, when they put the product on the field. i have done that for many yr as a season ticket holder with 4 tickets. so did he ever come out and thank us. not in promo's but thank us for being there? if they do not put the product on the field, i will watch them on tv..... that was my feeling when i was in chicago. even this yr, i mention that if i was back in chi, i would have brought tickets. inspite of not getting another pitcher and catcher. They've made MUCH more of a concerted effort in recent years to show appreciation for the fans, but it feels like "too little, too late." It's only when they were starting to get desperate, dropped dynamic pricing, realized they couldn't get shut out on Sundays and started dropping prices around the board, but by then the product on the field wasn't an easy sell no matter what the ticket price. The funny thing to me is that over all these years, I've always felt the only truly successful marketing (other than the giveaways) has been the weekend fireworks games. All of those other promotions, like Dog Day and Elvis Night, were just window dressing and copies of what numerous minor league teams had already invented and been doing successfully on a small-scale basis for years. It's also little things. They never had a toll-free number for tickets, since I was in middle school. Most MLB teams treated their fans with more respect than forcing them to pay money to call to buy tickets. Maybe they can't do Thirsty Thursdays and Two for Tuesdays (because of the fear of ruining the family atmosphere), but going back to some of the discount (Mon-Thur) day/night promotions (Pepsi) and dollar dogs/Buck Nights or even "bundling" really good food offers with the tickets (like the A's do) couldn't do anything but help.

QUOTE (ptatc @ May 13, 2015 -> 05:07 PM) I don't think anyone would argue that an owner who doesn't care about losing alot of money to win would help any team win. However, these are few and far between. even ilitch who you set as an exmple had 13 losing seasons in a row before a winning season and has had 14 losing season in 24 years as ownership. The JR group has done better than that just not in the last 4 which are the tigers only 1st place finishes under this ownership. So an owner willing to go into the negative to win isn't really the answer. Right, but it's also not fair to say the Tigers have "better fans" either, because of the unique circumstances surrounding "super fan/hands on" owners like Illitch, Mark Cuban or George Steinbrenner. And they did make it to the World Series in 2006 (largely due to Verlander and Cabrera, two huge superstars), which was enough to sustain interest (2009 they were in the race up until the final day, similar to the 2008/10/12 seasons for the White Sox) until 2011.

Melky Cabrera has a lower SLG than OBP. Ooops. Along with Melky, we've got Flowers, Ramirez, Micah, Alexei (moving up) and Eaton all in the bottom quartile of everyday hitters OPS-wise. Gillaspie (despite the horrid defense) looks practically good compared to the rest of the bottom-dwellers statistically. Then you've got Avi's BABIP thing and LaRoche's can't hit lefties thing and Jose's impossible bar or standard to live up to (he needs to be a Top 10 hitter in MLB for the White Sox to compete, not 40-50ish).

QUOTE (chitownsportsfan @ May 13, 2015 -> 04:33 PM) It's a huge red flag no matter what his other tools are. If you can't command the strike zone MLB pitchers aren't going to throw you many strikes. I'm high on Anderson overall but he needs to start taking more walks. Not a ton, just a few more. I'd be happy with 30-40 a year in MLB. Just enough to keep pitchers honest. I will add that I have zero faith in the Sox to develop any sort of strikezone command in their prospects. It's not something they do well, at all. It's also interesting that Bob Uecker and the Brewers' radio people had ZERO idea what Harold Baines did for the White Sox now. They had to look it up. Assistant hitting coach. They said, "boy, was he a great hitter, near HofF caliber except for the injuries and time spent as a DH" but had zero clue that he was even a coach still or what it was he was supposedly doing for the organization. I find that a bit telling.