caulfield12

Rios That said, Zobrist and Morales were huge additions. Young vs. Matz (lhp) in Game 4 will be key, if they don't use Medlen or Duffy instead. Young is a bit more predictable, and a bigger change of pace from three hard throwers in a row. Blanton and Medlen essentially replaced Jason Vargas. Even if Familia=Davis, the Mets don't have anyone as good as Herrera or even Madson. Defensively, the Mets are a tick or two above average but nowhere close to KC.

QUOTE (Thad Bosley @ Oct 25, 2015 -> 08:20 AM) How much nicer would it be to be reading about Mr. Reinsdorf talking about how it felt to be hugging the William Harridge trophy AGAIN cuz he won the pennant AGAIN, and how electrified the Sox fan base was as a result. TV ratings and attendance going through the roof down there in KC. Wouldn't you rather be hearing the Chairman waxing eloquent about that same phenomenon going on with the Sox rather than him sharing his uninteresting point of view on whether the '05 WS had more of an impact on the city than the '85 Bears Super Bowl championship. Who the heck cares about any of that! LOL - win, darn you!! WIN! Start winning and talking about that already!!!!! Enough of the fluff! And Glass was more hated/reviled/despised than Reinsdorf ever was in Chicago. At least JR had Michael, Scottie and Phil to fall back on. Glass was basically Darth Vader. He was basically accused of bringing a Wal-Mart "cheap/maximizing profits" approach for at least a decade. He followed Ewing Kauffman, who was even more beloved in KC than Bill Veeck could ever be in Chicago because he gave KC all those great teams from 1976-85...but he was finally willing to admit they needed to bring in someone from an organization like the Braves who knew how to properly evaluate both talent and character. That he needed to hire experts to build things correctly from the ground up instead of extrapolating Wal-Mart systems methodologies to the operations of a professional baseball franchise without the advantage of economies of scale in the smallest media market in MLB.

The Red Sox won't have to give up that talent for Quintana when they can buy it on the FA market without wiping out 1/3rd or 1/4th of their top prospects.

While We're Young is an excellent film. Noah Baumbach is on a roll. Ben Stiller, Naomi Watts, Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried. Reminiscent of This is 40 but much better. This one was way out there but uniquely compelling. "The Tribe" Director: Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy Cast: Grigory Fesenko, Yana Novikova, Rosa Babiy Synopsis: A shy boy arrives at a boarding school for the deaf. There he tries to find his place in the hierarchy of the school community, which operates like a Mafiosi group ungoverned by the outside world. Verdict: We need more bold, purely cinematic films like “The Tribe.” Playing like an even more disturbing combination of “City of God” and “Lord of the Flies,” debut Ukrainian director Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy takes a potentially gimmicky conceit — all dialogue is spoken through sign language with no subtitles — and infuses it with dread, political subversion (it directly comments on current Ukrainian politics) and incredible filmmaking bravado. Nearly all scenes play out in impeccably choreographed long takes, with a camera that rarely stops moving — its style is akin to Michael Haneke’s “Code Unknown” and features a similar foreboding, disquieting sense that things are going to end badly. And what's so impressive is that although its formalism is so rigid, it rises well above gimmick to become a truly great, unique piece of cinema (and a very fine crime movie to boot), conjuring its own world, commenting on ours and giving the audience something actually, palpably new. Our Review: Jess' A grade Cannes review Release Date: Will play Sundance prior to a theatrical release and VOD via Drafthouse. http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/the...y-seen-20150107

There you have it. Greg just presented the World Series to the Royals on a golden platter. https://sports.yahoo.com/news/the-royals-ar...-100548685.html

http://www.kansascity.com/sports/spt-colum...le41341293.html Maybe Thad Bosley can use his persistence to deliver this column to JR before it's too late...

http://espn.go.com/mlb/playoffs2015/story/...sas-city-royals Kurkjian of EsPn picks Royals in 7...provides five compelling plot points for the series. It will be Cueto and Ventura at home and then Volquez in Game 3 in NYC. Mets are going Harvey, deGrom, Snydegaard and then presumably Matz. Royals will choose from Young, Medlen and Duffy for Game 4.

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.