caulfield12

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.

Carlos has a better slider when he's 100% on his game. Equally confident bordering on cocky. In the future, maybe you can say he's cooler under pressure, perhaps...physical build/stamina in his favor as well. Chris' offspeed stuff isn't nearly as hard breaking but it can be equally effective. More like a slurve at times. And Sale is in a different zip code in terms of control of his full repertoire.

On one side, the Royals have homefield. They've got the balanced offense to manufacture runs instead of scoring in bunches. Teams like the Cubs or Blue Jays would be even more susceptible to dominant pitching. The Royals make a lot more contact and they have experience From lasy year as well. Basically, it will come down to the Royals' pen vs. the Mets' starters. Obviously the Royals have to start out 2-0 or 1-1 or they be in danger of getting blown out of the series early. Volquez, in particular, hasn't pitched well against the Mets in his career. Cueto's around a 4 ERA in 65 ip. Volquez is closer to 6.

QUOTE (High Mileage @ Oct 24, 2015 -> 04:41 AM) Eeeewwwwwwwwwwww. Well, at least you have one good team to cheer for... You might have to change to Sporting KC or KU basketball from the doomed Chiefs, though.

Haha. I wonder if the White Sox were playing the Mets whether more Royals or Tigers fans would go against their fellow AL team allegiance. I mean, we do generally cheer for the AL team in the All-Star game even when the Sox suck, right? Can't imagine many preferring the Cubs to the Royals...Harrelson would scold those fans, in particular. http://www.nj.com/mets/index.ssf/2015/10/m...anti-gay_b.html Cheering for the Mets and Murphy is like cheering for the Braves and John Rocker...this is getting into an interesting area of psychology where people have become so sensitive we can now retroactively criticize someone from a political correctness standpoint in their fifteen minutes of fame for something they didn't say recently. So all of a sudden cheering for the Mets means tacit support of anti-gay bigotry when Matt Damon said even more controversial things about gays in Hollywood (Rupert Everett) recently and nobody is boycotting The Martian.

Discuss. I'm going to predict a 50/50 split.

I thought High Mileage was a Twins' fan? Maybe confusing him with someone else.

I know Greg will pick the Mets just to show his anti-anti KC bias, haha. Four or five houses lost and counting. It would have been weird to see everyone cheering for KC against the Cubs. Now we'll have a 50/50 split I'd guess. And 20-25% of the thread post counts. Davis collected the save after sitting out more than an hour because of a rain delay in the eighth inning. He helped camouflage a colossal blunder by Yost before the rain came. The eighth inning was a catastrophe wrought by inclement weather and ill-advised bullpen usage. Holding a two-run lead heading into the eighth, Yost chose Ryan Madson to pitch instead of sending in Davis for a six-out save. Yost did so despite a sizable layoff for Davis, who had pitched only once in this series. Yost did so despite Madson’s pitiable history against the Blue Jays, who hit .600 against him in four regular-season games this year. Yost did so even though Davis already recorded one six-out save this postseason, in Game 4 against Houston, and even though a victory allowed for three days off until the World Series. At this point, the rain intervened. The game entered a delay that lasted 45 minutes. The weather may have played a role in Yost’s thought process, as he did not want to lose Davis for the ninth inning due to the weather. Even so, he still chose to expose Madson to the best hitters on Toronto’s lineup, rather than deploying Davis, an All-Star and perhaps the best reliever in the American League. Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/sports/mlb/kansa...l#storylink=cpy Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/sports/mlb/kansa...l#storylink=cpy Imagine the treatment from local beat writers if they'd lost?

They won because of their offensive balance, ten guys on the roster at 87 or higher ops+, including six at 120-130 in Cain, Moustakas, Hosmer, Gordon, Morales and Zobrist. That leaves Escobar (Mvp for the series), Perez and Rios, all three of them former All-Stars. And Escobar in two seasons in the playoffs already has 36 hits in 26 games...not bad for your seventh or eighth best hitter. The last two ALCS mvps in Greinke and Escobar came for Greinke, by the way, along with Odorizzi. That's good scouting. The Odorizzi was packaged with Myers for Shields and Wade Davis. They had just enough starting pitching in key moments, and then Herrera and Davis covering for Holland's absence. Other than that, it's all about speed, defense, execution and persistence in the face of adversity.

Last year it was luck. This year the umpiring. Next year will be...? Price didn't pitch poorly at all, but he was one fat Madson pitch to Bautista from being 0-8 in all 8 of his post-season starts. He has a tendency to be very streaky within a start...no way I'd give that dude $200 million.

QUOTE (pettie4sox @ Oct 23, 2015 -> 10:28 PM) What about on Navarro? Whatever I hope the Mets steamroll them. f*** THE ROYALS KC has the advantage in every area but starting pitching. NY maybe more classic home run hitters but KC also has nine guys in a row that are offensive threats if you include Alex Rios.

QUOTE (pettie4sox @ Oct 23, 2015 -> 10:21 PM) Who? Josh Donaldson. Of course, he figured into last year's wild card game as well with the A's. Pretty sure he made the final out in that game and Perez's huge go ahead hit went past him. Escobar already has 36 post season hits in 26 games. Second all-time for KC to Brett's 56.

Now the Royals can start Cueto at home Tuesday and either Volquez or Ventura Wednesday. Probably Ventura. Don't have to worry about Cueto on the road until Game 4/5. Another approach would be hold Cueto for Game 2 and then potential Game 6. That would mean Volquez, Cueto, Ventura, C. Young, Volquez, Cueto and Ventura. Lots of different permutations. Assuming Chris Young would get a second post-season start. Yost might want to get Cueto back out on the mound as quickly as possible. Coast to coast from Game 1 onwards this year.

Wow. Shades of El Duque against the Red Sox extricating himself from that situation after sitting nearly an hour in the dugout.

Osuna was down 3-0 against Moustakas and recovered to keep from getting blown out of the inning completely. The Royals with the best pen in the game will have to blow two saves in one game in order not to get to the World Series.

Bautista had a brain cramp...threw to second instead of Goins down the line. Jirschele was going to hold up the runner, Cain.