caulfield12

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 20, 2014 -> 12:10 PM) I'm pretty sure you can't charge someone with a crime that isn't on the books. Or they could use a Federal civil rights violation charge.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 20, 2014 -> 12:10 PM) I'm pretty sure you can't charge someone with a crime that isn't on the books. The charge would probably be second-degree manslaughter, like the Oscar Grant/Fruitvale Station case.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 20, 2014 -> 12:07 PM) It isn't popular, but I wouldn't be surprised at all to see Dunn back on a much cheaper one year deal. What's the point?? I just don't see Dunn WANTING to come back to Chicago, or JR wanting him back. With all this retirement talk, he doesn't even sound like he's happy about finishing this season. It's bad enough we always hear stories Ventura isn't sure about managing long-term, we shouldn't invest another year in a DH who doesn't even feel excited to play anymore. On one hand, we've got Avisail Garcia busting his butt in rehab and hustling on every play, Dunn's pretty much the antithesis of that. What's next? Konerko will want to come back as player/coach in 2015?

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Aug 20, 2014 -> 11:55 AM) I've said this before and I'll say it again- who specifically do you all want when you ask for a lefty bat to replace Dunn? There just aren't many LH power hitters on the market. LaRoche...likely to extend in Washington Lind...aging, good average but where's the power? Rasmus....the next JD Drew bad long-term contract? Melky Cabrera....very good or great for 3 seasons in his career, below average for the other 5...PED's issues, 31 on Opening Day Nick Markakis...O's might want to keep him, but undoubtedly for less than $12 million per season if they make the playoffs...complementary player, good/solid, does everything pretty well but he's always been a 750ish OPS type of guy and he's going to be declining from now on. Victor Martinez...likely to re-up with the Tigers Pablo Sandoval...he's struggled this season, weight issues, don't have the same need for 3B we had going into 2014 Seth Smith...extended with Padres Cuddyer...likely to stay in Colorado, although a possibility Outfielders Norichika Aoki Emilio Bonifacio Melky Cabrera Nelson Cruz Michael Cuddyer Rajai Davis Chris Denorfia Jeff Francoeur Jonny Gomes Franklin Gutierrez Tony Gwynn Jr. Scott Hairston Torii Hunter Raul Ibanez Reed Johnson Ryan Ludwick * Nick Markakis * Darnell McDonald Mike Morse Colby Rasmus Alex Rios * Nate Schierholtz Grady Sizemore Seth Smith Alfonso Soriano Denard Span * Ichiro Suzuki Ryan Sweeney Josh Willingham Chris Young Delmon Young * players with options for 2015

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 20, 2014 -> 11:44 AM) Again, for Noesi this really doesn't express what he's actually done this season. He's on the verge of being a >1 WAR pitcher with the White Sox and a -0.3 WAR pitcher with the Rangers/Mariners this season, and that's as a pitcher who still has room to grow in this league. I wouldn't pay him $13.5 million for that performance and I wouldn't pencil him into my number 2 slot in the rotation, but if Noesi is a 1 WAR pitcher and James Shields or Justin Masterson is a 3 WAR pitcher, then we're talking about paying maybe 5/$100 to a guy who will add ~$10 million in value to the rotation. That's a very different question. Danks, yes, he remains a problem and I'm disappointed we didn't do something to deal with that problem at the trading deadline when maybe you could have gotten a team to pay a premium "win-now" price in terms of how much of that contract they'd pick up. I think those 2-3 terrible starts he had in July really submarined his trade value and forced Hahn's hand in terms of holding onto him. There were too many options out there who were affordable or whose contracts weren't longer-term commitments....guys like McCarthy, Capuano, Correia, Robert Hernandez/Fausto Carmona, Jake Peavy, etc.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Aug 20, 2014 -> 10:13 AM) No one is against spending money in FA in general, but many are against spending it simply for the sake of spending it, because that's how you end up painted in a corner. Hahn's plan is much larger than Chris Sale and Jose Abreu and how both fit into a "contention window" -- it's about building a healthy organization that can enjoy sustained success. Panicking and buying marginal upgrades at market rate simply because they were the best available is precisely how we ended up in this "mess" to begin with. I think that, fortunately, KW's willingness to pay out the nose for upgrades without long-term commitments has afforded us the ability to crawl out of the "rock bottom" phase of the rebuild sooner, but that doesn't mean we should forget the big picture in year two and start acting like Jim Hendry all of a sudden. That's all fine and good, but rebuilding and competing on the go requires more immediate results for the Sox fanbase. Everyone knows this. So while the Cubs were in a position to pass on those free agency markets due to timing issues, and put out some tentative "we will fix things with our pitching staff sometime between 18 to 24 months from now" mantras, that's not going to work for the Sox. Hahn never presented that blueprint of waiting from 2011 until 2017 for a World Series-contending team like Epstein and Hoyer have consistently done. Of course, he wasn't in a position to sell the future when the "shorter term" has always been more important to the White Sox as a means of running a business. Sooner or later, his hand is going to be forced. Remember last season when people were saying the Cubs simply HAVE to sign a starting pitcher. Well, they passed on Tanaka, and have maximized the values of Garza, Feldman, Samardzija and Hammel. They now have a potential ace in Arrieta who needs to be paired with Lester/Scherzer/Shields for their fans to really start to believe...

If they keep Danks in the rotation, then they're just a different version of the Cubs sitting on the Edwin Jackson contract and not bringing Kris Bryant up to the big leagues until June because of his Super-2 status. It's encouraging they would rather Rodon develops at the big league level, but if there's not an accompanying influx of talent (a 25-30 year old mixed with a couple of veterans, probably one a hitter and one for the bullpen), then it's another wait until next year. After Rodon, we have Hawkins, Anderson, Montas and Tyler Danish. Not four Top 20 caliber players. Not Buxton and Sano coming into this year. So it's not like they can say, hey, be patient, wait until 2017 for those guys to arrive, since the Sox fanbase has already lost quite a bit of confidence in the team's ability to produce a (drafted and incubated) solid/decent hitting prospect that's not an international free agent like Alexei or Abreu.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 20, 2014 -> 09:42 AM) I just think he's also really tired. There are also rumors about his foot/ankle bothering him again, and that he's concentrating more on just making contact and driving in runs, but that's just a theory out there in the media to explain that 18 game homerless stretch. If he is in pain, it's certainly now showing up in his defensive play at 1B, which is much improved. By the way, there are only five teams worse now in the major leagues in run differential...this team's not going to compete for anything until 2016, minus historical off-season spending, which would be completely unprecedented in the 30+ years of the JR regime.

They better hope Rodon is more Cory Kluber/Garrett Richards than the typical rookie pitcher. That's a lot of pressure. He's going to be constantly compared to Chris Sale, and this idea of bringing him up in 2014 seems ill-conceived. The White Sox are basically saying we believe in Rodon so much we're not going to add any free agents, it's on you to perform right out of the gate.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Aug 20, 2014 -> 09:07 AM) Why do you insist on bringing up attendance? It's like always the crux of your argument over and over and it's never, ever been that big of a deal. Reinsdorf's goal is to win, and it's quite clear that Hahn has a long term plan that the Sox ownership is comfortable with to maintain winning long term, but that involves taking a few lumps in the short term. When the Sox win - and do so consistently - they draw. This has been proven. The only times they've played well two consecutive seasons are 1993-94 and 2005-06. I hope you're right. The only comparison we can make is the falloff from the 1983 White Sox. They lost over half their attendance in the span of 5 seasons, going from 3rd in the American League in 1984 to 14th and barely over 1 million in 1989. It's a good comparison because, while there was no new stadium, that 1990 team had Ventura, Thomas (as a rookie) and many reasons to be optimistic as a White Sox fan with the influx of young talent. However, the 2015 team is going to have to finish at 90 games or better to duplicate that turnaround from 1,045,000 in 1989 to over 2,000,000 in 1990. How likely is that to happen?

QUOTE (fathom @ Aug 20, 2014 -> 09:18 AM) There's a severe lack of power in the lineup you proposed. Also, as much as I love Rodon, I don't think he's ready for an entire year in the rotation yet. I think there's going to be more significant changes to the lineup this offseason. I do think the 1-2-3-4 in the lineup will be: Eaton Avi Gillaspie Abreu Does Garcia have enough contact skills to hit in that position? We know he can hit the ball to the opposite field, but for the time being, I think they see him more as a middle of the order run-producing player with someone like an Alexei Ramirez (if he's back), Semien or Micah Johnson hitting 2nd.

Spending $12-18 million alone on fixing the bullpen for 2015 makes little sense, since we'll only end up losing (as FA's) or trading those pitchers and starting all over again when we really need them in 2016-18. As we've seen with Downs and Keppinger, even if you sign players coming off good seasons, there's no guarantee they'll repeat. It makes little sense to think a rotation of Rodon as a rookie going through his learning curve, Danks continuing to struggle and Noesi doing his VORP 5th starter thing will end up anywhere besides 8-12 games under .500 again. For every positive, there's going to be just as many if not more question marks. Right now, we have ONE position player we can 100% count on for next year in Abreu, and he's seemingly going through an adjustment period as the league is figuring out how to TRY to limit his homer binges.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 20, 2014 -> 07:09 AM) Stop and think a bit more about this post. "If a rookie who has spent 1 month at AAA is in the starting rotation next year it's probably a rebuilding season". That's surprising why? Because wouldn't think JR would like to go all the way down to 1.4-1.5 million in attendance and decline for a 9th season in a row and waste another year of Sale and Abreu together, but if they're still content with profitability at this payroll level, more power to them. Actually, I do not know exactly what it takes for Brooks Boyer to lose his job and for the White Sox to try another approach, because it's going to be challenging to emptier stadiums than US Cellular in September. Even the idea of Rodon coming up quickly is going to be met with a shrug by fans unless he debuts and sustains an ace level of performance instead of profiling somewhat like, say, Kip Wells.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 20, 2014 -> 08:27 AM) From what I understand JR is probably a majority owner by now. There have been stories about him buying up the minority owners as they have wanted to sell. For some reason I have it in my head that one estimate was as high as 80% ownership. Can anyone else verify/remember that? Dick Allen always talks about this issue. He'd probably be the one.

Surely the Giants will protest and lose, but it really sucks for a playoff contender to have a chance to win a game be taken away by the lack of preparedness by an opponent's grounds crew. Granted, it was a very very localized storm, but it shouldn't decide a playoff race...or contribute to deciding one. One of the only examples of a protest being upheld that I can remember was the early 80's George Brett pine tar game, where the league office overruled the umpires...gave the Royals the lead and then they ended up going to New York on an offday to play the bottom of the inning, with the Yankees going down 1-2-3. I think they even offered discounted $3-5 tickets for folks who didn't attend the original game.

Danks has the same problem Gordon Beckham has, at least one of them. Can't hit or lay off high fastballs. Just doesn't have the bat speed...more of a slider speed/AAAA bat. At the major league level, he quickly gets exposed with everyday playing time. As the 4th outfielder and not getting 60-70% of the at-bats in a platoon situation, fine. We don't need to pay DeAza $4.5-6.5 million to do that, certainly.

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Aug 20, 2014 -> 01:33 AM) Yeah, I'm not qute sure that Eaton gets that ball. I didn't catch the jump that Danks got on it, but considering how much taller he is than Eaton, I'm not sure that if it tips off Danks stretched out body that Eaton doesn't get a glove on it at all. Hardly a catch you should count on ANY centerfielder in the game to make. Eaton is at least two steps faster than Danks, IMO. Danks, once he gets going, makes up ground with his longer strides, but lacks explosive quickness. It's why he hasn't been much of a basestealer in his career. Players at that height rarely have the acceleration necessary to reach top speed in their first 2-3 steps.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Aug 19, 2014 -> 09:07 AM) Also, I get caught up in K rates, but so long as you have command and can locate, pitching to weak contact early in the at bat is a very good thing. Shoulder problems eventually derailed him, but Roy Halladay did the same thing and he was a workhorse for years and years. He had the stuff and ability to strike a lot of guys out, but he kept pounding the strikezone with really good pitches. A lot of times, the first pitch you got in the at bat was the best you were going to see, even if it wasn't a good pitch to hit, and you swung at it a lot of times hoping to do something with it. I keep making these comparisons of the Sox prospects to these all time greats, but it's primarily just to show these examples exist. I do not expect Beck to turn into Halladay (more along the lines of a Jon Garland, about a league average pitcher), just saying that there is precedent for his philosophy working. That's being pretty darned optimistic, as Garland was one of the Top 20-30 prospects in all of baseball as an 18-19 year old. If you told me he was going to be in the 2015 starting rotation, I would quickly say it's another 76-86 rebuilding year, unless they've also addressed the significant holes in the line-up and bullpen. Even then, a rotation of Sale/Quintana/Rodon with Beck/Noesi/Danks fighting for the 4th and 5th spots is at least a year away, optimistically. If we were willing to get rid of Danks' contract and/or add another veteran to the back end for stability, I would be a bit more optimistic, as the assumption now has to be they're going to want no part of a FA pitcher over a 2-3 contract.

He's not as good as Adam Eaton defensively...there was a ball hit a night or two ago that tipped off Danks' glove that I'm sure Eaton would have gotten to. That is, if he can actually stay on the field and stop trying to run through fences.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Aug 19, 2014 -> 04:56 PM) Yea that doesn't make any sense Not everyone Harrelson hasn't seen eye to eye with has "lost" to Hawk. LaRussa's revenge was the rest of his career after he left Chicago. It's not the same as a media member such as Cowley, Mariotti or Abattacola, but the point remains. And isn't Cowley still covering the Bulls for the Sun-Times? Did he get fired? Mostly, his relationship with the White Sox was filtered through Ozzie Guillen, and once Ozzie was gone, his "inside source" was cut. That's less about Harrelson and more about the way he put himself in a corner as a beat writer by losing his objectivity about the team.

QUOTE (Charlie Haeger's Knuckles @ Aug 19, 2014 -> 05:04 PM) A) He already turned down a massive contract extension to stay with his current team, a team that plays in what is likely the weakest division in the league and has a "decent chance to play for a pennant" every single season. B) He is a Scott Boras client. He will receive the max contract the free agent pitching market allows this off-season. His contact will either set the market at the beginning of the off-season or he will wait until late February to sign. C) Scherzer wants to sign with a team where he will be the "ace" and the opening day starter. Chris Sale owns this town. He's not going to sign here so he can play second fiddle. D) After the Danks contract blowing up in the Sox face (not like, OMG NUKE explosion... more like, mentos + diet pepsi) and Reinsdorf's persistent commentary about the dangers of free agent pitchers' contracts both would suggest that the Sox aren't signing any significant free agent pitchers any time soon. Especially Tanaka...that would have been as much a disaster if more more than Abreu contract has been a pleasant surprise.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 19, 2014 -> 04:15 PM) I see what you're saying, but this is a man who obviously didn't think logically or even morally. He's a thief and a bully given his actions at the convenient store, and he's also incredibly stupid for picking a fight with a cop. All three things that the vast majority of people would never do. So "logic" can be thrown out the window. He was capable of doing anything. Once again, this (the released convenience store video) is "hindsight" and not probative or admissible later for evaluating Officer Wilson's reactions at the time of his first contact with Brown. At no point was the cigar situation an armed robbery, where an imminent/deadly threat or force was involved.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 19, 2014 -> 04:08 PM) He should nominate everyone who he has outlasted as a critic. Jay Mariotti, Joe Cowley, etc. It is funny, they all took on Hawk, and he has outlasted them all. LaRussa is getting his Bobblehead Night soon at US Cellular, so not 100%.

Matt Abbatacola @MattAbbatacola · 20h "Chicago doing a great job with RISP. They're 6-for-8." I'll take things you don't hear about pro baseball in Chicago for $500, Alex. He just can't resist, clearly making a reference to Jackie Robinson West LL.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 19, 2014 -> 03:57 PM) Huh? From 35 feet running at someone that is shooting you is a better option than running away? Let's assume that Brown thought he could run away and that Officer Wilson wasn't going to fire at him, because you don't expect the police to shoot you down from behind if you're unarmed, even if you had confronted him violently 30 seconds ago. Fight or flight response, right? Then you realize he is shooting at you...and that your life might be in danger even. Do you 1) put your hands up and risk being killed surrendering, or 2) charge at the officer, knowing you're unlikely to survive that 35 foot distance against a trained officer with his gun trained on you, also realizing you're not exactly a small or elusive target? Logically, if confronted with this scenario in a simulation, almost nobody would run at the officer and think they're going to survive unless they feel there's no other alternative. As there was reportedly marijuana in his system and not a stimulant, wouldn't that make him LESS likely to fly at the officer from so far away?