caulfield12

QUOTE (Brian @ Aug 10, 2014 -> 06:29 AM) How can you tell it was on purpose? I finally brought myself to watch the video and can't tell if there is intent or not. The kid is walking in the middle of a car race. WTF. The blue car went past and ALMOST hit him. That said, he (blue car) was able to keep his line much lower on the track, and there SHOULD have been enough time for him (Stewart) to correct his line. Forward vision is supposedly a non-issue in those types of sprint cars, according to those who drive them. It's the fact that he was CLEARLY upset with Stewart and shouting/screaming at him and that it was Stewart who actually hit him...just feels completely non-random. Nobody WANTS to believe it was intentional, and yet everyone understands the concept of "road rage" and the possibility he was trying to teach him a lesson or put him in his place and the situation just went out of control and he made a mistake and couldn't control his car (the fishtail) and its speed, although clearly witnesses believed he intentionally sped up or revved/gunned it. That and the fact that the race was under caution or yellow when it happened after the accident.

NASCAR doesn't "own" or "control" the drivers, to the extent the teams are like individual corporations or entities... So, at the moment, they can't keep their "brand" from being damaged in such incidents, at present...and they can't force Stewart not to race today. One would think that Bill France is getting a lot of calls already. Remember, Stewart's going to be facing a lot of protesters and angry family members in that region of the country...it's going to be like a hornet's next. Can you imagine this situation NOT becoming a distraction to the race itself, the other drivers and their teams, the sponsors for all the other NASCAR teams will be forced to have opinions. Stewart's own sponsors will quickly have to make snap decisions whether to stick by him or not...and then deal with the public relations fallout from such decisions.

QUOTE (Feeky Magee @ Aug 10, 2014 -> 03:08 AM) a) you're using the wrong WAR b) WAR is a cumulative stat and Abreu missed 2 weeks c) it's a good rule of thumb to be careful of seasons with huge defensive stats and look more towards career average d) like anything else, it's important to look at history as well as the current season. Seth Smith put up WAR of 1.2, 1.3, 1.2 and 1.1 his last 4 seasons. Cabrera 6.2, 6.7, 6.8 and 7.5. So I don't think WAR is telling us Smith is more valuable than Cabrera. Either way, the better WAR has Cabrera at 3.4 and Smith at 2.6 for this season. Which is reasonable, Smith is hitting .288/.383/.498 to Cabrera's .306/.365/.515 after all. e) devoid of context about age and contract, there's a decent number of players there you could make a strong argument that they are more valuable than Abreu right now. Trout, Tulo, McCutcheon, Cano, Puig and Stanton put up comparable offensive numbers at way more challenging defensive positions, and all have more speed on the bases. Lucroy is likely heavily undervalued because of his pitch framing. Finally, Jordan Danks just turned 28. Dayan is 25 and put up a 744 WAR rookie season at age 23 in the big leagues. That's going to get him the benefit of the doubt, and he's likely to finish with over 20 homers as well, which will help his case a bit when you look at the lack of pop we're getting out of 3B, 2B, CF, DeAza and Flowers (well, who knows who the REAL Tyler is?). I'll just say this, as things stand right now, Dayan Viciedo would go into next season as our #2 power threat behind Jose Abreu. In this day and age, you have to have SOME pop in your line-up. You could argue Avisail Garcia, but I'm not willing to go there until he proves it over a full season. Second, with Adam Eaton showing a proclivity for getting injured (at least this season), I think it's more and more likely Viciedo will be around again in 2015. Maybe Dayan won't just be given a starting job...as he entered this year in a platoon with DeAza. In a way Hahn "got lucky" when Garcia was injured that he had both DeAza and Tanks to cover that position. It has to be crossing his mind he needs a quality back-up option (compared to Leury Garcia or DeAza) who can play CF with Eaton getting injured so frequently. Statistically, if they played over a full season of 600 at-bats (I'm going by their cumulative major league results), Danks would hit 15.5 homers over 600 AB's and Dayan would hit 23.5 homers. We can argue all we want about WAR and Danks' defensive value, but his major league history has shown he's going to strike out out too much for that amount of power and that his defense, while VERY GOOD, isn't Gold-Glove caliber like an Endy Chavez or Franklyn Gutierrez in his prime or Torii Hunter or Juan Lagares.

It's also going to be a gut-wrenching decision whether he will race today or not. He just killed someone on the track, one-half the people think it might have been intentional...and he's 19th in the point standings for the Chase, so he has all the financial commitments to his sponsors as well to deal with. Don't know how he will deal with that, the guilt...compounded by the fact that if he does sit out this race, his enemies will use that as evidence that he's done something wrong and pulling out of the race is a form of culpability. Apparently there are no pending criminal charges (it's still under investigation) but you can be sure Ward's family will engage in a civil lawsuit against Stewart and his companies. A lot of the insurance agent(s) who handle his affairs probably were summoned out of bed at 2:00 a.m. or so last night when the story started to break on twitter. Apparently, Ward, Jr., the driver who was struck...died upon arrival at the hospital and not later, like at 1 or 2 .m. The incident actually happened around 10:30 p.m. or so EST. Ruggles, whose mother took her to the hospital after she began complaining of back pain following the accident, suffered a compression fracture in her back, according to the (Rochester) Democrat and Chronicle. "Right now, she has to take it one day at a time," Wendy Ruggles told the newspaper. "We had a big scare; she was close to being paralyzed." The track’s Facebook page posted that Ruggles was released from the hospital Thursday. "To quote our Alysha Ruggles - she said ‘Everyone needs to stop blaming Tony, it was a racing accident,'" the track said on its Facebook post. www.thesportingnews.com

This was from one year ago... Monday night’s accident was the latest in a string of spills Stewart has taken in sprint cars in recent weeks. On July 16, Stewart was involved in a 15-car pileup at Canandaigua (N.Y.) Motorsports Park that sent a 19-year-old female driver to the hospital. Last Monday night at Ohsweken Speedway in Ontario, Canada, Stewart was racing for the lead when his vehicle flipped five times. Although former NASCAR driver Jason Leffler was killed earlier this year in a sprint-car crash in New Jersey, Stewart maintains close ties to his short-track roots by scheduling roughly 70 sprint car events per year. Friday at Pocono Raceway, Stewart brushed off the Ohsweken accident as routine. http://www.sbnation.com/nascar/2013/7/17/4...print-car-wreck The story from a year ago....when Stewart took responsibility for causing a huge wreck which put 19 year-old Alysha Ruggles in the hospital.

I don't follow racing at all, but it seems that Stewart "just snapped" and I'm predicting the reason's (from his defenders) going to go back to the broken leg/rehab/recovery he went through to get back to NASCAR (didn't that injury happen in a similar type or form of racing??) and the one that's going to be thrown back out there against him is that he supposedly caused a big wreck one year ago in July at the same track at which at least two other drivers ended up hospitalized. They're going to look at the "kid" (20 and not 17 or 18) who was killed...his inexperience, and how the veteran driver in Stewart should have known better, as it would be more understandable for a teenager to try to kill a veteran/famed NASCAR driver than the other way around. Stewart's ego and hubris. How dare a "punk" kid on a sprint/dirt track engage him so publicly? Who does he think he is? Then you're also going to hear the...."he just meant to scare him a bit" or "he lost control at the last moment when he realized how close he was coming" or the prank defense...like when someone falls down in the snow or water and someone skis past them to taunt them a little bit, spraying them with snow or water but not inflicting any real physical harm. August 07 2014 KANNAPOLIS, N.C., (Aug. 6, 2014) – Tony Stewart will be turning left and right this weekend at Watkins Glen (N.Y.) International, but since this time last year, his career has come full circle. A year ago, Stewart was absent from The Glen. His streak of consecutive starts in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series ended at 521 when in the wee hours of Aug. 5, 2013, an accident in a sprint car race at Southern Iowa Speedway in Oskaloosa, Iowa, left him with a broken right tibia and fibula. Stewart’s season was over, and he did not return to a racecar until Feb. 14, 2014 when practice for the Sprint Unlimited began at 5 p.m. EST at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway. #StandWithSmoke was the mantra upon Stewart’s return, and it’s appropriate that #StandWithSmoke reappears in Stewart’s return to Watkins Glen.

QUOTE (Vance Law @ Aug 10, 2014 -> 01:16 AM) 1) He's not being made into a regular player for the future on this team. He's a 4/5 OF if he remains here. 2) He's never been given the regular at bats that Anderson got, but I bet he could outhit him. His .682 OPS last year in his most regular playing time along with being a plus on the base paths and on defense in CF made him at least a positive WAR player, which is more than can be said for Dayan Viciedo. I'm not buying it. WAR would tell you these 20 guys are all more "valuable" than Abreu. http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/batting/_/sort/WARBR/order/true Would you take ANY of them over Abreu OTHER than Mike Trout? Heyward being THAT high? C'mon. Tulo and Stanton, sure, I could buy that argument. But Yan Gomes? Would you take Seth Smith over Miguel Cabrera, for example?

99% sure Danish will stay with that Winston-Salem team as they fight to get into the post-season. That club features 80-85% of our better prospects. Better if they learn to play together, win together and progress upwards more or less as one, although obviously Rodon's on a faster track than the others. The last time we had so much talent together on one team was 2009 Birmingham before Beckham was promoted.

QUOTE (Vance Law @ Aug 10, 2014 -> 01:28 AM) Pretty genius move by Ventura to call up Danks from AAA and pinch hit him in the 10th and have him steal 2nd and score the winning run and have Guerra and Petricka not give up any runs. I'd say even more genius was Don Cooper for saying he could fix Noesi after that Rangers/Sox game. He's helped to put two critical losses on the Mariners this year, and they're now 1 1/2 games behind the Royals for the WC. That will haunt them if they miss out on the playoffs. Guerra looked good last night...and statistically has been one of the best Sox pitchers since his recall. Petricka's got to stop throwing straight cheese down the chute and hoping he can get away with it like he did in the minors...that said, thanks for the shift working out. Seattle's is probably worse than ours. There's Cano, Seager and that's about it in terms of real threats. Zunino has some pop, but K's a ton and has a much lower batting average than Viciedo. That said, he's also tied for the lead for catcher's homers (with Mesoraco) and you can tolerate a catcher with an OPS between 650-700 much more easily than a LFer.

This is going to be like the Mary Joe Kopechne situation with Teddy Kennedy...no matter what happens with the court case, he's going to have his reputation ruined forever. It's impossible for any reasonable person to watch the video, hear the accounts of witness and actually see it without coming to that conclusion. The woman on the Score overnight show was refusing to say it was intentional and people were getting upset with her, I get it that the media has to be "fair and unbiased" and not jump to conclusions, but this one's going to be impossible to explain as it happened under a yellow/caution flag. Just the comments of the person next to the one filming are going to live forever in everyone's minds if they don't take that video down. Update (12:29 a.m.): The Sporting News's Bob Pockrass has some more details: Rich Willis, who was at the track, said he didn't see exactly what happened but his sister down in Turn 1 did. He saw Stewart and Kevin Ward get into the wreck. "People (who could see it better) said the guy got out of his car and was gesturing angrily at Tony Stewart when Tony Stewart came by during the next lap under yellow," Willis said in a phone interview. "He approached him and evidently when he was driving by the guy standing on the track gesturing at him, he gunned his engine. "What happened was the back end kicked out and clipped the guy and the guy flew across the track." Update (1:06 a.m.): More from Pockrass: Tyler Graves, a sprint-car racer and friend of Ward's, told Sporting News in a phone interview that he was sitting in the Turn 1 grandstands and saw everything that happened. "Tony pinched him into the frontstretch wall, a racing thing," Graves said. "The right rear tire went down, he spun on the exit of (Turn) 2. They threw the caution and everything was toned down. Kevin got out of his car. … He was throwing his arms up all over the place at Tony for most of the corner. "I know Tony could see him. I know how you can see out of these cars. When Tony got close to him, he hit the throttle. When you hit a throttle on a sprint car, the car sets sideways. It set sideways, the right rear tire hit Kevin, Kevin was sucked underneath and was stuck under it for a second or two and then it threw him about 50 yards."

Just goes to prove the old axiom that closers often struggle in non-save situations. Jenks was notorious for that. Also, not sure how Hector Noesi wasn't the player of the game. When the M's look back on this season and when/if they miss out on the wild card, these two games Hector started against them and they lost both will rankle.

Doesn't seem Danish will ever hit any top 100 lists unless he throws 92-94 MPH consistently as a starter. Results matter less to guys who make up those lists than raw stuff, and they often don't account for the difficulty of hitting someone with such an unorthodox motion until they prove doubters right at the major league level (think Chad Bradford, for example).

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Aug 9, 2014 -> 10:28 PM) Winning run tonight No thanks to their SS (Taylor), who also hit into a DP ball to end the game. He did at least get the patented One-Dog jump to get to 2nd and put himself in scoring position...there's that.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Aug 9, 2014 -> 08:19 PM) Yeah, I'm no prospect guy, but it seems like he's the real deal for sure. Ryan Braun a good comparison? (Stats-wise. not PED-wise) Houston really f***ed up the last two drafts. They would look a whole lot better with Bryant & Rodon as opposed to Appel & nobody. Don't forget Correa got injured...can't remember who else they could have taken first, and it's not like he has been disappointing. Buxton (2nd to the Twins), Zunino, Gausman and Zimmer all went in the top 10, along with Almora at 8. So essentially, you're looking at Buxton/Bryant/Rodon vs. Correa/Appel/nobody until 2015.

QUOTE (JUSTgottaBELIEVE @ Aug 9, 2014 -> 06:03 PM) Baez has 6 hits out of the 13 balls he's put in play. Pretty sure that's unsustainable. No walks in 23 at bats. All 3 homers in coors against the worst pitching staff in baseball. I wouldn't get too excited about that .957 OPS because it's only headed down from here. And Alcantara is the 2013 version of jordan danks, sweet. Let's see how these guys' numbers translate at the mlb level over 200+ at bats before getting too excited. Possibly this is just the first chapter in the development of the best offense in baseball but I'm skeptical. Oh yea and their pitching still sucks. Thought I'd go ahead and reiterate that small piece of information. Well, nobody ever said Jackson was good without Cooper. As far as Alcantara, a 700ish OPS out of a rookie is acceptable if he can play as well as he has been defensively in CF (and stay healthy, unlike Eaton). Those numbers are way down from where he was a week or two ago, so these are his first offensive struggles...up to him to respond. I don't remember anyone taking Danks seriously as a Top 80-100 prospect in all of baseball for five years now. Let's wait before we start comparing him to Danks, Marcus Semien, Junior Lake and Mike Olt, etc. I guess we could have said the same thing about Abreu and Avisail in Coors Field. Up to Baez to perform against every pitching staff, obviously.

Defensive range is off the charts, but they still need to see him make improvements on the routine plays, turning the DP, etc. Confidence is one of his biggest assets, never gets too down on himself...can always find a positive way of making a contribution, like moving a runner into scoring position. Reason for decreased success on the basepaths...1) lingering hamstring issues this season, 2) better catchers with better arms/experience and pitchers better at holding runners, and 3) his reputation from last year causing opponents to be more careful. Says the White Sox need him to be that dynamic, game-changing presence and utilize all of his tools to be successful at the next level as a regular. No discussion about a move to the outfield. Banged his head getting off the bus this weekend, they thought he might have had a slight concussion, but test results were negative...also battling the flu and the iffy hamstring throughout the season, but it's not bad enough to keep him from playing or causing them to want to shut him down completely. Needs to work on command of strike zone/plate discipline and "aggressiveness within the strike zone" offensively. Not far away now from the big leagues. Biggest comment about Marcus was that he seemed to be putting too much pressure on himself to get back to Chicago, and that had affected him adversely after he was sent down but has been doing better recently. Great tools/athleticism....noted his "clutch" late game performances and said would obviously like to see his batting average come up.

10 strikeouts in 23 AB's for Baez, 43.4% OTOH, a .957 OPS with 5 RBI's with 4 of his 5 hits for XB, which is basically what Leury Garcia has given us for an entire season. Alcantara with a 705 OPS but stellar defense, especially considering he mostly played IF up until recently.

I feel like it's a repeat of the same thing we heard about Brian Anderson over and over again... If only he hits .240 with 15-20 homers, he'll be like Tori Hunter-Lite. Likewise, I am confident in saying that Jordan Danks being anything other than a 4th/5th outfielder is a sign we're farther away from being a competitive baseball team, not CLOSER. The bigger problem is Eaton staying on the field. You can't count on someone to lead the team who's constantly hurting himself and out of the line-up one out of every 3 games, roughly. The DiamondBacks knew that Eaton had a lot of upside, but it was similar to the situation with Quentin staying healthy.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 9, 2014 -> 02:00 PM) Yeah for my two cents, it would be much more valuable for the young core to keep moving forward, than to lose games because those guys sucked and get a better pick. It would leave Hahn to wonder who he could count on for 2015. He's still not going to know with Flowers and Viciedo, no matter how they finish. The bullpen, who knows? At least they can get some kind of read on Semien, Sanchez, Wilkins and Avisail, although Garcia's going to be the RF/LF/DH in 2015 no matter what happens one has to believe.

Tigers might be in trouble. Nathan blew another save, but Soria bailed him out of a bases-loaded one situation by getting a pop-up and fly out. Six blown saves, 80 saves for the Rangers. 6 blown saves, 24 converted for the Tigers. YIKES. Sanchez went down yesterday and had an MRI today, not sure what the results are...Soria today with some sort of back/side/oblique problem. Joba blew the game in extras. Royals only 2 games back.

QUOTE (JUSTgottaBELIEVE @ Aug 9, 2014 -> 01:09 PM) You are assuming all those prospects turn out. The royals were thinking the same thing a few years back. I don't think hosmer, starling, moustakas, etc. are helping the royals much this year. Or Cameron Maybin and Miller with the Marlins. That was enough to get the AL MVP the last two seasons. Prospects are worth even more than they were back then...so, if they so choose to do so, they can trade those guys while they're still in the minors, the same thing Kenny Williams did nearly every season with his prospects to fortify the major league roster. They don't have to be successful at the major league level to be worth a lot to another organization. If the Cubs were closer, they easily could have put together the package for David Price, for example.

QUOTE (kitekrazy @ Aug 9, 2014 -> 12:54 PM) I believe that has a lot to do with more teams being bad or not up to their usual standards. They can't seem to play good baseball in August. That and the schedule's going to be rougher from here on out...Minnesota and Texas were that last great opportunity to get to .500 or at least just 1 game under and now they're back to only one game away from their low water mark (-8) for the season. Mostly, they've been at -3 to -6, in that range, never winning 4 in a row and never bad enough with Sale/Quintana/Abreu/Eaton/Ramirez to go on a prolonged losing stretch until now.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Aug 8, 2014 -> 05:01 PM) His players respect him. His "strategy" isn't nearly as bad as some advertise. When you don't have benefit of hindsight, the moves he was "supposed" to make don't always work out, and the "stupid" moves he makes often do work out and are called lucky. For some, he is wrong even if he is correct. And just like the made up Greg Walker philosophy of lift and pull, the lack of fire and passion Robin supposedly has is totally false. He isn't Ditka, which apparently is the model Chicagoans believe to be the best model, yet no one wants to work or play under that kind of buffoon. Robin keeps White Sox business in house. I don't always agree with every move he makes, every line-up he makes out, but you look at the talent level. At some point this year the Sox absolutely needed a new C,2B, LF, RF,DH, a totally different bench, the SS needed to be traded. The 3 positions people have been happy with 1B, 3B, and CF all spent time on the DL. Only one AL team has a higher team ERA, yet, the team is damn near .500. I cannot believe that could possibly mean the manager was horrible too. That's a bit of an exaggeration. Of course, one week ago, it would have been true. But nobody would be surprised if they finished 10-14 games under .500, as opposed to anywhere close to 80-82 wins.

QUOTE (JUSTgottaBELIEVE @ Aug 9, 2014 -> 12:47 PM) I'm not comparing the sox to cubs. I'm talking strictly about the cubs. And regarding the braves, A's, and twins, they never had the offense to compliment the pitching. Like I said, you need both to win. Not that you need a 95 Indians offense or a 95 braves pitching staff but generally speaking you need to be very good on both sides of the ball to win the world series. Of course there are exceptions, but more often than not, the team that is balanced both offensively and defensively wins the World Series. Relying too much on either offense or defense is a recipe for failure in the playoffs because as soon as that one side of the ball struggles you need the other to pick up the slack to get through a 7 game series. When was the last time a team won the World Series while being in the bottom third in runs allowed in their league? To get that pitching they are either spending big money (which is a big question mark right now) or trading away their offensive prospects. What would it take to get a guy like Chris Sale in a trade? Russell and Baez maybe? Well there goes 40% of their big time offensive prospects just to get an ace. How about rodon and Quintana? Soler and bryant? It's not easy to build a strong staff without spending money on big time free agents (Lester, scherzer, etc). Until they get the pitching, they aren't winning the World Series. That's not jealousy or envy or anything of the sorts. It's just a fact. What players in the majors WOULDN'T a package of Castro or Russell (let's say Russell for argument's sake), Almora and/or McKinney, Vogelbach and Schwarber get you? Maybe Pierce Johnson or CJ Edwards if the other team is balking or wants a pitcher. That's four former 1st round draft picks that are "expendable" and don't force you to trade Baez/Soler/Bryant. Right now, they're getting plenty out of Coghlan, so it's not imperative that they add another outfielder when they have Alcantara and either Baez or Bryant who could possibly be shifted to LF/RF, not to mention Soler. That still leaves you: Coghlan LF/RF Alcantara CF Soler LF/RF Sweeney 3B Bryant SS Castro or Russell 2B Baez 1B Rizzo C ???? As far as pitching goes, I think unless they can get Lester, they're going to pass on Scherzer and Shields. Shields SHOULD get no more than a 4 year contract, and the Cubs still might not be able to legitimately compete for the playoffs until 2017 and 2018. 2016 is kind of the same situation for the Cubs as 2015 for the White Sox. That said, let's say they signed Shields for $90 million over 4 years. That leaves: #1 Ace (acquired via trade) #2 Shields #3 Arrieta #4 CJ Edwards #5 Edwin Jackson #6 Jacob Turner #7 Pierce Johnson #8-10 Wada/Kendricks/Beeler That said, if they don't want to go that route until the 2016 or 2017 season, they can always bring back Hammel as a bridge to the big time free agent/trade acquisition. And Turner, Edwards and Johnson still have time to emerge as well. Take all those players I highlighted in bold, and you can get just about any pitcher out there.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 9, 2014 -> 11:40 AM) But MLB pitchers throw harder. We should leave him in the minors so that he doesn't get hit by one of those pitches. It makes just as much sense. Just wait until he's had 10-15 games in AAA. It takes most guys longer than that to find a groove in spring training. That's not unreasonable, that's 1/2 of a full minor league rehab stint. If he wasn't hitting over .500 and he was at .091 instead, striking out a ton and making weak contact, I would agree that 15 or even 10 games would be better. In the end, it's not his decision, so they probably will hold him back and take the conservative approach. So we have the major league pitchers throw harder theory vs. the higher probability of being hit by a pitch in the minors (although I'm sure AA has a higher rate than AAA, and harder throwers on average than AAA).