caulfield12

QUOTE (SoxAce @ Jun 8, 2014 -> 07:13 PM) Depends if you view a top prospect list as far as production/floor or potential/ceiling. Guys like Rodon, Anderson and Hawkins/Adams (even without him throwing a single pitch yet) for me are without a doubt our top 3-4. But I've always viewed potential higher for years on this board, sans the occasional few (or "favorites" of mine if you will). I don't blame others though at looking at the production/floor players (likely big leaguers) though. You don't find many Evan Longoria/Buster Posey types that are pretty much both from the start. Montas is getting close to a name you have to include as well...obviously, it's based more on potential and this year's results rather than the past, but he's starting to draw a lot of attention. That type of player will always be more interesting to follow, rather than a "solid"/gritty player like a Saladino, Andy Gonzalez, Aaron Miles, CJ Retherford, etc. A lot of the posters who see these players play in the minors quite a bit and meet them personally tend to be influenced by that as well, it's human nature. We tend to root extra hard for someone we like (say, Joe Borchard) compared to someone who acts like a jerk (Jon Rauch, although he was cool when we met him in spring training around 2001 when he was one of the top prospects in baseball).

QUOTE (kev211 @ Jun 8, 2014 -> 07:01 PM) Remember when we voted in podsednik over jeter in the 2005 final vote? I think there was a BIT more excitement about the White Sox that season...at least it was starting to grow in June and July, with the skeptics falling to the wayside.

Jeter's pretty close to the bottom 10 in OPS for the majors, FWIW. Maybe 85% of American baseball fans would just like for that story to go away, other than the All-Star game/Ripken-esque tributes. By the way, does Abreu have any type of escalator clause in his contract for All-Star appearances, or just a bonus?

White Sox will pick him up as Dunn's replacement for next season, haha. http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-leag...-180411853.html Scherzer taking out an insurance policy on himself to protect against $144 million injury...surely will be a new trend for high-end pitchers.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jun 8, 2014 -> 09:11 AM) I don't know who is next, please list 50 more ex players Have you seen a different strategy for identifying future coaches in the Sox organization...besides former players? Hahn's a smart guy. Sooner or later, he's going to have to convince JR to try something more innovative, loyalty be damned.

QUOTE (The Ultimate Champion @ Jun 8, 2014 -> 09:14 AM) lol Don't ask for something you don't want to get. What would you call for Tyler Kolek in that situation?

QUOTE (flavum @ Jun 8, 2014 -> 09:06 AM) I'm just pissed. My problem with Ventura is that I never feel he's in charge of anything. He's just a face with words coming out of it before and after the games. It's pretty on-par with what is going on in baseball...Hire a nice guy that the players like, give him information, let him manage more-or-less "by the book", and do interviews. It's back to the "figurehead/symbol/take one for the organization and serve as a buffer during rebuilding" thing again. Cooper and Steverson have their clearly-identified roles and outputs, but what is Robin really in charge of? Certainly, it's not fundamentals and defense, or something about his message hasn't gotten through very clearly. Lack of consequences/punishment? Or maybe it's a lack of players/capable depth to be able to send a message to guys like DeAza who seem like they might need a kick in the butt from time to time....Alexei Ramirez in past seasons, for example.

QUOTE (flavum @ Jun 8, 2014 -> 08:33 AM) The Sox are soft, like their manager. Who's next, Aaron Rowand? Carl Everett? Jim Thome? Konerko? Thome and Konerko personality-wise would be no different from Ventura, one would imagine. AJ as player/manager like Don Kessinger or Lou Boudreau? Have always thought Omar Vizquel would make a good manager...pretty sure he's currently with the Tigers' coaching staff, working with their infielders. He did a lot of great things with Alexei, and defense is one of our biggest areas we need to show improvement in to be a playoff-caliber team. Of course, Robin Ventura because almost as famous for his defense as for his hitting. FWIW, a lot of people who watch Trout say he struggles the most with sliders and a bit with two-seamers this year. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/forcing-a-r...out-mike-trout/

QUOTE (The Ultimate Champion @ Jun 8, 2014 -> 08:11 AM) That was a hard loss to watch but it doesn't really bother me at all. Part of me actually likes (if not loves) the decision to leave Sale in through all that. Yes, he was gassed, yes his defense let him down once again, yes he was facing Trout who hit the ball hard off him before & who had seen everything Sale had to offer, BUT if he gets through that inning what does that do for his confidence level? The bomb to Delmon Young in DET isn't something he has forgotten, and this situation, getting through that is kind of like getting even there. I think lost in all this stuff is that we're developing Sale too here. This is not a contending season nor should we treat it as one. Sale is already an ace, but he's also going to be our horse in the playoffs, and facing that kind of extreme pressure in a non-contending regular season game could be a good thing in the long run. Did Robin manage himself to a loss? Of course, and he's a pretty poor game manager anyway and we've known this for a while. I don't care so much about that. I do like him trusting Sale to that degree though, even though I completely disagree with putting a similar level of trust in any other pitcher on our team, especially a closer. But overall I'm not sure Robin is going to be the guy when we're a great team again, in fact, I'm not sure that was ever the idea on the Sox FO part anyway. I think Robin was a purely developmental type of guy who had upside to be more than that. Anyway it just doesn't really bother me. Sale is our guy. That loss hurts our ego, it certainly hurts mine, but again this is going to be our horse in the playoffs, this is the guy we're going to ride deep on, and as long as you keep the guy healthy & you're making sure he's not so gassed that his mechanics are off & he is endangering himself, then I say take the kid gloves off and let him develop as the bulldog he wants to be. And lastly I have to say I am certainly not in love with Tyler Flowers game calling at all. I can't remember the hitter, think it was Hamilton, but he had Hamilton set up to be put away with the fastball on the outside/off the plate, or at least it would have been tough for him to make contract out there, yet Flowers calls slow again in and it's ripped for a hit. Also vs. Trout in the slam sequence which you could see coming well into Kendrick's AB, Trout was really close to timing the fastball but you could tell he was looking offspeed. I get why you don't want to give him a fastball 3-2 with the bases loaded but why the f*** don't you throw the slider? He's looking for less velocity anyway and he's close enough to the fastball to get the bat out there and hit it hard, so give him some break. A 3-2 slider to the best offensive weapon in baseball, bases jacked, game on the line etc. that's balls right there and the correct call. No way should Flowers have called a change right there IMO, either another fastball which he was behind on but close to or you give him the wipeout pitch. I just don't like the way Flowers calls things sometimes and I don't think it's coming from the bench because I don't think Robin really cares about that part of the game. Strangely enough, I'm finding myself agreeing with most of that. My problem is more with what happened after the Trout GS. And Flowers, for all his offensive improvement, has regressed in some phases of the game defensively....especially pitch framing and blocking.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jun 8, 2014 -> 08:01 AM) And if you wait to see what the results were, you too can manage better than any manager in history. Sure, after the fact, taking Sale out after the guy reached on an error is the move everyone would have made. It is obvious. And sure, after Petricka and his 1.50 ERA come in an blow the game, unless you are the idiot Ventura is, Putnam should have been used. Just go to the archives of the gamethread against the Yankees where Danks gets pulled after 8 leading 3-0, and the Sox lose. Many of the complainers are the same, but they now are using the opposite argument. It is funny Ventura is becoming like Obama to a republican to many posters here. It doesn't matter what he does, it is wrong. The fact of the matter is that Ventura still thought the game was safely in hand, so he had his 3rd or 4th (after Belisario, Putnam and Webb) best reliever out there thinking it wasn't even a save situation yet...and by the time everything fell apart, which was quite quickly, there probably wasn't enough time to get Putnam ready. That's a tough one. I know that with the way Hamilton has been hitting recently, and matching up with a power pitcher in Petricka instead of the more finesse/movement guy...I never would have had Petricka face Hamilton. That's not second-guessing. As far as when to remove him, yeah, there's going to be a split between after the 7th (those worried about Sale's elbow falling off every time he nears 100 pitches), after the initial double, after the RBI single by Ianetta and THEN almost everyone retroactively is saying after the Ramirez error. Of course, Sale's not Quintana and hasn't been snake-bitten and Trout was 1/10 against Sale, hadn't looked good and Chris was still throwing in the mid 90's. I guess even if Quintana was in that same situation, Ventura would argue that leaving him out there and forcing him to fight through adversity is the best approach for his career long-term, even if it results in short-term losses and frustration.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jun 8, 2014 -> 07:45 AM) Players like playing for him. Sale,Abreu, Eaton, Beckham all on the DL this year. Johnson and Paulino train wrecks, and a team a lot of the Ventura haters said had no chance at the playoffs with a full roster, still have a shot. Of course, you can say the same thing about 20-24 teams in the majors. Even the Astros (with Springer and Singleton now up), Cubs and DBacks are showing signs of life. The Rays might be the "deadest" of them all at the moment. “It sucked,” Sale said. “There’s no doubt about it. When you put as much effort, and kind of your heart and soul into a game and it unravels like that, more than anything, I’m just kind of disappointed. I threw a good pitch to a better hitter and things happen. “That’s why this game is as crazy as it is. You love it one minute, and you hate it the next.” The White Sox loved life headed into the eighth inning. Fangraphs.com’s probability for a White Sox victory stood at 98.4 percent. Sale entered at 93 pitches and with a shutout intact. He had only allowed three hits, though two came in the seventh inning before Sale struck out C.J. Cron to strand a pair. “He was going pretty good by that point,” White Sox manager Robin Ventura said. “You’re not going to pull him out the way he’s going there. You have to let him have his game.” Howie Kendrick worked a full count and singled on the ninth pitch of the at-bat to load the bases for Trout. Trout fouled off two fastballs and then worked his count full before he crushed an 86-mph changeup from Sale. Prior to the seventh, when he allowed five runs (four earned) and four hits, Sale had allowed two earned runs and seven hits in his previous 32 innings. “It doesn’t matter what you’ve done up until then,” Sale said. “It matters how you finish it, and they finished it. “I don’t really remember much from it. I just remember that ball going over the fence and wanting to rip my own head off.” Everything was going according to plan, Sale destined for his sixth win in six decisions. Even as the inning unfolded in nightmare fashion -- the botched ground ball, Kendrick’s bleeder to the right side -- Sale wanted every chance to hang on and finish the game. “Yeah, without a doubt, I wanted to be in there,” Sale said. “I wanted to be in there, for sure. Without a doubt.” Kudos to Sale for tipping his cap to Trout though, he didn't make any excuses. Just disappointed with himself, and that's to be expected from the ace of any team in that situation. www.csnchicago.com (Dan Hayes)

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Jun 8, 2014 -> 07:39 AM) I was going to say that too. You won't get any though. It's like the strange "defense" of Greg Walker. No one ever actually defended him or thought he was good, just people like to argue and talk in circles. Same with RV. For example, Ozzie was great (especially in the beginning) at 1) knowing how long to go with his starters, especially getting a lot out of Garland, 2) having an intuitive/innate sense of how to use the bullpen wisely until the second half of his Sox career when he got lazy and went with Baseball 101 textbook managing. He was also (like what he said or not) excellent at taking the pressure of his teams/players by bringing a lot of attention to himself or creating issues. Baseball is also partially about entertainment, and I'm not going to go out as far as greg775 on this one, but Ventura can be boring. Now, in the end, it doesn't really matter, as long as he inspires his players to play hard for him and they respect him. Clearly, they have fought harder to come back in many games this season, but they've also never come close to finding a rhythm or going on a long winning (or losing) streak. A lot of that's attributable due to the transitional state of this team, of course.

I still haven't seen anyone come up with some specific areas of managing they feel Ventura is extraordinarily good at... If Cooper makes ALL of the pitching decisions, what does Ventura do other than fill out the line-up card and argue with umpires and make replay challenges occasionally? Wouldn't you then have to argue that Steverson and Cooper are more important to the team's success, then? On the other hand, you're looking at a starting line-up right now in a large degree of flux...it's quite possible that only Jose Abreu is back next year. Of course, it's likely that Eaton will still be around, but it wouldn't be going out on a limb to say we're likely to have 6-7 different starters for Opening Day in 2015 (and certainly by the end of 2015) compared to today's line-up.

QUOTE (pettie4sox @ Jun 8, 2014 -> 03:33 AM) Trout has some eye opening ability. How in the world he knew that pitch was coming is beyond me. He was way behind on 2-3 consecutive fastballs. He must have anticipated that Sale would JUST KNOW Trout was expecting another one at 3-2. Therefore, the change. In the end, it sped up his bat. But only about 5 players in baseball take that ball out.

I always assumed it would be Jeb Bush or George P. Bush (half-Hispanic nephew of George W. and Jeb's son)...but the Bush brand name is too damaged. From everything you see and read about Chelsea, she's way too introverted to run for president, kind of reminiscent of Caroline Kennedy.

QUOTE (BigHurt3515 @ Jun 8, 2014 -> 12:02 AM) Were you the one saying it was a fastball during the game thread?? Yes, because that's what Mark Langston said. It's very hard for the radio announcers to call pitches from the press box until they can later watch the replays.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Jun 7, 2014 -> 09:17 PM) They also, like college pitcher, typically have more days between starts. They also use six man rotations, as well.

It was definitely a change-up low and off the plate by a couple of inches. Don't know what the Angels' announcers called it a fastball at 86 MPH.

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Jun 7, 2014 -> 11:28 PM) Sale's meltdown: http://i.imgur.com/MDbZAGZ.gif At least he did it fairly calmly. Like something he just had to get out of his system. But imagine if he got injured doing that?

His defenders will say who could have done better with all the injuries this season...overcoming all that adversity and not completely imploding again like 2013. Does he get the credit for being the strong/steady hand behind the wheel or just receiving the fortune/benefit of Hahn's roster? Does Cooper get more, holding things together without Sale/Johnson/Paulino, surviving with Noesi/Rienzo/Carroll/Leesman and creating a credible bullpen out of scraps, rookies and unwanted veterans in Putnam, Belisario, Petricka and Webb? Dunn said it himself...even if they hadn't made ANY changes coming into the year, there's no way that should have been a 99 loss team based on the talent on that roster.

I'm just curious, for anyone out there who really likes Robin Ventura. What, in your mind, is he one of the five or ten best managers in MLB at doing? What aspect of his job does he excel in? A couple of seasons ago, I would have said he has the right amount of patience and that "player's manager" feel...but without all the baggage and unpredictability of an Ozzie Guillen. We also knew he was never going to be a great post-game interview or wizard dealing with the press/media, such an important role for modern-day managers. With how the defense and fundamentals haven't clearly improved coming off last year's debacle...and yet with new players at many position, you start to wonder if the institutional culture (outside of Cooper) needs to be changed at the big league level. If it wasn't for the fortune of bidding on Jose Abreu in the perfect offseason for him to be available, this team would be 5-10 games under .500 and foundering, with no or little help available from the minors other than Rodon (assuming he signs).

QUOTE (Feeky Magee @ Jun 7, 2014 -> 11:14 PM) We were talking about a complete game during the 7th. If Robin takes him out after the 7th and the bullpen that you've all despised for most of the year gives up 6, I bet we have people calling that a sackable offence too. He left him out too long in the 8th, but s***. It's Chris Sale. He got a groundball off Cowgill that should have been a double play, and I thought he had Kendrick struck out. The Angels' announcers were saying the only place to get an out there was Ianetta at 2nd base. Cowgill runs too well.

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Jun 7, 2014 -> 11:11 PM) I told my dog that Sale would give up a grandslam to Mike Trout tonight and that the Sox would lose. See, I knew we should have never started Sale. I knew it would end this way. Saw it all the way. RV is stupid for ever starting Sale against this team. He just got off the DL for the love of god! It was fine for him to go out for the 8th. But leaving him in after Ramirez's error was just dumb. Having Petricka, a fastball pitcher, match-up with Josh Hamilton, their hottest hitter in recent weeks...was just dumb, as well. They should have used Putnam, who has the type of movement and slower stuff to give Hamilton fits.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jun 7, 2014 -> 11:08 PM) That was quick I don't think there was any doubt they were going to fold after Trout's ball cleared the wall... Oh well, right now we have about 1/2 of a starting outfielder for next year in Eaton, they're clearly more than a move or two from fighting for the WC. And, no matter what is said about this game later on, it probably wouldn't have happened if not for Alexei's error there that really gave the Angels life and quickly made the comeback seem quite possible.

QUOTE (BigHurt3515 @ Jun 7, 2014 -> 10:53 PM) It was a change up low 94 MPH??