caulfield12

The question...if he gets into real trouble or it's a tie game, will Ventura go to Cleto or Webb tonight? HOPEFULLY it's Webb, but we'll find out.

Guess not. Is there a day game tmrw? At this point, Ventura might as well wait for Friday night. What's the weather forecast FRI?

QUOTE (chitownsportsfan @ Apr 23, 2014 -> 07:47 PM) it's crazy how this team is still putting up runs with all the injuries, they have every excuse just to rollover with so many regulars out of the lineup but instead they continue to hit. Leury Garcia is growing on a me a bit. Obviously he's not a guy you want starting all the time but as a bench player he could be pretty valuable. flowers is going to be back down to 220 pretty quickly. Especially when considering how badly the bottom of the line-up with DeAza, Flowers and Danks looks, then Leury Garcia and Konerko instead of Gillaspie and Dunn. Until the last 7-10 days, Semien was looking like he would have been better off playing SS every day at Charlotte. Small miracles. And Abreu.

QUOTE (flavum @ Apr 23, 2014 -> 07:21 PM) 6 innings for Danish 1 run. 0 k's Kinda weird. Seems like a Jon Garland start before he started getting some more K's in the 2nd half of his White Sox career.

After the Cleto "experiment," I think you'll see Lindstrom...at least until he blows another save. Cringing, thinking about all the Addison Reed blown saves against DET in 2012 and 2013.

QUOTE (Feeky Magee @ Apr 23, 2014 -> 07:36 PM) Nobody in baseball hits the ball weakly enough to have just 1 in every 6.5 balls put in play result in hits. Not to say he doesn't have some issues this year. He's walking a bit less, striking out a bit more (although you could put down a lot, if not all, of that to BS check swing calls), and looks anxious at the plate. But to say he's "worthless" is silly hyperbole. It may well be that he's less valuable than he has been, but that doesn't mean he won't still be valuable, or that you can even make a judgement after a little over 3 weeks. I guarantee you that if you took whomever is your favourite hitter on the team, I could find you a 3-week stretch where he hit about as badly*. *unless it's Jose Abreu. 1/25 stretch putting his average in the low 220's but that wasn't 3 weeks, just less than 1

QUOTE (BigHurt3515 @ Apr 23, 2014 -> 06:27 PM) He has had one bad inning. A lot of pitchers do that.. If he finishes and goes 6 innings letting up 4 runs I will be content with that Exactly what happened!

QUOTE (DirtySox @ Apr 23, 2014 -> 06:00 PM) Hawkins hasn't walked today. Oops, wrong column. RBI/K .300 22 K's/5 BB for the season

I think keeping the three Cubans together (Viciedo and Ramirez to go along with Abreu) will be important...starting to rethink the whole idea of trading Ramirez, because we could be competitive in 2015 and 2016 with the right pitching additions (one through trade/FA, one through Hoffman/Rodon). DeAza's days are numbered. Unfortunately, there's no one to push him right now...Danks or Mitchell, forget it.

Had a feeling those 3 runs they left on the basepaths (Garcia out stealing 3rd, Viciedo doubled off) were going to come back to bite them. Lead gone...poof. Rienzo's lost his curveball and control this inning. Stuff's gotten lazy this inning, adrenaline's probably run out....plus, 2nd time through the order.

Rienzo flashing a really nice curveball (aka yellow hammer) against Martinez.

Hawkins with walk #6. Has "slumped" recently down to .294 but still 12th in the Carolina League in batting average.

Eaton couldn't get back fast enough, for all those thinking mistakenly that Jordan Danks was anything more than a 4th-5th OF.

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Apr 23, 2014 -> 05:31 PM) Chris Shelton still plays baseball?? I remember like 6 or 7 years ago when he hit like 9 HR after the first 15 games of the year. And then he sucked. It was very Hee-Sop Choi of him. Haha, no, to my knowledge, he doesn't...at least not in the US. Just making a joke about Colabello's hot start. A lot of people weren't expecting him to make it past the first week of hot hitting. We'll see.

Announcers saying they typically only see 3-6 homers per year to straightaway CF at Comerica. Rienzo having lots of problems with XB hits in his limited MLB time, particularly homers. Didn't realize Stanton and especially Michael Brantley were off to such hot starts. Brantley with 18 RBI's?? Wow. Abreu, Pujols, Trout, Cabrera, Colabello 6-10 in MLB OPS numbers (Trail only Bautista in the AL). Alexei 11th, Dayan currently 19th. The Cubans came to play this year.

One behind Colabello/Chris Shelton now in RBI's, 22 to 21.

Tigers' announcers said they've never seen homers in back to back games over the CF wall in the history of Comerica.

Putnam and Downs looked good at least. We've only been totally blown out of 2 games out of the first 21.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Apr 22, 2014 -> 06:02 PM) Dude that's what Verlander ALWAYS throws early in the game. If he really wants to, like Greinke, he'll reach back for 2-3 MPH on his fastball in the early innings, then peaking like Colon used to at the end at 96-100. It's not like EVERYONE in baseball isn't starting to talk about Abreu as a legit threat/MVP candidate. Verlander probably didn't catch the video of Abreu's COL homer to CF, or concern himself about it. But he definitely was charged up to face him in his second at-bat, especially after the balk call. Of course, we all know how many stories were written about velocity drops for Verlander and King Felix last year.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Apr 22, 2014 -> 10:21 AM) The Sox seem to be chasing after more IF and C than anything else. I think they are pretty happy with where they are in the OF unless a real game changer pops up. The only ones out there are Frederich Cepeda (he's 34 and profiles as more of a 1B/DH going forward, playing in Japan right now) and Despaigne in terms of impact bats. At Cepeda's age, he's clearly going to be on the downside, but he wouldn't be a bad sign at all if they had to go platoon DH next year.

Very good range there from Garcia. Of course, for him to be a regular, he would have to be nearly Gold Glove caliber at the major league level.

Velocity on that Abreu home run was "only" 93 MPH...no Verlander's best. But STILL. Tigers' announcers seem to think the strategy with Abreu is to get him thinking inside and then trick him to the outside...at least it was in that at-bat. Another play that COULD have been made by Jose but wasn't. Oh, well. Learning curve year.

QUOTE (Feeky Magee @ Apr 22, 2014 -> 05:39 PM) So does Alexei simply have no clue about the team concept of baseball? Sometimes he goes through phases where it seems like he's completely ignoring the fact that he has a job to advance to the runner to 3rd base. Obviously, he and Flowers have been the early hitting surprises for the White Sox, and he was due for a bad streak. Would just like to see him concentrate more on getting Dayan to 3rd in that specific situation when you're facing a Verlander and every run counts. Maybe they all feel Leesman's going to give up a bunch of runs and that it's not going to be the typical Verlander/Sale pitching duel.

Blame it on Chinese internet... There's a delay and the feed skipped so it seemed like DeAza was one who got out right away. Or it's just too early (736 a.m.) after staying out too late last night, haha.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Apr 22, 2014 -> 05:29 PM) Ya, hitting a ball over that cf fence during a cold weather game is pretty ridiculous. Said it only happens 3-5 times per year, usually in the middle of the summer. And most of them come off Cabrera's bat, when he's going good.