caulfield12

QUOTE (LDF @ Jul 21, 2015 -> 05:06 PM) just coming in now..... i didn't have time before. Melky stat - june 270+ avg, july 303 avg. he is starting to hit like many expected him. Danks contract was inherited there is nothing that can be done about that. Adam LaRoche - why wasn't he added to the list??? the only what if, i have is the additional pitching, Anderson / Volquez, both of which i wanted in dec. Beckham moved paid off, much to my surprise. but then i am saying a person who is hitting a sub 200. Boni i am totally surprise on him.... my only lame excuse is he wasn't handle right. but that is grasping. next yr, it is really going to take a smart gm to do this right. whomever is making the decisions. With KaRoche, only a two year deal and we're going to be hard pressed to compete next season as we've been discussing for 2-3 months now.

The end of Trump is nearing...it was quite fun for the Dems while it lasted. Now maybe we'll see if Bernie Sanders' crowds will net him any real traction against Clinton. Also seems to be a repeat of 2012, when 6-7 different GOP candidates pulled into the lead but managed to quickly blow themselves up. Now, the pressure will fall back on Walker again, who has been flying under the radar. Do the Republicans really want a candidate without a university degree for the highest office in the world? Stay tuned.

It would be nice to have the second or third best team in baseball and still have the luxury of sending down the equivalent of Carlos Rodon with little or no impact on the product on the field.

Also, in hindsight, it's going to be fairly ridiculous to pay Robertson elite closer money for at least 2/4 years when we're not even close... There are a ton of guys out there like Melancon, Grilli, K Rod, Casilla, Boxberger, Soria and Uehara who wouldn't have been up there in Robertson/Miller territory. There's no doubt that spending money too early on Robertson, Cabrera and then the Danks deal aren't preventing another huge push this coming offseason.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jul 21, 2015 -> 11:35 AM) This is the one spot that you and I disagree, but I don't think much of what we did necessarily set us back that much. I don't think LaRoche contract decimated the club and I don't think the Melky deal did either, but I suppose that one was more risky given the extra years. I still think you can spin Shark today and get the equivalent of what we gave up (and as I've long said we traded from a surplus given the Semien was the primary chip). In fact, I think we could get more, so one could argue (and none of us were privy to the conversations) that Kenny and Rick told JR, okay, we can try to make a push, give it our best, but whatever we do, we will ensure ourselves we have ability to pivot after this year depending on how things go (as we know this team can only contend if all of these things go right vs. even with x and y going against us, we'll still contend). No point in you and I arguing this back and forth since we both see these differently regarding what the Sox did this off-season. You think it set us back, I happen to have a differing opinion, but that is a seperate argument. None of us know that conversations between JR / Rick / Kenny and what went down and we also don't know strategically what they have in mind, but my presumption is we'll at least find out if our return for Shark exceeds what we gave up (on paper) in the next few days. Who can the White Sox realistically pursue in FA that will improve the team significantly and NOT blow our entire budget on just 1-2 players (Heyward, Gordon, Cespedes). So the question with the Melky contract is did spending that money too early impact our next free agency class? Obviously if he had a crystal ball and signed Morales instead of LaRoche, B.Anderson/Volquez instead of Shark...were in a position to add Puig for Quintana, you'd be much closer to competing and we still would have Semien to start at 2b or 3b, maybe bringing in Cervelli to catch. Lots of what ifs. The problem is that Avi Garcia is closer to a negative than a positive, Melky's more of a complementary player at his best, Abreu's struggling physically and hasn't carried the team like in 2014 (or Quentin in 2008)...and the gaping holes are at premium positions like 3b, SS and C. I'm not so sure we wouldn't be in the same spot if we signed Russell Martin instead of Cabrera/LaRoche because we'd still have had to spend another $25 million on the likesof Lind/Morales/another veteran pitcher. In the end, the Cabrera and Danks contracts are weighing us down...that and wasting money on guys like Beckham and Bonifacio when it would have been better to play Saladino, Micah and Sanchez the whole season at the big league level and see what we had at the end of the year. At this point, nobody could say with certainty any of those players should be penciled in as starters for next season, other than Micah Johnson since he's still the most likely impact player of the three.

Is that Hamels contract now considered a bargain? Two months ago, it was more of a salary relief must come back with him conversation. Who's going to outbid the Dodgers on Greinke? With his social personality disorder, NY or Boston's not the best landing spot. You could see Detroit if they go back into "all in" mode, which they are pretty much going to be forced into doing with their roster construction and payroll.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jul 21, 2015 -> 09:12 AM) This would be our tremendous lack of power and reliance on stringing 4-5 singles in an inning to score runs. And lack of two out clutch hitting since we had all those miracle comebacks the first six weeks or so...passed balls, HBP, balks, opponent's errors, that's our best offense.

QUOTE (Brian @ Jul 21, 2015 -> 07:38 AM) Just read about it. I'm over the vampie genre. Even that indy one with Tilda last year was annoying to me. What about Let the Right One In, the Swedish film? Warm Bodies was pretty clever, fwiw. A little of Rob Corddry goes a long ways, though. I even had to watch two Kevin Hart films because it was a 15 hour flight and was running out of options...Get Hard and Wedding Ringers. He'e definitely getting overexposed. The best was Her Granddaughter, a Japanese film, and Red Army, a documentary about the Russian state hockey machine in the 70's and 80's starring Slava Fetisov and Scotty Bowman.

Well, considering that Alexei and Gordon will both be off the roster...and one of the replacements is likely to be Micah Johnson, it's difficult to imagine where the defensive improvement will come from. It's hard to believe they will sign Heyward, Gordon or Cespedes and move Avi to DH. As it is, Abreu's looking like he needs to spend more time at DH with his body seeming to break down more and more as the season wears on.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 21, 2015 -> 04:56 AM) No, the point is Escobar wasn't the best. Players become infinitely better in your mind the secomd they are traded. You were making excuses for Semien and his 28 errors saying the A's see potential and brought in a coach to help him. They brought in a coach because he is awful, and the bat has come back to earth as well. Escobar is a utility guy. Trading him made plenty of sense. It didn't work out, but he will hever be a difference maker. Considering your benchline/standard for best position player produced by the White Sox is Gordon Beckham over the last decade...infinite's not a bad choice of words when Semien still comes out well ahead of Alexei production-wise.

They would have to continue to average 22,622 over the final 38 games to get to 1.832 million. Will be hard-pressed to do that with so many games left when the team's already perceived to be out of the race. If the Yanks, Cardinals (midweek) and Cubs are enough to offset the team's blase record and end of summer vacation, it will be a huge surprise. 1.775 million is probably a better final guess. If they would have taken 3/4 out of the All-Star Break against KC and kept Samardzija, 1.9 might still have been doable.

QUOTE (Vance Law @ Jul 20, 2015 -> 09:10 PM) If you've got Bonifacio, he's bumped up to 24. If Beckham can hit his career average against lefties, he's fine as a platoon mate with his plus defense. Beckham, like Alexei, LaRoche, and Melky, has not approximated career averages. But it's beyond silly to care what deficiencies the back end of the bench have, when you consider the hitting of literally every player on the team. Except his GM is paying Bonifacio basically twice as much as Beckham to do pretty much nothing. How did he end up overvaluing him by so much? We've seen the same thing happen with Keppinger, as well, fwiw.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 20, 2015 -> 09:10 PM) Escobar's UZR/150 -15.1 falls into the "awful" range. So there you go...if the best of the worst is awful, whose responsibility is that? As has been noted 1,000+ times with Semien, if we can't develop hitters or fielders, what can we do well, as you don't think Cooper has done a good job with the pitching, either?

That would put Price, Cueto, Hamels and probably Chapman ahead of Samardzija...and, if the Sox are asking too much, someone like Haren from the Marlins. What's the status with Kazmir's injury the other day? Should be plenty of interest, Ventura got rocked again so it seems KC really needs an anchor at the front end of that rotation to stabilize things and remove some of the pressure on Duffy and Yordano.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/attendance Barely got the White Sox past Oakland for 26th...there's the Cards and Cubs still coming, but not much else to prop up attendance from here on out.

QUOTE (Vance Law @ Jul 20, 2015 -> 08:46 PM) Micah now his 6 straight multi-hit games. Average up to .333. Bring him up. They need to wait 2-3 weeks until he's cooled off and starting to doubt himself a bit, like with Sanchez.

QUOTE (Lillian @ Jul 20, 2015 -> 08:36 PM) If it is true that Saladino is a better defensive SS, I would absolutely prefer Tyler. In fact, I even like Saladino better if he is only as good as Garcia. It was my understanding that Leury was clearly the better defensive SS. If anyone can make a comparison of the two players' respective defensive skills, that would be helpful. It's arguable. Neither player is Rondon. Garcia has the better arm and slightly more range. Saladino's serviceable, but that doesn't get you in playoff contention. The best guy we've produced is Eduardo Escobar, fwiw.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Jul 20, 2015 -> 11:14 AM) Eh, he wanted to go against the continuity of the MCU. When the franchise is 11 films deep and has their slate laid out, that's just not possible. Meanwhile Ant-Man was a fun ride. I expected Michael Douglas to phone it in on this performance but no, he really sold Hank Pym. Michael Pena, TI and friends added some levity as well...I thought it was very good, definitely better than I expected going in. It's a pretty unknown character except to hardcore comics followers...no cool suit or merchandising treasure trove, but it all worked. As far as female heroines...the character could have easily been exchanged with Bryce Dallas Howard in Jurassic World. You don't want the girl to be too much like Gal Gadot in the F&F series or she'll distract too much from the lead. She's built to be a complementary piece in the background and undergo her cool foe to warm supporter metamorphosis.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movie...121-column.html A Girl Walks Alone at Night...still don't know what to make of it, but it keeps your attention, that's for sure. Saw it on the plane from Chicago to HK. Shot in black and white, it's the first Iranian skateboarding vampire female revenge flick/western, haha.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jul 20, 2015 -> 09:55 AM) Took Balta a year to convince me Connor was worth anything and then as soon as I finally came around, he went completely into the tank. Connor, too bad, their were times where I saw some offensive potential, but defensively, you were offensive. We can't even agree after all this time about how to spell his first and last names.

QUOTE (Bigsoxhurt35 @ Jul 20, 2015 -> 07:06 PM) Jose Quintana for Nolan Arenado. Why would the Rockies trade their best player, nearly a superstar at a premium position...for Jose Quintana? How would that improve their future prospects? It would also require sending Montas or Anderson along and probably even a lesser prospect.

QUOTE (shipps @ Jul 20, 2015 -> 07:41 PM) Unbelievable play by Phillips. Maybe the best by a second basemen this year. You can pretty much guarantee he's written in permanent ink on KW's "once great but maybe we can catch lightning in a bottle" veteran acquisition targets list.

QUOTE (CaliSoxFanViaSWside @ Jul 20, 2015 -> 06:04 PM) Well I know his hitting has been pitiful but you hear a lot in the game threads about Alexei being a step slow . All those assists tell me differently As far as mental errors I really think that's something that is extremely hard to quantify. No one is in his head and plenty of SS make errors on routine plays or what appears to be routine plays. Like Hawk likes to say if you get to more balls than all other SS the chances of making an error are higher because you're getting to more difficult plays. I can't defend his hitting at all except to say working the count is also one of those things there is too much emphasis on. Some pretty good hitters love to sit on that 1st pitch fastball because its the most predictable pitch and likely to be the best pitch you see in a particular sequence. That's fine...but hit it where it's pitched, like Abreu does. Be willing to take a hit to the oppoite field. How many times has he rolled his wrist and pulled the ball on the infield to the lh side or hit into a DP?

Opposition finally showing up defensively...highlight reel play there by Phillips and Suarez.

Let's imagine we had the Pods/Iguchi line-up for a moment... Which players are most capable of adjusting their offensive approach and advancing runners, hitting the ball to the right side...being situationally-aware, two strike hitting, etc. Alexei's not THAT player. He's a lot closer to Viciedo and Juan Uribe, minus the sac fly swing. Actually, we might be better off with Uribe as a place holder, come to think of it.