caulfield12

So are they really back to looking at Axelrod as a 5th starter, with Surkamp and Rienzo out of camp for now? I'd almost rather see Beck working with Cooper for one year and going through all those struggles than that. Heck, might as well start Boggs or Cleto.

QUOTE (bmags @ Mar 22, 2014 -> 03:52 PM) 2 straight MEATBALLS from Paulino leads to a 3 RUN HR As long as he's healthy and feels good...some out there are starting to worry about Quintana and monitoring to see how he bounces back next time.

Michigan looking dominant. 30-12 lead for the Wolverines. Amazing how good this team would be with Burke and McGary. Some would pick Matta or Izzo, but Beilein has to be considered the best coach in the league now. Someone else might argue that Bo Ryan gets the most out of his talent. Then you have Miles and Pitino, with Collins getting lots of respect for his job with NU, maybe too much. Matt Painter looked like a future coaching star and he's a year away from losing his job. Same with Crean.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Mar 22, 2014 -> 01:40 PM) What are you talking about? Are you seriously suggesting that Hahn would add a s***ty player to the roster as favor to the guy who oversees the system that failed to develop said player? Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? If he was in any other organization, they'd already have given up on him. I say this as one of his biggest fans from the time he played at LSU in the College World Series.

Mitchell's not going to be part of the rebuild. He MIGHT end up end up as a 4th/5th OFer as a favor to Buddy Bell. Players like Smith or Ibanez would be okay as "glue" or complementary pieces, but not as starters. Just like we've mentioned a veteran back-up for Flowers/Phegley would have helpful in their development. Instead, they seem to prefer to try to bring in younger competition in the form of Nieto.

QUOTE (Stan Bahnsen @ Mar 22, 2014 -> 12:53 PM) I have no real issues with the Epstein plan, if that's what you're implying. It fits their situation and history. I'm turned off by his ego and his fanboy pundits. If it craters, it will be VERY fun to watch. No, just hinting to our favorite resident doomsayer that he would be happier these days in the anti-Cubs brigade.

QUOTE (Heads22 @ Mar 22, 2014 -> 12:41 PM) Hopefully we have it reinforced that we have one of the best damn coaches in the country. Hinrich, Collison, LaFrentz, Barnes and Paige. Five reasons to hate Roy "Huckleberry Hound" Williams. At least he never won a championship with KU.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 22, 2014 -> 11:39 AM) Trayce still only just turned 23 a week ago. We've been talking about him forever but he's still not "old" for AA/AAA. And you still believe he will be a major league regular at any point?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 22, 2014 -> 11:32 AM) They went after a guy they thought was a better fielder at the position. Then they should have at least tried Suarez for 2-3 months.

http://puigdestroyer.bandcamp.com/album/puig-destroyer Actually, this just made me crack up. Track #6..."Stop F---ing Bunting" Quite possibly the worst song I've ever heard in my life. Just thinking about all the arguments about "small ball" and how many outs Guillen gave up bunting at USCF...even Ventura getting criticized for it when it wasn't even a Top 20 issue with everything that went haywire last year.

QUOTE (Heads22 @ Mar 22, 2014 -> 12:24 PM) Man, this team was looking like a Final Four potential team. Not really possible now. Hell, they could still win their next two games by playing out of their minds, but Niang is such a big part of what we do. Louisville overcame the Ware injury last year, but they had a lot more depth. You never know what North Carolina team you're going to get...but getting past the Sweet 16 would seem like an immense task.

QUOTE (Stan Bahnsen @ Mar 22, 2014 -> 12:28 PM) We don't reach the 1 year mark of the rebuild until July. It may be complete in 10 months from now. Sale is here for the next six years. Do you even think about what you write? Being an anti Cubs rebuild/anti-Epstein poster would be a lot more fun these days. Alas, not to be. Seems like we'll be having the same arguments for the next 2-3 years.

The 3rd round (2nd, whatever) always is so boring... Seems like 80-85% of the games aren't very interesting, except the 4/5 and 3/6 games usually. Pitino made a good point. Everyone is feeling so much pressure in the first round...especially the top seeded teams, that everyone starts rooting for the upset and the teams just tighten up until they get that first victory in the books and can relax a little bit. It definitely worked that way for the 2005 White Sox. Once they had survived and realized they weren't going to give up the division in a historic collapse/run by the Indians...they went back to playing the way they were capable of.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Mar 22, 2014 -> 11:57 AM) Lmao, wtf are you talking about Caulfield. Nobody has ever argued that here I think I've seen that somewhere in cyberspace...maybe it was the arguments going back and forth about Strasburg and how the Nationals were handling him, and faulting the GM for what eventually happened. That the recovery rate was so high now (compared to labrum/shoulder/rotator cuff surgery), and that quite a few pitchers were actually throwing harder than before the surgery in their second/bounceback year...

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 22, 2014 -> 11:51 AM) They need to add pitching, so they should trade pitching. Makes perfect sense. It's almost to the point where I'm wishing that Jimenez, Garza and Santana would go down to injury. Because if that ever happens to Chris Sale, it's going to be beaten into the ground more than any topic than the White Flag Trade. (Of course, with advances in TJ surgery and the fact that Sale's under team control through 2018, there will be others arguing he should get "pre-emptive" surgery just to get it out of the way, assuming he's going to get hurt at some point.)

Because rushing that timeline works so well. Just wait when the Royals are still one or two starters away when they lose Shields to free agency and wish they could have Wil Myers' offense back. The reason the White Sox are in this position in the first place was Kenny Williams' lack of patience. His best trait, but in many ways, his biggest fault as well. For a perfect example from another sport, look at what the Boston Celtics are doing with Brad Stevens. Rome wasn't built in a day.

QUOTE (oldsox @ Mar 22, 2014 -> 07:23 AM) Alexei is safe for now. Tigers got SS Andy Romine from Dodgers. That's not a good solution. They would have been better off with Dee Gordon.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Mar 22, 2014 -> 11:04 AM) That Wilbekin 3 was huge. The dreaded "momentum" changer going into the halftime. That Florida team is going to be extremely tough to knock out with all that veteran leadership. Louisville and MSU, as well.

Great, we're dealing Quintana, instead of signing him to a long-term, cost-controlled contract... And, here it comes....signing Colby Rasmus for $118 million. They're going to stick with Davidson surely at 3B, but Morales could definitely be a buy-low candidate to replace Dunn and provide some needed balance to the offense. We need some more disciplined, veteran hitters to serve as examples to the youngsters, with Konerko leaving. It would be ironic if Nieto turns into another version of Quintana, but nobody's counting on that one, since he hasn't exactly blown up A ball even.

Calipari, Billy Donovan, Alford...those are the smug guys you love to see lose. Calipari is like Nick Saban or Belicheck to me. A lot would include Roy Williams and Self on that list, along with Boeheim. For what it's worth, I hope Wichita State crushes them just to show that getting all those one and done players almost never works out anymore in terms of building a cohesive, team-first type of program. I never hated Pitino as much because of all the personal issues that he's gone through...and I really enjoy watching teams that have a well-coached pressing style and outwork/outhustle their opponents.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Mar 22, 2014 -> 10:14 AM) 25 minutes after you name Abreu as part of the White Sox core. He's the most experienced, polished and professional of all the Cuban players, from a consensus of opinion. He IS the core, with Sale. You can certainly include Bryant or Baez as soon as they earn starting jobs for the Cubs. Everything else is semantics. Please close this thread, lol. I feel like I'm watching an argument about the definition of sex from the Clinton days.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 22, 2014 -> 10:01 AM) You can't call it a "core" when none of them have playing a pitch of major league baseball. Soler has definitely fallen a bit out of favor already...injuries, temperament...Bryant, Baez and Almora (to a lesser extent) are the "golden boys" of the moment. Good luck to them in dealing with the weight of a century of losing all on their shoulders. Of course, so were Brett Jackson, Gary Scott, Kevin Orie, Bobby Hill, Jerome Walton, etc. Even then, one injury can derail all that, like the Twins are going through with Sano, or the White Sox with the Jared Mitchell traumatic ankle injury. He only calls it a core because that's the Theo Epstein pr/hype machine inculcating that message to the fanbase and via their beat writers.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Mar 22, 2014 -> 09:49 AM) The 3rd pick of the draft is no place to try to find a bargain. Take the best player. That is what ultimately will make your team better. Not trying to save $250k to give a 3rd rounder. If they think the HS kid is the best player, fine, but the bonus amount shouldn't be the deciding factor or losing 99 games was worse than we thought. How can you be 100% sure a collegiate pitcher is ALWAYS the better choice over someone like Kolek? (He's certainly been the choice of KW over the years, because we've traditionally chosen players who could contribute as quickly as possible to the big league club...at least before the Courtney Hawkins selection). Clearly, the more advanced player is usually the older one...but it's sometimes very difficult to project high school pitchers. It's not like we haven't done it before, though. We were 100% right on Gio Gonzalez, it's just unfortunate those results came from other organizations at the big league level. And the same thing is usually said about toolsy outfielders....the boom/bust rate is MUCH higher, but the ceiling for a guy like Buxton is SKY HIGH (Ken Griffey, Jr.), and the Twins picked him 2nd overall for $6 million. But I can guarantee if we took yet another athletic/toolsy high schooler over a polished collegiate pitcher, a lot of SoxTalk is going to be upset.

QUOTE (Stan Bahnsen @ Mar 22, 2014 -> 06:41 AM) To the bolded, yep that's the $64K question. Micah's speed gives him the highest ceiling, unless Semien shows the OBP skills he had at B'Ham. Micah's defensive ?'s likely give him the lowest floor, but he's acquitted himself rather well in this area during ST. If Johnson hits well enough, he'll be an impact player with his speed. His technique will likely evolve in the higher levels, and in MLB. Won't hazard a guess on how many SB he'll get annually, but lack of speed is not an issue. BTW, have you seen him run this spring? He flies. Whoever thinks Avi is as fast to 1st needs to get their stopwatch checked, and yeah I read something along those lines too. I think it's bunk. It was probably Bo Jackson.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 22, 2014 -> 09:36 AM) The White Sox have Chris Sale, Jose Abreu and Jose Quintana at their core. The Cubs have Anthony Rizzo and Stalin Castro. You tell me. If you want to extend it, you make it Sale/Quintana and Abreu/Garcia/Eaton/Davidson and POSSIBLY Viciedo. For the Cubs, you can't have this discussion without Bryant/Soler/Almora/Baez. They have "bigger" prospects, but we have the huge advantage in pitching and their core guys (you can add Smzardija too, for Cubs fans) are ones that are another bad or average season away from being out of the organization (Castro and Rizzo), just like Viciedo. Cubs' fans think they have at least two perennial All-Stars in their group. White Sox fans believe the same about Abreu and one of the three new youngsters they've brought in, with the big difference that Abreu is major league ready, so we're a step ahead and maybe more if the Cubs end up discarding their three "best" major leaguers for more prospects. On the other hand, we can "discard" Alexei Ramirez and replace him with Semien. Everyone expects that to happen eventually. But Cubs fans will expect Castro to turn out like Rafael Palmeiro or Greg Maddux when he leaves the fold.