caulfield12

QUOTE (The 815 @ Jun 12, 2013 -> 05:58 PM) Also, I believe the rule for players selected in rounds 11-40 is that there is a 100K limit before money counts against the allotment. For example, if Octavio or Tash sign for 250K then 150K would count against the signing allotment for round 1-10. Is Tash related to Toe Nash?

QUOTE (fathom @ Jun 12, 2013 -> 03:24 PM) Oh come on Isn't Geoff Blum an Astros announcer now? My University of Iowa dorm neighbor (Brett Dolan) was doing Astros' games with Milo Hamilton, not sure if he's still there or not.

Royals did rally to pull this game out at least, 3-2. DET bullpen issues continue to linger. The thing is, this year, they're going to address it in June/July and not try to wait it out again. Justin Verlander tossed seven shutout innings for the Detroit Tigers today. He didn’t get the victory. The Kansas City Royals rallied for a 3-2 victory in 10 innings after Lorenzo Cain hit a 2-run home run off Jose Valverde in the ninth inning with two outs and two strikes. Eric Hosmer’s RBI single in the 10th inning to score Miguel Tejada from third base sealed the win for the Royals, who took two of three from the Tigers in the AL Central division battle. ■ Box score Verlander gave up just three hits and two walks while striking out eight. His ERA dropped to 3.41, but his record remains at 8-4. As for Valverde, he’s now 9-for-12 in save chances this season. He inherited a runner on first base after Drew Smyly gave up a leadoff single to Hosmer to begin the bottom of the ninth. After recording two outs, Cain hit the homer off an 0-2 splitter to left center. Phil Coke relieved Valverde one batter later to end the threat. Prince Fielder hit an RBI single in the first inning to score Avisail Garcia, giving the Tigers the early 1-0 lead. Then, a Brayan Pena double in the fifth scored Matt Tuiasosopo to make it 2-0. K.C. starter James Shields went seven innings, striking out six. The Tigers (36-28) now have a day off and travel to Minneapolis to play the Minnesota Twins for a weekend series. The first game is at 8:10 p.m. Friday. www.freep.com/sports

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 12, 2013 -> 03:44 PM) There's a long series going back with the Dodgers and Diamondbacks at least 2 years, with Kennedy and Kershaw both involved with hitting people worth remembering too. Pretty sure it was Kershaw and Gerardo Parra. They brought that up yesterday during the broadcast as well. Dodgers' radio announcers were freaking out that Kershaw, Greinke or Puig were going to get injured in the scrum/fight.

Verlander's last two pitches were 96 and 97 MPH to Billy Butler (picking up the K). That's about as hard as he has thrown that I have seen recently.

QUOTE (The Ultimate Champion @ Jun 12, 2013 -> 01:55 PM) If Rick Hahn doesn't get to work he'll be sitting there with a fleshlight. Think of Rick Hahn more like The Great Gatsby, except not as smooth or suave as Robert Redford or Leo DiCaprio. Then mix him with Tom Buchanan.

QUOTE (The Ultimate Champion @ Jun 12, 2013 -> 01:46 PM) lol that's a pretty good idea. I think that would probably work if you're in the right place & you have enough bling. Bar trash isn't hard to impress as it is. Every team in the league knows we're desperate for young talent as it is. All they have to do is look at our organization. There are a couple players though that aren't getting the QO and are probably gone no matter what, and everyone out there knows it. I'm just saying, face the music. It's like Hahn should look in the mirror and say "We're not good enough, we're not smart enough, and doggonnit, nobody likes us" and then pick up the phone & let everyone know. Kind of like KW in August that year when he made it clear he was trading pieces after a bad game, and Contreras went to COL & Thome to LAD in the same night. Or like the time KW flipped over a table after Rauch went out to dinner with his parents. Hahn needs to flip the b**** switch. Does he have the b**** switch? We will find oit. I don't think so. Should have hired that Kim Ng chick, she probably has a b**** switch. Haha. Not going to go there, knowing how many stereotypes about Asian women are out there, starting from their over-the-top portrayals in martial arts movies (think Lucy Liu), vs. the conceptualized idea (by SOME men) of quiet/docile/respectful/obedient/servile. Just like there's a similar perception of Hahn as sort of an egg-head, detached, Ivy League-educated, accounting/data analysis/lawyering up type nerd without a killer instinct. He has yet to pull off the "Theo Geeky is the New Cool" move yet. A big part of it is perception and how you deal (or don't deal) with the media.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jun 12, 2013 -> 01:45 PM) I think to some extent you can, but you have to play it from the stereotypical girl's perspective rather than the guy's. Be a little slutty, feel the guys' offers, tease a few different guys and then go home with the one that has the biggest package. The guy is going to tell everyone at the bar that he wants to get laid and he is going to go up to all the girls and get no response and then, by the end, he is going to get one desperate, lonely girl to take him home and they'll have sloppy, quick sex and then he'll leave her house the next morning in shame and full of regret. Even Gordon Beckham and Brian Anderson? Kirk McCaskill? Jon Garland? Derek Jeter? What if that guy's read the MLB GM's version of THE GAME, lol?

When is this weather supposed to start? The Cubs are playing right now.

QUOTE (The Ultimate Champion @ Jun 11, 2013 -> 07:28 PM) I'd say it's aptitude. You can't see it, you can only guess at it. The physical ability is the only thing you can really quantify, so you see how much is there & then try to take into account stuff like character, attitude, coachibility, etc. But there's no sure formula as players with little in the way of natural ability succeed, guys with worlds of ability don't, good kids don't learn even though they listen, complete assholes who refuse to listen to anyone still can make it through on their own every once in a while, etc. Re: Septimo you see there's the arm so you take a shot, because good lefty specialists are nice to have & because he costs really nothing, and at this point he doesn't even cost a 40-man roster spot. The talent is there, the aptitude, who knows, but as a converted position player you'd expect him to take some time and not just set the world on fire out of nowhere like Sergio Santos did. IMO there is a middle ground between "all-star" and "f*** this guy" and I think Septimo has the potential to settle in that middle nicely at some point. I wasn't referring to Septimo so much specifically as the players like Jordan Danks or Phegley or Tekotte or Casper Wells or Tyler Greene that are some of our options right now. Playing Wilkins or Dan Black over Adam Dunn's not going to accomplish anything much for the franchise either, for example.

QUOTE (The Ultimate Champion @ Jun 12, 2013 -> 01:24 PM) They do HAVE to do something, sell. I'm all freaked out that Hahn is going to botch the deadline. f***. Hey caulfield you wanna do some coke? I'm all freaked out f***. For what it's worth, most likely everyone is going to be disappointed...just because hopes are so high we actually bring in a tremendous infusion of new talent. Part of its the sheer level of frustration with the starting line-up we're sending out there everyday and how many mistakes they're making on a daily basis. We haven't really done something of this scale since 1997. Would be interested to hear the tone Reinsdorf would take were he to be interviewed after last night's game...and Hahn, other than a couple of cliched responses, he hasn't been nearly as "informative" or outspoken as KW, so we should never make the mistake of assuming nothing's going on simply because he's more circumspect with the media and national beat writers. Even if KW wasn't saying something, he was saying SOMETHING if you interpreted the tea leaves. Hard to be patient to wait for Hawkins and Anderson for another 2 1/2-3-4 years.

Ben Verlander=Jordan Danks with the Tigers? They took him in the 14th round, OF, Old Dominion. Similar prospects?

Well, the White Sox have plenty of resources, supposedly, so it's not like they HAVE to do anything. That gives them lots of leverage, in and of itself. And they're not dealing with situations like Middlebrooks/Youkilis or Thome/Howard, where there's an obviously superior prospect being blocked by a popular, highly-paid veteran. I do think that Crain has been SO GOOD, so far, that it's likely (just from a statistical perspective) that his performance has nowhere to go but down, and that will clip some value...along with having him for fewer games left this season the longer teams wait. It always goes both ways. We wouldn't be completely shocked if Crain was to go in June. The rest of the players, July is much more likely.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 12, 2013 -> 12:36 PM) You know another time when the Sox had a really sloppy team? In fact, now that I checked, they led the league in errors. 1999. They were worse on defense than the Rays. Sloppiest team I can remember off the top of my head. You know why? Rebuilding year. I'm glad no one here thinks that's the thing the Sox need to do. That's fine, but when you have hitters to watch like Thomas, Konerko, Ordonez, Lee and Ray Durham, it's not so boring. Always the KW philosophy back at that time, entertain them with offense/homers. At least there was excitement about the arrival of young rookie starting pitchers with talent like Kip Wells that year. We also were one year away from being named the #1 farm system in MLB.

They might as well name go ahead and name Anderson and Hawkins as co-captains, as much leadership as they're getting at the major league level this season.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 12, 2013 -> 08:34 AM) The thing that will make me upset is if Santiago goes back to the bullpen at the AS break once Peavy is back. However they do it, they need to clear out a starter somewhere and give Santiago the next 4 months as a full time big league starter. Yep. The most obvious candidate is Axelrod, but it could just as easily be Quintana the way things are going. If they can't figure it out, go to a 6 man, so that every starter is not taxed and they're all ready to hit the ground running in 2014...maybe adding Johnson into the mix and subtracting one of the starters. The way things are going, it probably will be Peavy (dealt), but they have to wait for the right deal and not just trade him out of frustration for less than he's worth.

I'm sure someone in the front office is making these calculations right now... The cost of adding free agents to improve the offense for 2014, the expected return if they did almost a full sell-off, the fall in revenue from what they were expecting vs. what they're likely to get for the remainder of the season.....all their cost savings from Konerko, Crain, Thornton and possibly Ramirez and Rios and DeAza being jettisoned, and the $25 million boost coming in. There just aren't very many opposing teams that are going to draw fans to USCF for the remainder of June, so it's not like they're going to have any kind of attendance boost at all to allow for acquisitions where we're basically adding SOME salary and not giving up much in talent (like with Myers/Youk/Liriano). Coming into June, and looking at the upcoming schedule, there was definitely hope (coming off the 9-3 mark and back to .500 before playing the Cubs) that they would be within 1-2-3 games of the Tigers heading into the more difficult waters of July. Right now, at 8 games back, we're right on the cusp of elimination from all serious consideration (3.8%, tied with the Cubs, of all teams) for the post-season and already playing for next year. Not only that, but there's a bunch of competition in our own division we'd have to leap over...this isn't 2003 where you just knew the Royals were going to fall back to the pack. Unless at least two starting pitchers for the Tigers go down to injury, they're going to win the division. They can afford to even lose Verlander OR Scherzer, because Smyly's actually been their best pitcher the past 4-6 weeks, and he got a lot of valuable experience starting in 2012. We simply can't count on injuries and Valverde sucking again to get back to within hailing distance.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jun 12, 2013 -> 08:18 AM) <!--quoteo(post=2819570:date=Jun 12, 2013 -> 09:14 AM:name=Buehrle>Wood)-->QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Jun 12, 2013 -> 09:14 AM) <!--quotec-->He was even worse with the pitch calling than usual, so yeah he has some of the responsibility. Really? You mean when he wants the slider slow and away and Reed leaves it up and out over the plate? Your browser does not support iframes. Let's be rational here. Reed has also been overused, some would say abused, this week. To the point where posters on another board would worry he would end up like Bobby Thigpen after the 57 save season.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 12, 2013 -> 08:12 AM) ???? Do you mean Joe charboneau? I had my vowel sounds right at the end, lol. Tony Conigliaro is the name I was looking for.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Jun 12, 2013 -> 07:30 AM) So Kennedy plunks Puig in the face and then throws at Greinke's face, too? Guy should be banned. Buzzing the tower on Puig might have just been a way of getting his attention, like hey rookie, welcome to the big leagues. The shot at Greinke's head was 100% intentional. There's that code in baseball where you throw behind someone, or below the chest...but never neck/face/shoulders high. Can just imagine the damage to the game of baseball of a Rocky Colavito type situation with Puig after the first 10 days of his big league career.

Simply because of 2005, Paulie will never be booed (nor should he be) after what he's meant to this organization the last 15 years. Dunn doesn't have that history, and he never will. Period. And we're already "letting go" of Konerko and our memories of him in his glory days...we're still stuck with Dunn in a Sox uniform for the next 1 1/2 years, so that's hard to reconcile psychologically.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 12, 2013 -> 07:15 AM) .308 average, .923 OPS in June. I just wish he would be a bit more accountable. Just say, "I didn't make the play, and I should have..." instead of, "well, the ball skipped and I never had 100% control of it and..." Those are the plays major league catchers are paid to make.

http://www.providencejournal.com/sports/re...couting-war.ece http://www.providencejournal.com/sports/re...ce-scouting.ece http://www.providencejournal.com/sports/re...outing-team.ece Sometimes, one wonders if Ventura is getting 1/2 the advanced scouting information and processing it with his entire coach as well as on a system-wide basis, like this example of the intricate detailed preparation the Red Sox staff does. The fact that they've beaten up almost every rookie pitcher they've faced (12+ ERA for opposing rookie starters this year) shows that they're doing their homework. Not saying the White Sox don't necessarily do it...but you wouldn't know from the hitting results over the last decade plus. Articles like this could be used to support the Phil Rogers thesis that the White Sox aren't working as hard at some elements of the game as other teams...once again, we have no way of knowing how diligently Ventura and the staff are actually working, all we can do is theorize and conjecture based on the on the field results we've been seeing since mid-September, on through spring training, and now into the regular season for 1/3rd of 2013. This is essentially 85% of the same team we had last year that was in first place for much of the season, after all...a team many felt was overachieving their talent level. But these articles reinforce ONE WAY that an organization can quickly turn its fortunes around quickly from one season to the next...and, of course it helps when Buchholz, Lester, Ellsbury, Pedroia, Nava, Ortiz and Salty are playing as well as they have been, it's not like they were lacking in talent in their organization.

QUOTE (balfanman @ Jun 12, 2013 -> 06:16 AM) I was a Flowers supporter to start the season, but I must say I've seen enough. The Sox management really needs to shake things up and I think that it should start here. Maybe a few weeks in the minors would wake Flowers up, IDK, but something needs to happen to get this teams attention. As a primary defensive position, the catcher should set the tone defensively for a team and this is not happening. This should not be the only move either, Flowers should not be made the scapegoat for the lousy way this team is playing, but it's a start. JMHO Whoever this teams baserunning coach is (is it Boston?) should be fired immediately as well! Doug Sisson is coordinator for baserunning, but he deals mostly with the minor leaguers. BTW, Jeff Cox was hired by the Tigers this season, didn't realize he was back in baseball. Ozzie can sleep easier, haha.

A couple of things to remember. In Reed's defense, he was sent out there for the fourth consecutive day. That's pretty unheard of. That said, he had enough on the fastball to get it past Bautista, it was the hanging slider that sped up his bat which ultimately killed him. Also, I read somewhere online that one of the many reasons that they let AJ go was because he didn't want to call low/outside breaking balls is because he was getting lazy and/or didn't want to block pitches in the dirt. Even if that was true, which I doubt it, Flowers' technique with trying to backhand a ball with critical runners on base was just brutal. We're leading all of MLB in passed balls by a wide margin. Finally, Alexei's never going to get over that issue of being afraid of contact with the base runners, gator-arming the ball or trying to field it on the 3B side of the bag and THEN reach across instead of making the catch and getting the tag right in front of second simultaneously. That missed tagout was the end of the game, essentially.