caulfield12

The point about an overall down year for conference will proved to be a prescient one, If ur two team is Maryland and they can go down 22-3 vs. Iowa to begin a game, that's a team which hasn't been battle-tested enough recently...at least after their non-conf. And losing to Rutgers even without kaminsky is mystifying. It wouldn't shock me if 3-4 teams made the sweet sixteen, or zero. That kind of year.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 3, 2015 -> 03:48 PM) Those deals were all very early on... Was he lazy from day one? Nope, driven to prove himself, not unlike Ozzie. It just started sounding hollow and meaningless, like a White House press secretary in the end.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Mar 2, 2015 -> 01:36 PM) Oakland has a switch pitcher in camp. I hope he makes it. It really surprises me there haven't at least been a couple of these guys around. You really wouldn't have to be that good from at least one side to be really effective. He pitched today actually.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 2, 2015 -> 12:18 PM) Peter Gammons ‏@pgammo 8h8 hours ago This is trouble: Dodgers' Alex Guerrero says 'I'm not going down' http://fw.to/0UXuxjl There's our next Cuban middle infielder. Joking. At least hopefully not...unless he said it in another context, like he's goingto fight to win the position this time and leave no doubters, versus refusing an assignment from his org.

Would anyone be surprised if Wisky didn't get to the Elite Eight? Seems they're better off as the underdog/sleeper, not the giant waiting to be knocked off. And not quite sure Jackson coming back this late is a net positive.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Mar 3, 2015 -> 04:36 PM) Looking at tomorrows lineup, which is very likely a regular season lineup we'll see against LHP, it's kind of sad to see that some ugly bottom third from last year. Beckham-Flowers-Sanchez has minimal offensive upside. If Micah gets the job and can get on base at a ~33% clip I want him batting lead off. Every time he gets on base he'll get plenty of chances to run with Eaton typically seeing plenty of pitches. The brain trust really seems to love the prospect of Melky hitting second and I understand why but I worry the team, as currently constructed, will be a little too top heavy. I hope they're flexible enough to hit Melky #5 or #6. Especially if Avi Garcia doesn't set the world on fire which is a very real possibility. I know a lot of advanced metrics say you should have your best hitter hitting second but I think we have guys with speed/bat control that could benefit from having speed on base in front of them. Essentially, Eaton should always be #1 or #2 and some mix of Melky, Micah and Bonifacio should make up the other hitter. They will never do that to rookie. That said, Eaton would make a very solid 2 hole hitter but we also don't want to waste his base-stealing ability, either. In the end, Eaton leads off and Johnson is 9th unless he hits .400+ all spring. Even then, he's 8/9 imo. At least until Eaton gets knocked out by injuries and there's no better option available. Agree about the last line wholeheartedly. No Beckham, would even accept Ramirez there, although he's perfectly fine at 6-7 driving the ball like last season.

6th is the better position in the BIG10 tourney to avoid Wisky. Starting to hope Iowa gets into the 7/10 NCAA game vs. the dreaded 8/9 if u end up matched with Kentucky.

Semien now with two homers, nine total bases...four batted in, 3/3. Shades of a Wilson Betemit, haha.

Well, the whole Berry/Barry thing with the Dodgers didn't help either, the Todd Ritchie deal, along with Moneyball. As far as state universities, I meant comparing Iowa, Wisconsin or University of Illinois....to the ones I mentioned. Since a clear majority of the analytics front office hires have IVY ties over the last 15 years or so.

Nebraska has been in a free fall, fwiw. Everyone's looking ahead to Purdue, which makes it a dangerous "let up" game. If the boilers do lose to MSU early in the week, it nears a must-win situation for both teams. Certainly Illinois.

Former white sox relief prospect Gregory Infante trying to close out a save for the Pirates. Hasn't been in the bigs since 2010.

Semien starting at ss and hitting second for a's, phegley catching against Madison Bumgarner. And marcus just hit a two-run bomb to left, of course. Just hearing Jon miller's voice again is so cool. A's have hit for cycle in first six batters against the best pitcher in baseball down the stretch. Yawn. It's only spring training.

Waiting for "how the ---- could they possibly consider starting Beckham?" Thread to burst on the scene.

That Pierre Pierce/Alfraud situation at Iowa came close to demolishing the program. With Duke, the beat goes on.

I'm going to tune into the Tigers' game this afternoon and see what mood their announcers are projecting...

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Mar 3, 2015 -> 10:55 AM) Joe Savery and Arcenio Leon were both offseason pickups. Savery might be the 3rd or 4th pen lefty on the depth chart, Leon is just AAA filler. Fernandez is probably Raul, he's not going to see the majors this year. He's on the 40 and has intriguing stuff, picked up off waivers a year ago. But he's more likely in AA. Philips, I must confess, I don't know who that is referring to. I don't see any Phillips on B-R listed with White Sox, so color me confused. Hopefully not Heath, Wade or Jason.

What do we know about (pitchers) Savery, Leon, Phillips and Fernandez?

QUOTE (raBBit @ Mar 2, 2015 -> 04:07 PM) I asked him to expand on his role in the organization because it's very obvious that he has a prominent role, but a role that is somewhat ambiguous. He first reiterated to me the only information that had been public (at least to that point). That being his influence on hitting coach search, compiling candidates, background work and recommending Steverson. Other than that, the beat writers talk about his work on arbitration cases, which really could be taken as an endorsement of his craft as the Sox almost never make it to arbitration with their players. Other than the info that was already known, Haber, who seems entirely prepared in his speech much alike Hahn, expanded on how he works hand-in-hand with Dan Fabian. That is a tell, to answer your question, that yes, he is an analytical/information guy. For those who don't know, Dan Fabian has been an integral piece of the front office despite rarely being mentioned in the press. He's the Director of Baseball Ops and has been with the team for 20+ years. In any case, he has been given credit for creating the "portal" for the White Sox analytics department. While the Sox have been noted as behind the curve in the sabremetrics game (largely because of a couple pot-shots by Michael Lewis in Moneyball), those within the organization feel differently and that could be attributed to Fabian's longstanding contributions. But getting to Haber, he talked about working with Fabian on player targets and player evaluations. Perhaps delving into the portal with Fabian led to him spearheading the movement to extend Quintana which was released today by Dan Hayes as well as others I am sure. In any case, Haber has been very active in the White Sox organization and I am sure will begin popping up on other team's radars if he hasn't already. I was very impressed with him. One of the things that drew me to Hahn when he was still Assistant GM was the way he spoke as if he had known the questions in advance and prepared his answers. Haber has that same trait. I am sure the multiple degrees from top flight institutions speak towards their intelligence but socially, neither of these guys miss a beat like say, Kenny Williams (for sake of convenience) had in the past. Haber's clear and concise with a soft humor and was much more comfortable than other members of the White Sox front office. Judging off what is known about Hahn, there should be no doubt that Hahn looked at Haber and saw a lot of himself. If the Sox build a winner out of this new team, I imagine Haber takes on a more prominent role in either the White Sox organization or elsewhere. I don't want to draw out this post any longer but it's broaching on a topic that bothers me. People talk about whether front offices are "sabers" or "old-school" and it's silly. For 90% of organizations it's a hodge-podge of 3-7 individuals making the decisions and these individuals have different backgrounds. There may be a few exclusions, say the Diamondbacks on one end of the spectrum and the A's on the other but with out a doubt, a successful front office needs individuals who can characterize and weight performance financially/statistically as well as guys who have "been there before" and can offer a nuanced outlook on the dynamics of a baseball team. It's not like Stanford's a crappy school, haha. One of my students here in China got turned down by them but accepted at MIT (also not wanting to get into the argument about the quality of a state school, versus, let's say Northwestern or Notre Dame). At any rate, like Ozzie, KW got a little bit lazy and started resting on his laurels. Call it cockiness, overconfidence, whatever you want. The most blatant example was the misunderstanding about the Nestor Molina acquisition, and his status over that winter. Seems he was delegating too much (in that case, to Paddy) and, in other cases, to Dave Wilder to have carte blanche to run his own show in the Dominican.

That's nearing Sosa 1998 size. Or Puig.

Penn St./Paterno/Sandusky it is certainly not. And there's no pattern of cover-ups/abuse of power, etc.

So one would have to assume Rasheed Suleimon was one of the players... Or is this an older story going back to decade or two? http://nypost.com/2015/03/02/coach-k-waite...ssaults-report/ Here's the story. And it was Suleimon, going back at least 10 months...and two alleged sexual assaults.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Mar 2, 2015 -> 10:37 AM) Also a disciplined hitter who had an OPS just under .800 with Cincinnati. But his first 3-4 seasons he was terribly inconsistent...and he was on the verge of being banished to the minors or being out of baseball.

Looks like Viciedo will make $20K per month if he doesn't make the major league roster. About $850,000 (total) if he never sets foot on a major league diamond this year, not bad. With the Saunders injury, though, the door is at least ajar to be a platoon DH and part-time OF through mid-May.

QUOTE (oldsox @ Feb 28, 2015 -> 06:55 PM) Who had the movie rights? https://images.search.yahoo.com/images/view...mp;fr=yfp-t-252 https://images.search.yahoo.com/images/view...mp;fr=yfp-t-252 Cinemax Friday Nights, haha

http://m.mlb.com/news/article/110819666/ph...hicago-treasure Very good Phil Rogers column on Minnie. Didn't realize his WAR and BB/K stats were so amazing...