caulfield12

K's and fly balls from DeAza, not good. Ideally, De Aza would have a RH counterpart who could play against LHP, too. White Sox 3-17 when not hitting a home run this year. 2.2 runs scored on average over the last 9 games. What do you know, 1-2-3. Saunders is practically unbeatable at SAFECO, atrocious on the road. Dramatic splits.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 3, 2013 -> 09:16 AM) Honestly it is too bad the Sox and Royals can't trade with each other because they are in the same division. There could be some interesting potential matches. There's no way they would trade Moustakas or Hosmer. They'll run them into Luke Hochevar status before that happens. The only players left who are interesting are Salvador Perez, Escobar (to replace Ramirez, but why would they trade a younger/cheaper version of Alexei to us?) and Cain. Alex Gordon is their franchise player right now, along with Billy Butler. I can't think of anyone they would want from our organization...other than Sale and some of our relievers. You can add Quintana, Santiago and Reed, but they need offense just as badly as the Sox do. They're not going to trade Moustakas OR Hosmer for Viciedo/Rios, for example. (Although that would be an interesting move since they're in "win now" mode). I don't even know if White Sox fans would be for acquiring Hosmer for Viciedo/Rios, actually.

Indians fighting back, just scored 3 to tie it and are threatening to take the lead from Pettite.

QUOTE (Jake @ Jun 3, 2013 -> 06:25 PM) If Dunn gets a hit in a game or gets 1 BB in three ABs/2 BB in four ABs, I wait until the next game to say anything bad about him I wish the White Sox would do an internal survey of their season ticket holders and give ten options why they're not going to games or selling their tickets... They could choose 3 reasons, and would be given 10 options to choose from. One of them would be Adam Dunn. I wonder how much he's affecting the bottom line by still being on the team? The morale...being around someone who has been struggling so badly for all but 2 or 3 months of his time with the White Sox has to wear on everyone, including the media. They don't like having to ask the same questions of him game after game, either. Most of them think he's not a bad guy, it's hard to "hate" him, so it's easier just to tune out or not care anymore.

Up to .184. Dunn's average makes Hawkins' look decent in comparison.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 3, 2013 -> 12:51 PM) MLB ‏@MLB 1h AL @AllStarGame voting leaders: 1B: Davis 2B: Cano 3B: Cabrera SS: Andrus C: Mauer OF: Trout OF: Jones OF: Hunter DH: Ortiz Andrus at SS is a function of the fact that this is a weak position in the AL (Asdrubal Cabrera is better but not having the best season, Peralta deserves the spot) but also of the Rangers voting in their favorites and having attendance superiority. And, it makes Alexei Ramirez still attractive, comparatively. Credit to the fans for Davis over Fielder. Hunter in the OF (he did have a hot start but no way he's going to hold up as an All-Star) is a bit more dubious.

QUOTE (Jake @ Jun 3, 2013 -> 02:58 PM) 3 game hitting streak Didn't we argue he'd turned it around a month ago with his hot streak? That didn't exactly last.

For example, the Rays made a bunch of solid first round draft picks (since sucking for a decade is always pointed out as the last thing the White Sox can afford to do). Crawford (2nd round), BJ Upton (2 overall), Josh Hamilton (1st overall, couldn't have foreseen car wrecks and drug addiction), Longoria (3rd), Price (1st), Delmon Young (1st), Matt Moore...they would have had Teixeira instead of Dewon Brazelton if not for Scott Boras, they also couldn't have foreseen Rocco Baldelli's health problems (6th overall). That's a great foundation. But the reason they became one of the best franchises in baseball was JUST AS MUCH flipping player for player, like Kenny Williams did at the height of his regime. Trades that were buried on the last page of the sports page on the transactions list. The biggest one that everyone remembers was Garza/Bartlett for Delmon Young, ultimately the move that got Bill Smith fired by the Twins. Little known Ben Zobrist (from right in our backyard, Eureka, Illinois) for Aubrey Huff (Astros). JP Howell (former Royals' first rounder who flopped as a starter) basically stolen and patiently converted to relief, based on their internal sabermetric analysis of his peripherals. Grant Balfour for Seth McClung. Iwamura from Japan because nobody at that time was valuing defense in MLB, and they knew with their incoming pitching talent and some of the worst defenses in baseball (2005-07) that they had to shore up this area. Cliff Floyd (another Illinois kid) for veteran leadership, not unlike Carl Everett or El Duque in 2005 with us. Willy Aybar (look at his personal/off the field history) stolen from the Braves, took a huge risk and it paid off (although they made mistakes with Hamilton, Young and especially Elijah Dukes). Kazmir for Victor Zambrano Smart trade to pick up Gabe Gross (Brewers) and make him part of a platoon Then a long list like Eric Hinske (more veteran leadership), Trever Miller, Carlos Pena (who was available for next to nothing on the waiver wire multiple times to many teams), Andy Sonnanstine, Dan Wheeler, Jhonny Gomes and Dioner Navarro (Yankees). 50% of it was those 1st round draft picks, and leveraging them...and getting the likes of many of them to extend out past their arbitration years early (Crawford and Longoria being the first two, Longoria famously leaving millions on the table as it worked out, but he guaranteed himself $20.5 million before his first month in the big leagues). Matt Moore would be another example, copying the model the Indians set with Shapiro in the 90's with this strategy, and what we chose to do with Sale as well, guaranteeing his family's future economically while also risking the loss of millions of dollars if he outperformed, went year to year and hit free agency earlier. This is exactly what Hahn needs to do. He doesn't have a Delmon Young to leverage, but he does have some assets to get the process started, and tons of payroll flexibility (except for the Dunn/Danks situations).

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jun 3, 2013 -> 02:59 PM) I don't think the bolded word means what you think it means. This isn't arbitrage. It is a hedge, or speculation, or some of both... but not arbitrage. It's when you make a move paying less for an asset than its "real" or true corresponding worth, and, simultaneously are selling high on other pieces (be they stocks, baseball cards or real players)...increasing the overall net asset value of your organization. For example, Soptic for Gillaspie. Getting Peavy and Sale for much less than market value. Or Freddy Garcia's extension, whatever. Or leveraging our relationships with Cuban agents to get Ramirez and Viciedo (but missing on Cespedes, Soler and Puig). The problem is that we've been both buying high (Dunn, Teahen, Keppinger, Edwin Jackson, Swisher) and selling low (Jackson, Swisher, Santos, Quentin) on most of our assets over the last 2-3 years. For example, if we would have picked up DeAza for nothing and turned him into an even younger player with even more ability and saved money on years 5 & 6 of his arbitration eligibility, which is unlikely to happen now. Selling a player one year too early is almost always better than one year too late.

QUOTE (TaylorStSox @ Jun 3, 2013 -> 02:16 PM) Yeah, I'm sure his kids can't handle a little ribbing at school for a multimillion dollar inheritance. How do they manage? Look at what Warren Buffett did with his children and grandchildren. You can't assume you know what Adam Dunn is thinking any more than I can.

Buck, Hundley, Corey Hart, Carlos Pena, Weeks, Schierholtz, Morse, Bay, Ibanez, Quentin, Soriano, Melky Cabrera, Kendrys Morales, Adam Lind. There's a list of players that could be helpful for this season or next season if we don't or can't get SoxTalk versions of Trout/Harper/Machado back in return in any trades that might be made. At least we could field a respectable team around .500, if the F.O. prefers that to bottoming out completely. Some would of course argue that adding most of these veteran players (with the exception of Morales and maybe Buck) wouldn't come close to making us competitive and would only make things worse by blocking players who will be part of the next White Sox playoff or World Series team. However, if you stuck Buck or Hundley at catcher, Dunn/Viciedo at DH, picked up one of those LFer's and got a real offensive spark out of him and Konerko got going in one last hurrah...there are definitely arguments to be made you could still get back into the race THIS SEASON. Then the question becomes who are we willing to trade for those pieces? And some of them would be just salary/payroll additions.

But then there's the stress and strain on a family when the father goes to the park and hears boos every game, his children have to deal with it at school (perhaps)...just the frustration level and lack of answers, the constant interviews and mental/psychological stress. Removing yourself from that whole situation has a value too. Everything in life is not always about money. If his agent/financial advisor was doing his job, he would have stuck a significant amount of that money into CD's, TIPS or index funds and the amount should have grown by at least 3-4-5% a year. We don't know how much money he's actually saved, but it's worth considering. Heck, maybe "setting up every generation of his family for life" isn't his top priority. Maybe he thinks if he spoils all of them or they expect it or have come to rely on him too much, they'll only blow the money or be irresponsible with it because it's not money they themselves had to work hard for and earn from the sweat of their own labor. Anything's possible. We just don't know.

QUOTE (The Ultimate Champion @ Jun 3, 2013 -> 11:58 AM) I really doubt they'll undermine Robin. Or at least they shouldn't. When Robin was hired they told us that he was going to take some time, maybe a couple years, 3 years, whatever, to come into his own. And that would be fine, because we'd be retooling/reloading whatever you want to call it. But since hiring Robin we've signed veteran players to MLB contracts & traded prospects for veterans. So we say one damn thing and do another. If this coaching staff is here develop players then let's bring in some players to develop. Calling out anonymous players and then demoting Tyler Greene solves nothing, and it's hard to blame the coaching staff for not coaching up a contender when the FO made it very clear that that wasn't the goal, and when the FO hasn't done a damn thing to make this team into a contender. I want Hahn to make a move soon, finally, because ATM it seems like there's no plan around here. Only the Peavy extension. And Sale, although if he doesn't get hurt, that's just great arbitrage, when there's a decent likelihood he'll outperform that deal by $70-110 million based on sabermetric values. But you could also say that bringing back Floyd (there's another move about contending now) and Peavy was spinning them off for future assets at some point as Plan B, with the idea all along they were in-between as an organization in terms of being able to compete these two seasons.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jun 3, 2013 -> 01:33 PM) Probably not. But players have done it before, a very few times, and Dunn seems like the type that might very well do it. We are talking about a guy who is just playing the worst baseball in MLB right now, and pride is important to these guys. He's already made a ton of money. Not saying it is likely - just that it is possible. Gil Meche would be one, although he didn't want to rehab yet another injury and stay on the DL for an entire season collecting salary when he knew he wanted to walk away.

QUOTE (flavum @ Jun 3, 2013 -> 10:06 AM) I'd cut two weeks off the regular season. Shorten the season to 156, for one week off, and schedule 3 doubleheaders per home team (6 total per team). If some small market teams want to have straight doubleheaders as a promotion, great. Otherwise, make them split doubleheaders. They've already made the rule about adding a 26th man for doubleheaders. They should have more of them and get the World Series over with by October 15th-20th. 154. Tradition.

It's not helping that most of the star players for the Yankees are out or have been for most of the season...the Mets, Cubs, Sox, Angels and Dodgers are all struggling. So that wipes out your 3 biggest media markets...although the Red Sox and Yankees are doing well for now, those regional teams like the Giants, Braves or Cardinals just aren't the draws. Even Philadelphia was a more powerful draw in their heyday than the Cardinals, Giants or Rangers.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Jun 3, 2013 -> 09:30 AM) Yeah, it's important to note how little money we have in long-term commitments. After 2014, it's Sale and Danks and nothing else. Peavy and Rios will likely be traded either this deadline or next. Konerko likely retires, leaving us to sit through one more year of Dunn as the primary first baseman. That's possibly also a transitional period for Viciedo -- we have a bunch of OF that need to break into the Majors and no plausible long-term replacement for Konerko/Dunn at first. But this is why we're in a much better position than the Astros and Cubs have been -- we don;t have any work to do to clear out roster flexibility. This current group we can call Kenny's Final All-in is already almost done. KW can take the blame for not winning this time around, but he needs some major credit for not crippling the franchise in the process. Except Dunn and Danks are still looming over our future VERY MUCH the next 1 1/2 years. Looking around the rest of the AL Central, there isn't a single contract worse than Dunn's or one riskier than Danks, although I'm sure Verlander, Mauer and Fielder will draw some arguments. KW also left the farm system in much worse shape than when he became a GM. The question is how much further we need to fall before there's light at the end of the tunnel? There are also legitimate concerns about Alexei Ramirez's contract, maybe not this season, but in the next couple of years. Not to mention Viciedo's worrisome OPS against RHP and the future of the catching position. We can get rid of Beckham and Flowers and DeAza, but then we still have to replace them, and none of those candidates exist inside our system AND are ready to make an impact in the next 2-3-4 months. Finally, we're left with pretty much no assets to trade that won't cripple this year's team...except for maybe Erik Johnson. So not sure if lucky would be the word I would use...having had to discount tickets this year to get roughly the same amount of attendance and inevitably behind last year's tv ratings as well. Another season like 2011 isn't going to be fun for anyone.

QUOTE (balfanman @ Jun 3, 2013 -> 09:23 AM) I hear ya, and I'm not necessarily disagreeing. I just think that its time to shake things up a little bit and try something different. I agree that Danks wouldn't help the offense much, if any; but Danks replacing 1 of DeAza, Viciedo, or Dunn in the lineup isn't exactly taking out a hot bat either. I think that while making a bad play yesterday, overall Danks is much better on average than anyone else we have in centerfield. The problem is when you're sacrificing 75-125+ OPS points, he better be playing a Gold Glove CF.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Jun 3, 2013 -> 08:27 AM) No marketable stars. If Harper, Machado and Trout aren't it... Or Verlander and Cabrera. Strasburg. Maybe Harvey. MLB hasn't done a great job with marketing, it's not that there aren't any marketable players.

The irony is now we're going to bench Keppinger when he's been hitting close to .400 the last 13 games. That kind of season.

They key is fixing up the middle first. Beckham/Ramirez, then CF and C. At least, that's traditionally the way to think. It's just going to be incredibly difficult to do in the short-term...but rather than spending huge money on veteran bats in the free agency market, they're going to have to find value players like the Rays did with Ben Zobrist (Astros) and someone like a Franklin Gutierrez (Mariners). That will at least allow us to be play "Twins/small ball" and win the close games (if we can shore up the bullpen too) and make other teams beat themselves with our pitching, base-running and defense.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 3, 2013 -> 06:59 AM) In other words, no matter how much people complain about the World Series becoming a regional event...baseball doesn't need to "Fix" it because they're maximizing revenue from it. Maximizing revenue in the short-term, but partially losing younger fans to the NFL and NBA because of it... From observing Selig, it's clear he wants to expand more and more into Latin America (Mexico City, for example)...Asia...Europe's going to be a tougher sell. You can imagine some kind of partnership with the Japanese Professional Baseball leagues to have a merger with MLB and keep a Pan Pacific Division in South Korea/Japan/China (made up mostly of Asian players)....and then one within Central/South America, for example, 2-3 teams in Mexico, 1-2 in Cuba, at least 1-2 in the Dominican Republic, 1 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, maybe a couple in Venezuela if that country ever becomes friendlier to the U.S. and less kidnapping-crazy, one in Cartagena/Baranquilla/Santa Marta in Colombia....then eventually into Brazil. Heck, you could even imagine at least one in Taiwan, one in Hong Kong, one in Shanghai and one in Singapore eventually. Manila would be another option, as that country's very Americanized, although they love basketball the most...their economy grew at a faster rate than China the last quarterly cycle. So you'd have the best Asian MLB team play the best Latin American team, and then the winner would play the winner of the North American World Series...although some of the American and Latin American teams would face each other during the regular season as well.

Who's the one hitting too many fly balls? DeAza, one would assume.

If they can't find impact bats...one thing for sure they need to do is find superior defenders (buying defense costs a lot less than offense, another Moneyball-ish/Rays idea) in order to improve the overall D at: LF, CF, 1B, C. Gillaspie will get most of the at-bats at 3B, he's at least league average defensively and could improve, Ramirez and Beckham...and then Rios is fine in RF. Viciedo needs to DH against LHP with Dunn only facing RHP. Viciedo can play against softer tossing RHP sometimes, depending on how Dunn is going (maybe they even release him, but that's seemingly not an option quite yet). DeAza might need to go if he can't play CF...he's definitely not close to average there. One obvious move (at 1B) would be a veteran "place holder" type of bat like Carlos Pena for a year, who can also play very solid defense. Then everyone knows the problems at catcher, they're well-chronicled. Getting Viciedo and Keppinger off the field will solve 50% of the problem. Thompson in CF would be another solution, but he's probably a July/August/September 2014 arrival...so they need someone to hold down the fort while waiting on reinforcements. It might mean Granderson for one or two years (or a mutual option for the 2nd/3rd year). It might mean Morales at 1B, or Pena. Utley's more of a long shot for 2B, because we already have Keppinger/Beckham/Sanchez there...at least there are options. Plus Semien and Saladino and even Micah Johnson are backlogged at that position, even DeMichele. Then you have the McCann idea for catcher. That's a LOT of spending. And it's also giving up on Viciedo playing about 50-60% of the time, which I'm pretty sure they're not ready to do yet (and they shouldn't be with a 24 year-old).

You can't really make the World Series a SINGLE game or 2/3 or even 3/5, and make all the other post-season series shorter or sudden death, because that ruins (at the very least, cheapens) the longest season in professional sports. Making it where 16 or more team (half) make the post-season...same issues, diluting the value of the regular season. The World Baseball Classic was an attempt to go there...but that only works at the end of a season (not as a sort of spring training), and you have so many issues with agents, teams, contracts...about the teams playing, for example, after the end of the World Series, not to mention the fact that most of the best players in the world are already playing MLB in the first place. Then all the injury concerns about pitchers, lots of issues to resolve. One issue that always comes up is the late starting times, specifically on the East Coast. Not having any day/afternoon games that kids can skip school for or follow during the daytime...tv/broadcast ratings again. The impossibility of making it similar to 16 game NFL (every single game is magnified, just like the Super Bowl)....diminished attention spans. Maybe some of that can be blamed on computer games/addiction to visuals, versus the patience for a 3 1/2-4 hour baseball game. It seems they have to really find a way to connect to fans around the world through cell phones/internet/MLB.com, and the idea baseball translates to audio/radio better than any sport (especially car racing, golf or NHL).