caulfield12

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Apr 27, 2013 -> 06:06 PM) Santiago not lookin' good. Not an easy situation to just be thrown into the game with no time to prepare mentally. We'll see if he can get straightened out as he goes along. As it is, we'll have a hard time just scratching a hit against Moore with this line-up.

Why in God's name is DeAza missing the cutoff man? Geez. Our fundamentals are just terrible this season, compared to the first 4 1/2 months last year.

Looks like Floyd's going out of the game. Seems pretty serious...could be. Santiago warming up in the bullpen. Now Hector's going to get his chance, whether the front office wants him to start or not. Geez....Beckham, Viciedo, now one of our starters (who we were potentially looking to trade at some point this year).

QUOTE (fathom @ Apr 27, 2013 -> 05:52 PM) This is quite the lineup the Sox have tonight facing a tough lefty. There's a good chance he gets Flowers, Danks and DeAza next inning too. At least 2/3. LOL at Farmer saying "One day, Gavin's going to figure it all out and go on cruise control and pile up win after win." Sounds like a familiar refrain....Harrelson: "Javy's got the best stuff for any .500 pitcher in baseball history."

http://www.milb.com/scoreboard/index.jsp?s...mp;ymd=20130427 Hawkins 0/2, BB, K .172

Getting more interesting. 6 for 6 in K's.

QUOTE (IowanSoxFan @ Apr 27, 2013 -> 05:35 PM) I love how Stone has given up on making a comeback, lol. No Will to Win from Stone Pony. Probably because he knows how good Moore has been and how typical Gavin has been to start the season.

Not getting how you can walk a .139 hitter with speed after you have him down in the count 0-2 and Jennings up next. At least they didn't score 2 more.

Classic Dunn. Missing 2 eminently hittable pitches over the heart of the plate. Gavin, why do you keep throwing that below-average change-up when you have three other pitches that are better? Floyd just killed a double play ball and left the runner at 2nd now....chances he scores? About 85%.

Classic Gavin. Keeps getting beat on his 4th pitch, change-up.

Bulls win.... Hopefully a harbinger of good things to come. These are the two games that you'd be happy to win just one and take the series 3-to-1.

QUOTE (kitekrazy @ Apr 27, 2013 -> 01:15 PM) I think the job of a hitting coach is always temporary. They also need new players to coach. It's not unusual to seem them make a big difference their first year. At the major league level it has to be very difficult. Most of the players have habits that are hard to change at this level. The ones that can break them usually self coached. When guys like Walker, Hawkins and Mitchell and Thompson are brought up, the logic tells me trading for prospects will be a dead end. It appears the scouting and instruction sucks. Why are they always drafting these outfielders? This organization doesn't seem to have a scout that can find a good catcher. It could also be kids don't want to play that position anymore. I think the future is beyond bleak. As long as JR is calling the shots it will be nothing but bleak. This team needs new ownership. So far nothing really stands out about Hahn either. Our minor league system has always been known for developing pitching (McCarthy, Hudson, Gio, Richard, etc.), just like Cooper has been known as Dr. Fix-It at the big league level. Recently, it's bullpen arms and identifying guys like Quintana, Floyd, Humber, Danks, Sergio Santos, Jenks, Nathan Jones, Reed or developing Santiago with low draft picks....then you have the up-and-coming group of Beck/Johnson/Snodgress passing "so-so" prospects who were overhyped simply because there had to be someone ranked in our Top 10 like Rienzo, Castro and Molina. Until about a month ago, most scouts would have said the one area of depth we had was those four minor league outfielders....and the possibility of Sanchez being a nifty little player. Nothing pretty much at catcher, no impact hitters on the infield corners, Sanchez/Semien/DiMichele/Johnson at middle infield (none of them considered future stars)....that's it. And all those potential relief arms.

The M's and Astros are the outliers there. And MOST don't expect the Angels to stay near the bottom. With the AL Central, we're still not sure what the Royals, Twins, White Sox or Indians will do over the course of a 162 game season. Three of those teams need to prove themselves to gain any believers nationally, and the Sox still don't have many believers nationally after the 2012 season. How many of those teams would you take the "over" bet on them winning 82 or more games this year? Maybe the Royals would be the popular choice right now, but most bettors would probably skip that wager.

And, the fact that Alexei was the most "underpaid" SS in the game for much of his White Sox career. JR is nothing, if not loyal, and tends to reward his employees (based just as much on past performance), like the final contract to Contreras. Here's the whole problem with using this SABR argument for Keppinger. You can use the "exploited a market inefficiency" argument for the Rays picking him up and making him a useful, quasi-regular player. Or just the development of multiple players on a team that can play all around the diamond (like Kepp, Sean Rodriguez and Zobrist, in keeping with the Chone Figgins tradition started in LA). The problem here is that there's now so much focus on SABR analysis that the reverse ends up happening. Valuable "complementary" players like Keppinger become overvalued. The White Sox bought him at his all-time highest value, then were forced to make him into an everyday player at 3B, and now at 2B. Offensively, he hits with a good SABR skill-set profile, but not defensively. When you overpay players at the top of their market, and then you're paying guys like Thornton almost as closers, that's exactly when YOU get exploited by other teams because your payroll becomes limited and/or you have to bid at the top of the market for replacement hitters like Dunn. If the Sox identified Tyler Greene using this methodology, and he goes on to become a regular this season, that's one thing. But to overpay for a similar player in Keppinger who just happened to have a career year/anomaly/outlier and then predict it would repeat, especially when he was facing ALL types of hitting, well, that's not sound either. If the White Sox are really so smart that they could project Keppinger to be able to repeat his stats from 2012 and Gillaspie to be an everyday player using SABR analysis, more power to them...but I'm more willing to believe they were concerned that they didn't have any back-up insurance for 3B other than Morel and needed to bring another player into the mix.

Did anyone see PAIN & GAIN yet? Having read the 30+ pages story by Collins at the Miami New Times on Friday, I'm more interested to see how Bay has twisted the real life, facts are stranger than fiction story to suit his "dramatic" needs. The biggest change has to be the character played by The Rock, who wasn't close to a major player in reality.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Apr 27, 2013 -> 09:01 AM) Hah, this would be like walking around wearing the ski outfits Harry and Lloyd wore in Aspen and pretending you're not a douchebag... Somehow I don't think "Dumb and Dumber" would work as a tagline, lol.

So Rios has been the one big "success" story for Manto, admittedly. Dunn turning things around last season at least seemed to be partially attributable to Manto working with him. If you look at Braves' hitters over the last 7 months, are there any who have dramatically improved? Heyward has definitely gone backwards. McCann has been beset by injuries, so hard to say what effect, if any, Walker has had there. BJ Upton is in a horrendous slump, although I'm not sure we can blame Walker there any more than we can give credit for Justin's season so far. Freeman? Uggla's always been a three outcome hitter, so his approach hasn't changed a bit. Simmons has also been struggling in the early going. And Gattis has come seemingly out of nowhere, and HAS hit after not playing anywhere for 4 years, which is kind of a baseball miracle. Hard to draw any hard conclusions. With Beckham, Viciedo and Flowers, it's a mixed bag for both Walker and Manto. Gillaspie's the other early season success story for the Sox, from a hitting standpoint. But, once again, crediting Manto there is like blaming Manto for DeAza, Keppinger, Dunn, Viciedo, Wise, etc., struggling so far out of the gate this season. Other than Dunn, it's hard to say anyone in our line-up is dramatically underachieving, other than some of the names just listed.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Apr 27, 2013 -> 08:27 AM) I get your point, but honestly, what would you do if you were Brooks? You can't control the play on the field, so you have to be very careful about using a tagline like that. It's fine if you're the SF Giants or the St. Louis Cardinals, but it really doesn't apply to the White Sox at the moment...after all, we've only won one division crown in the past 9 seasons. To be honest, I'd prefer "Everyone Loves to Root for the Underdog" or "Because Chicks Dig the Underdog" to Harrelson's nonsense. It is better than "Make An Impact," I guess. But, in general, generic lines like "Respect the Game" are better than one connected with this particular team winning.

But, is there any difference from Clint Eastwood talking to a chair and Harrelson admitting to not reading the book? Is this just the PR/marketing department's way of saying, basically, we have nothing....and Ozzie's antics with the media are a thing of the past, so let's stir up a little controversy and debate to take the focus for awhile off the field? Isn't this whole "Will To Win" covering up the biggest issue right now with the Sox, which is the overall lack of talent? Verlander, Scherzer, Jackson, Cabrera and Fielder just had more of the "TWTW" last year? I don't think so. They were simply better...and all in the primes of their careers.

The Braves weren’t the most surprising victim for (Anibal) Sanchez’s feat. As David O’Brien wrote in Friday’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the Braves’ attitude for this season: “They were going to hit home runs. And they didn’t care if they struck out. A lot.” The Braves arrived at Comerica on Friday night leading the majors with 35 homers. They were fifth in the majors in strikeouts. They’d already struck out 16 times twice this season — and they’d won both those games. “There’s different ways of scoring runs,” said hitting coach Greg Walker, in his second season with the Braves after 8 1/2 as White Sox hitting coach. “This is what the Atlanta Braves chose to do. And I’ve coached teams like this before, and answered all the questions, and seen what works and what doesn’t work. “Last year we had probably as good a combination of leadoff and No. 2 hitter as there was in baseball (leadoff man Michael Bourn and No. 2 hitter Martin Prado), especially in the first two-thirds of the season. Bourny scuffled down the stretch. We did get a lot of early leads, but we didn’t score any more runs than what we’re doing now. It’s just a different style, and we have the potential to get better in (this style).” ... According to Fangraphs, Braves hitters have swung and missed at 11.2 percent of all pitches, the highest percentage in the NL and the second in the majors behind Houston’s 12.6. Twelve teams have swung and missed at 8.6 percent or fewer. Braves hitters have made contact 75.1 percent of the times they’ve swung the bat, the lowest contact rate in the NL and second-lowest in majors ahead the Astros (72.8). Fourteen major league teams were above 80 percent. The Braves’ homer pace projects to 270, six above the record by the 1997 Seattle Mariners. .... Walker was hitting coach when the White Sox led the majors with 236 homers in 2006 and 235 in 2008, and set a franchise record with 242 in 2004. But the White Sox also led the American League in sacrifice bunts and bunt hits while hitting 200 homers in their World Series championship season in 2005, and in 2006 they led the league in average with runners in scoring position (.307) while having four players with 30 or more homers. The Braves rank 22nd in the majors with a .223 average with runners in scoring position. http://www.myajc.com/news/sports/baseball/...btomyajcpremium Other than Jeff Keppinger being acquired, have we seen any changes in the Sox approach? We won another game last night largely on the strength of the home run. There's traditionally been a VERY strong correlation between Sox victories and the games in which they homer at least once. Essentially, the Braves are like the current White Sox, with the exception of having the best player in baseball (for the first month) in Justin Upton. Otherwise, not too many differences. Teams based on pitching first, I think the Braves' ERA was leading the NL, in the 2.6 range. Four of our minor league outfielders are leading or close to leading their leagues in strikeouts (Walker, Hawkins and Mitchell....with Thompson not so far behind). Is there evidence at all in the minors of a changing or evolving philosophy, either in drafting or development? Dick Allen is probably right. There's pretty much ZERO appreciable difference between what Walker and Scott Fletcher (assistant hitting coach with the Braves) and Manto are/were doing. In fact, our OBP has actually gotten worse, led downward by the likes of DeAza, Dunn, Keppinger (so far), Ramirez and Viciedo. Have the White Sox simply ended up "rebranding" the same exact model they've been using for the past decade, and now we're calling it "The Will to Win" all of a sudden, but it's still largely homer-based to win games for the Sox, especially at USCF? Is there a clearly-defined, differentiated offensive approach now with the White Sox?

Either that, or he got sentimental for Chad Bradford. Interestingly, all the Moneyball reporting never added the fact that Olivo (the other side of the Bradford deal) became the key player in the trade to acquire Freddy Garcia, which got the White Sox the World Series title (along with Contreras for Loaiza) the A's never came close to...but who's to let a good story stand in the way of reality? The year the White Sox won it all, Bradford was already on his way to the Red Sox.

Trying to get Rondon acclimated, used him for the 9th instead. With the concerns about Verlander and Scherzer not throwing as hard, the extended post-season, Leyland's not going to chance it.

The funny thing is that Luhnow's the one that drafted Greene in the first round with STL, had him with the Astros, and gave up on him. I guess their philosophy is that any player 30 or over isn't going to be part of their rebuilding effort.

Gillaspie atoning for his earlier misdeeds tonight with RISP. Alexei will go deep next? Guess not.

Peavy showing off the fastball that tails back over the plate...really reminiscent of Bartolo Colon in his heydey.