caulfield12

Huge change-up K's Parmelee and avoids the bases-loaded opportunity for the dangerous Plouffe (22 homers).

Jimenez not starting off well against DET. Bases loaded already for the Tigers. Didn't want to give Doumit a fastball to hit there in that sequence. One more out, this feels like a huge inning to get over the hump. Tigers out to a 2-0 lead, someone got a key 2 out hit. Tigers now leading the AL with RISP.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Sep 16, 2012 -> 01:05 PM) You get the feeling Viciedo is going to be some sort of very good next year. If he can get a better handle on easing up on his swing, especially with 2 strikes. And he's GOT to improve against RHP if he wants to be a regular player and not a platoon candidate. Will be interesting to see how Wise, DeAza and Dayan finish up here...and where they'll be playing in 2013, with DeAza asking to play LF and that obviously not feasible if you want to keep Viciedo in the line-up anywhere but DH. Doubt they'd trade Dunn to open up a position for Wise, lol. Peavy 4-7 on the road, 6-4 at home. Strange splits this year, especially for Sale being so dominant in a homer haven of USCF. Blyleven wondering why Peavy hasn't been shut down, too, haha.

Blyleven ripping on the Nationals' decision to "bench" Strasburg, same with McDonald and the Pirates. Unlucky break with ball bouncing right back to Doumit, preventing Viciedo from scoring. Rios, Kinsler and BJ Upton the only players since 2009 with 75+ homers and 90+ SB's.

WOW. Lucky break there, have to take advantage. That's 14/17 steals against Diamond. Pretty unusual for a lefty, to have such a high success rate. Dayan makes him pay. 63 RBI's on the year, has a great stroke to RCF against lefties. 16 doubles, 3-1 Sox, another 2 run lead for Peavy.

QUOTE (pettie4sox @ Sep 16, 2012 -> 12:52 PM) What happened for those of us following the game by alternative means? Beckham hit a liner off Diamond's left shoe/spikes and it went into RF for a single and extended the inning to Wise/Youk. Created that 1st and 3rd situation after Flowers walked nicely, setting up D-Wise sac fly. 7 in a row retired by Peavy, helpful only 9 pitches that inning. Last time out, the pitch count was a big area of debate about his performance against the Tigers. Yankees all over the Rays early, A's amazingly only 2 games behind the Rangers with 7 more head-to-head down the stretch. Melvin clearly will win American League Manager of the Year. Johnson, Matheny (maybe) and Gonzalez in the NL.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 16, 2012 -> 12:50 PM) Sox fans complain the starters are overworked and also complain when Ventura uses any reliever other than Veal. What is he supposed to do? Fathom could probably give specific examples, but a lot of them were games that were already well in hand and he left him in for an extra inning or two...or games that the White Sox were fairly far behind and he should have been pulled as well. Just seems that they were going to get every cent's worth out of Jake in terms of his IP this year.

YOUK crushes the 3-1 fastball and almost made it out for his 20th homer of the season...ball jumping today. Darn. C'mon Dunner. Need a clutch hit out of you. Diamond might be dealing with the same issues Peavy, Sale and Quintana are going through with tired arms.

Nice approach there by D-Wise against a lefty with 1 out and a runner at 3rd. Really need DeAza back against the Tigers, he's played so well against them this year....2/21 slump has him out of the line-up today against the lefty.

QUOTE (WilliamTell @ Sep 16, 2012 -> 12:35 PM) Watching FSN North I take it. Yep. Offspeed stuff much sharper that inning for Jakemeister.

QUOTE (fathom @ Sep 16, 2012 -> 12:33 PM) Peavy's almost matched his total for HR allowed in the first half during the second half in 47 less innings. This is where Ventura consistently overworking Peavy in the first half of the season is having some pretty obvious negative consequences. Location on his fastball just not quite pinpoint. Left another one out over the plate against Parmelee, too. Got away with it.

8 of 23 Rios homers this year have come against the Twins. Very nice running catch by transplanted 1B Chris "Bernie" Parmelee down the RF line.

Ball is carrying VERY well today. Mauer OPPO shot over Viciedo AND the wall at 377 mark makes it 1-0. Seems even though he doesn't homer as much as his MVP year or in the new stadium, he always kills us. Center cut fastball in his happy zone.

BUMP... 3 hours ago, Mauer wasn't even sure he would be able to play due to his back spasms. Hmmm.

Weird that the Indians/Tigers game is starting one hour after ours... NFL/Sundays.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/features/cyyoung Price with the lead over Sale, Rodney probably won't actually factor in 2nd, taking the Rolaids Reliever of the Year award instead. RA Dickey BARELY over Gio right now in the NL, but you'd have to think with the Nationals a lock for the playoffs and the Mets not so much, Gio might take it.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Sep 15, 2012 -> 08:43 PM) It would be hilarious if we came full-circle and ended up with Hector again... TRAUTMAN: When are you gonna come full circle? RAMBO: What are you talking about? TRAUTMAN You said that your war is over. Well, maybe the one out there is, but not the one inside you. I think I know the reason that you're here John, but it doesn't work that way. You may try, but you can't get away from what you really are. RAMBO: And what do you think I am? TRAUTMAN: A full-blooded combat soldier. RAMBO: Not anymore. I don't want it. TRAUTMAN: That's too bad, 'cause you're stuck with it. Let me tell you a story, John. There was a sculptor NAMED DON COOPER, and he found this stone: a special stone. He dragged it home and he worked on it for months, until he finally finished. When he was ready, he showed it to everyone on the coaching staff and they said he had created a great statue, and the sculptor said he hadn't created anything. The statue was always there. He just cleared away the small pieces. We didn't make Hector Santiago into this CLOSING machine. We just chipped away the rough edges. You're always going to be tearing away at yourself until you come to terms with what you are. Until you come full circle. RAMBO: I guess I'm not ready yet. TRAUTMAN: Well . . . I gotta move. Promise me you'll look me up when you get stateside. RAMBO: Colonel, I'm sorry, but it's gotta end for me sometime. TRAUTMAN: I understand . . .

QUOTE (JohnCangelosi @ Sep 16, 2012 -> 03:26 AM) No way that happens, however. I just wish we didn't use him to finish games that were well out of reach early on. From a fiscal standpoint there is no way you can justify 10% of your salary on Brett Myers in 2013. Period. Plus there's no convincing me he's any better than Crain could be in the role anyhow. I'd be shocked if he reaches the number this year, which, by the way, what are the current numbers? He needs another 5 finishes or so? According to Fathom, it was 6.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Sep 15, 2012 -> 11:27 PM) Did you ever deal with the crazy 88s in your travels? NOPE! I have been to an Oklahoma City 89ers game, lol. And I watch "The Sons of Anarchy" series, does that count?

QUOTE (chw42 @ Sep 15, 2012 -> 08:19 PM) Your Chinese must be pretty good by now... Following Sox games in China is a b****. In fact, going to any American website ends up being a b****. MLB Gameday Audio and this year (with our school's internet upgrade) more recently I've been able to watch 90% of the plays through MLB.TV, although it jumps and freezes and restarts. I use freegate and DynaPass, usually that gets me around any problems. A lot of people pay $10-15 per month for a more reliable VPN/proxy service, but usually those work for me. The only times there are problems are when there are events like the Olympics (where there is often negative Chinese coverage in the press)...anniversaries of events like Tiananmen Square in 1989, etc. They made the compromise agreement to host google through Hong Kong to save face, because they couldn't afford to not have that search engine. Most Chinese people use baidu.com and bing.com. In fact, almost any recent movie or book is available for free within a year (popular ones), just go to baidu or bing, enter the name of the book or ISBN and PDF. Funshion.com (the best, to me), tudou.com, youku.com, sohu.com and ppt stream are the best for downloading movies and tv shows. The big budget action movies that debut in the US and internationally at roughly the same time are almost always online within the weekend or no more than a week or two. And my Chinese still sucks after 2+ years living here!!! It's a pain in the butt, the pronunciation and tones, I actually spoke Thai more fluently and it has 5 tones compared to 4 for Chinese. They say Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai and Arabic are the hardest languages for a Westerner to learn, and it's definitely true. Spanish, Italian and Portuguese are easy in comparison. Also, keep in mind, there's about 20,000 Chinese characters commonly used in everyday conversation and texting. Hit the tone not exactly right or precisely enough and you're forming an entirely new word that might even be offensive, somehow. Compare that to the English alphabet.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Sep 15, 2012 -> 08:18 PM) Well Detroit has woken up from its slumber. If we're gonna win it, we're gonna have to earn it. I'm still glad we got rained out the other night. Sox at that point were in the tank. Now they appear to be competing again. The ? is can we earn the title and beat a higher payroll team in the Tigers or not? The bigger questions are going to be beating the Tigers Monday, KC, the A's and the Rays. The Tigers only have one "good" team left, we have two.

QUOTE (Noonskadoodle @ Sep 15, 2012 -> 06:56 PM) So UnAmerican like.... I also have a birth certificate from Indonesia. Joking. 1992-1996 Georgia (Statesboro/Augusta) 1996-2005 Kansas City 2005-06 Colombia 2006-07 Kansas City with Greg775 2007 China 2008 Philippines/Thailand 2009 Thailand 2010 China 2011 South Korea/China 2012 China

BUMP

How it happened: Francisco Liriano dominated the Twins before losing his bid for a no-hitter in the seventh inning on Trevor Plouffe's two-run homer. He struck out nine in his seven innings pitched. The White Sox staked Liriano to some early runs, with Paul Konerko driving in the first three with an RBI groundout in the first inning and a two-run homer in the third. Konerko’s 23rd home run came with Adam Dunn on base. Dunn, playing his first game in over a week, singled and walked in his first two at-bats. Gordon Beckham singled home Dayan Viciedo with the Sox’s fourth run in the fourth inning off Twins starter Samuel Deduno, who left the game in the fifth. Liriano, who had been removed from the rotation due to ineffectiveness a week ago, threw a no-hitter against the White Sox as a member of the Twins on May 3, 2011 at U.S Cellular Field. The Twins made it interesting in the ninth, scoring once off Addison Reed, but Matt Thornton came on to record the save. What it means: Dunn’s return to the lineup gave the Sox a needed offensive boost as he finished with two hits and a walk. Liriano threw himself back into the rotation mix, which seems to change on a daily basis. A six-man mix of starters will be the job of Robin Ventura and pitching coach Don Cooper to figure out for the last 18 games of the season. The Sox increased their AL Central lead to 1.5 games over the Detroit Tigers, who began play against the Cleveland Indians after the Sox game was complete. The win was the 78th for the Sox, who won 79 games total in 2011. Outside the box: Trainer Herm Schneider advised Ventura to use Dunn at first base in order to keep his sore right oblique loose during his first game in over a week. Up next: The Sox will send Jake Peavy, aka JVPINAA (10-11, 3.27 ERA) against the Twins’ Scott Diamond (11-7, 3.46) in the finale of this three-game series Sunday. espn.com/mlb (Bruce Levine)

Thankfully I went out drinking last night and missed the last inning of the White Sox game and most of the Indians/Tigers due to falling asleep at 330-400 a.m. Spared me some tense moments. Much better to wake up and see the victory/loss rather than suffer another Addison Reed blown-up inning.