caulfield12

QUOTE (GreenSox @ Jun 15, 2014 -> 11:57 AM) Kenny went the prospect route: traded TCQ for a single pitching prospect who was awful; traded Santos for a single pitching prospect who was awful; the prospect for EJ was a single pitching prospect who was awful. Note that all 3 single pitching prospects were "near ML ready" but actually had hit a peak and had already started to decline. Hahn has a lot of work to do over the next 6 weeks. No more flawed declining AAA prospects. Take the As and AAs with promise and develop them. Who was flipped with Eduardo Escobar for Francisco Liriano, one of the ten best pitchers in the NL last season.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Jun 15, 2014 -> 12:45 AM) What? He means that undefeated teams always tend to go into the NCAA finals with too much pressure, although WSU just wasn't as talented as Kentucky across the board, regardless of seeding. Trying to think of another example....one of those UNLV teams in the early 90's?

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jun 14, 2014 -> 10:57 PM) Amazing how the Royals' patience is paying off. Or their cheapness. Maybe they didn't want to pay Yost and his replacement, but suddenly KC looks like the class of this division. 10 wins in last 14 games with the bats waking up and the rotation looking very good. Would you bet your house (double your money) on them to overtake the Tigers? Remember, they simply have beaten the last last-place White Sox (and haven't faced Sale/Danks) and Indians and a so-so Yankees' team (although that's a breakthrough of sorts anytime they can take a series from NY).

After winning the first two games against the Tigers, then having Sale/Scherzer on Thurs, this week has sucked. Last place now. If there's any such thing as momentum (6 in a row now for KC) or pitching match-ups being against you, the Royals will win and make Greg correct, which of course never happens in baseball or even worse, house betting.

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/teams/wsoxatte.shtml If you look at attendance date/averages vs. the rest of AL, you could easily argue 1905-1920 and 1950-1967 were much more successful. Pretty shocked how well the attendance stood up in 1920 even after the Black Sox scandal. You can definitely see it fall off after the disappointment at the end of the 1967 season, as well as after the White Flag Trade.

Yes, Eaton, Avisail Garcia and Montas are all garbage. Sure.

QUOTE (shoeless_joe21 @ Jun 14, 2014 -> 09:31 PM) Montas nearly walked as many batters tonight as he had for all of his other starts combined. It was a weird start for him. Maybe too much rest? In the first inning, he had runners on 2nd and 3rd, two outs and a wild pitch scored both runners...kind of a weird play where the ball bounced all the way from home over by the dugout. But he only gave up 4 hits in 7 innings...and I'm pretty sure 2 or even 3 of those hits were in the first, so basically he was untouched for most of the game until the 7th again.

QUOTE (oldsox @ Jun 14, 2014 -> 06:00 PM) Are you saying you LOVE the signing? Would you rather have Purcey, Veal or De Los Santos?

QUOTE (oldsox @ Jun 14, 2014 -> 06:28 PM) De Aza was pretty close to awful most of last year, and Hahn gave him another contract this year and has kept him on the team even though he has no business in MLB. Not the biggest deal, I agree, but he is in the category of bad Hahn moves. Not as ridiculous as Paulino or Cleto or Boggs or as costly as Davidson/Reed, but Mr. Hahn is not yet qualified for Sainthood. Cleto, Boggs, Guerra, Putnam, Noesi, Carroll, etc., didn't cost us anything...so it's hard to get upset about any of those moves. They're just throwing darts at the wall and hoping some stick. Putnam and Noesi have held their own. Without those two guys, we'd be 7-9 games under .500 right now.

QUOTE (danman31 @ Jun 14, 2014 -> 06:13 PM) I have an Italia shirt and root for them all the time. Don't care what you say. I don't root for them as my first team, but when the US goes out it's nice to root for a good team. People can root for whichever team they like. If those same people also don't care about the US team, then you can have a rant. Same here, always try to cheer for the African teams because of all the disadvantages they face. Costa Rica's a nice story. Not sure who to root for with Ivory Coast and Japan. Maybe Drogba, haha. In all seriousness, as much as they love watching and betting on soccer in Asia, there haven't been many reasons to get excited since they held the World Cup. China's national team in a complete joke, adrift in corruption charges and bereft of quality youth league coaching, as well as a strategic youth development strategic plan in general. With land being relatively scarce in bigger cities, very few talented youngsters even have a decent soccer field to play on unless they go to private schools.

QUOTE (Ozzie Ball @ Jun 14, 2014 -> 06:04 PM) Wahhhh wahhhh wahhhh Nevermind. this is the first time in my life I've come into a major tournament with no expectations of England. Some promising signs from the likes of Sterling and Sturridge at least. Need more Ross Barkley too. Sturridge really has a couple of nice shots on goal that were on target and deflected. Rooney had one of the worst corner kicks I've ever seen in my entire life...and maybe 3 shots on goal that weren't even in the same area code. He had a 50/50 shot at a pretty wide open goal and pulled it way to the left somehow. I remember living in Thailand and always following guys like John Terry, Ashley Cole (Chelsea), Peter Crouch, Lampard and Michael Owen in the EPL. Times have changed. At least Rooney's hair didn't fall off.

May 3/4 in the first game, finally got his OPS up over the 600 mark. Barnum somehow managed a triple. Mostly excited about Montas start.

What's to lose? Charlotte has a brand-new stadium and a terrible record, so any little bit of excitement helps. God knows, Erik Johnson hasn't been providing it. If you want to pick on Hahn, it's easier to choose Keppinger and Downs, for example, although Scott had a great track record of consistent performance coming into 2014. Paulino didn't cost that much, and picking up Noesi more than erased that bad move. DeAza is still better than anyone we have at the moment for that position, although they might as well give Taylor a shot at some point to see if he can catch fire. Better than the 8th rendition of Jordan Danks.

Another disappointing WC loss for England. Rooney with some strange plays in the 2nd half. Not unexpected.

Has a team ever gone for an entire season without winning on a Saturday?

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article/mlb/statca...p;vkey=news_mlb MLB Statcast sheds light on amazing catches by McCutchen and Puig

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Jun 14, 2014 -> 07:34 AM) He stepped on him. And then flopped. Because at that moment he had to plant his left foot and reverse direction...he must be a Houdini to have the presence to be looking completely in the other direction and still get lucky enough to find the leg of the sliding defender and lose his balance in convincing enough fashion. If you watched the action in real time...the first time...it's much more difficult to come up with another interpretation. If you slow it down and look at 1/32nd of a frame, then sure, if you want to come to that conclusion (it was an intentional move), it's possible to see it that way.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jun 13, 2014 -> 10:41 AM) Where in the world did this come from That deadspin article was great. I know it was a joke but it makes you think. Right now America is like Gordon Beckham of last season. Really very very very little about it makes you think anything positive is going on. Blame it on the Jayhawker. Just made me laugh, the comp. Greg is always anti-Obama, and then he's using the one example from the White Sox of someone who has made derisive statements about the president.

QUOTE (danman31 @ Jun 13, 2014 -> 10:24 PM) I don't know how you can look at that and not see a penalty. The defender is sliding out of control and the ball is well away so he's not playing the ball at all. Then there's obvious contact with the trailing leg that absolutely causes him to lose his balance and fall. Yes he stepped on his leg, but the defender shouldn't have been there and it's awfully tough to say he stepped on his leg intentionally. It's not Diego Costa's responsibility to get out of the way of the defender. Agreed. There's no way from all the replays you can blame him or say he was acting or whatever. Whenever a defender's sliding in the penalty box, there's always that 10-15% chance you take down your opponent inadvertently...doesn't matter if it wasn't a huge amount of contact, it still knocked him down or off-stride and stopped all of his momentum toward the goal. 95% of referees are going to be forced to make that same call.

QUOTE (danman31 @ Jun 13, 2014 -> 11:07 PM) Steve Nicol on ESPN just said since the Cameroon defender's deflection wasn't intentional, meaning he didn't intend to hit it there because he could only deflect it, he doesn't count as a defender, but still resets the offside line. In other words, the offside line was reset as if a Mexican player hit the ball off the corner. In simple terms they got the call right. This was new to me, but an interesting explanation. Hey, at least we got an explanation. The US didn't get that against Slovenia in 2010. Yeah, I've never heard of that and so difficult to call when everyone's in the goal mouth for a corner kick. The 3rd goal in the Spanish/Netherlands game, the attacker was basically in the goal and collided with the goal post as he was trying to contact it with his head....I couldn't even tell from the replay how it went in, just that Casilla misjudged his leap and the ball got to the far post. It seemed like it hit his head, went straight down and bounced off a foot or leg into the goal.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jun 13, 2014 -> 09:34 PM) 0-10 with RISP. Eaton the lone bright spot. Up to a 669 OPS. Viciedo under 700 for the first time. Flowers at 687. Conor falling to nearly 800. Even Alexei is down to 786, although his BA is well above .300 still.

Gregory Polanco with 5 hits tonight, just hit the game-winning (if the Pirates can hold it) bomb after the Pirates blew a 6-2 lead in the bottom of the 9th in Miami, first MLB homer in dramatic fashion. JEALOUS of a team that can actually scout/draft/develop outfielders.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jun 13, 2014 -> 09:11 PM) Ramirez has been incredible so far as a reliever. It will be interesting to see who ends up being better, Montas or Edwards. Wasn't Grimm part of that trade? Or that was Garza?

Silva had a chance to make it 2-0 and it could have been the dagger...but chip didn't work. Then the Van Persie goal brought the Orange to life. Amazing 2nd half for them, and SOME retribution for four years ago. Don't know why they took out Alonso...Spain, without a healthy David Villa on the frontline and Fernando Torres six years out of his prime just isn't the same team. Casillas has no confidence when he used to be the best keeper in the world. You've got Iniesta, Xavi, Alonso...but Pique just got totally whipped by Robben and Ramos isn't the same player he was in 2010, either. You could just feel the collapse coming, and it did when Robin VP was given that 2nd gift goal. Maybe the Spanish are simply just tired from all their elongated Liga play, UEFA champions cup...tournaments/scheduling over the last two years. Excited about Colombia being back in the World Cup (used to live there, happy for that country) and also England/Italy on the controversial Manaus/Amazonia heat/flood beaten-field. Probably more bad publicity for the Brazilian government...if it wasn't bad enough they were chanting "f--k you" at their president in an election year in the 2nd half of their opener against Croatia.

QUOTE (Jake @ Jun 13, 2014 -> 08:59 PM) So the Cubs got a reliever who walks 4.2/9, Mike Olt, and an A-baller with a bad shoulder and they "won" the trade? I'd say they need more time to declare that What is Olt doing these days?