caulfield12

Royals' outfielders have been destroying the Tigers and White Sox this month.

C'mon Harrelson, that wasn't even close.

Two questionable non-strike calls there elevate Hector's pitch count but he gets Hosmer out of there. Looking good....but, as usual, with all our starters except Peavy, pitch count a bit worrisome.

Gordon, once again, cuts down another runner at the plate. This time DeAza comes up a bit gimpy with Perez blocking the plate effectively. 14/76 with RISP during our recent 4-8 stretch (.184).

Even our imported players can't seem to bunt well for the Sox... K's, DeAza still at 2nd now with one out. Sucks that Ramirez came to the park late, with how hot he's been with the bat.

QUOTE (JoshPR @ Sep 9, 2012 -> 01:05 PM) And that AJ has been a complete butcher lately..... I've always said the pitchers look better with Tyler behind the plate..(ok here come the stat fanatics.....) And Flowers has been throwing out an impressive 33% of opposing basestealers.

Butler flips a duck snort into RF down the line, Rios had no chance. 1st and 3rd, 2 outs after K'ing Gordon with a nifty curve. Perez, maybe their most impressive player, ripped the first pitch straight out at CF but DeAza made a fairly comfortable catch.

Escobar singles off the screwball on a 1-2 count, serves it into LF, over Olmedo.

One would also hope that would be the case if Ramirez was 11 for 25 versus Guthrie. Wow, Eric Stults, who we waived this season, has one of the top 5 ERA's in baseball since August 8th for pitchers with a minimum of 28 IP. Sub 2.00. Of course, would he have put up those numbers for the Sox, at USCF...instead of the Padres? Highly doubtful.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/features/cyyoung Chris Sale 3rd in ESPN's CY standings, after Price and Rodney. Can't imagine that Fernando will actually finish 3rd, but he's had a great season and thankfully not for the Tigers anymore. Verlander's 6th, Scherzer's 8th. Gio Gonzalez makes an appearance on the NL side of things. Cueto still the favorite over there, and Chapman's near the top as well.

Dick Allen is mostly sore because Matt Thornton's name occurs so frequently. At least he got the job done last night, praise be to God.

QUOTE (coco1997 @ Sep 9, 2012 -> 10:04 AM) The Fenway game when Ross hit the walk-off three run bomb was by far the worst for me. I remember I was just getting ready to go see "The Dark Knight Rises" midnight premiere with some of my friends, and that loss was a serious buzzkill before leaving for the theater. Maybe the Tigers really need the four-game series with the White Sox that opens Monday night in Chicago. They haven't done well against anyone else lately. The Tigers swept three games from the White Sox last weekend. Other than that, they're 1-7 in their last eight games. That night's Batman premiere in Aurora, Colorado, kind of put the whole world of sports back into some perspective.

Well, Lopez was absolutely horrible two nights ago and Olmedo at least plays consistent defense. Not sure what they can do there, one area where KW seemingly dropped the ball. It's telling that Robin Ventura has a lot more faith and trust in Dayan Viciedo against RH'ers than Dan Johnson. The homer yesterday and the defensive gem that prevented Cain from scoring the 3rd run with Myers on the mound in the 8th were HUGE for the Sox....plus the assist from Alexei, who's the 3rd leading hitter with RISP in the AL this year. That has more than made up for his sub 700 OPS and low OBP and WAR and whatever SABR stat you want to throw out there. He's been as valuable, if not moreso, than any player on this team since June 1st.

And finally, Monday through Thursday will be fascinating for another reason, from a sports psychology perspective. How can the city of Detroit, suffering from such economic devastation, have thousands of baseball fans who have been travelling all over the country this year (they packed Wrigley Field, for example) to follow their pretty shockingly disappointing team (based on pre-season projections) end up being in a situation where they still might outdraw Sox fans for a series IN CHICAGO? Is it simply because they have owned the Sox recently? That no matter how badly Verlander has been on the road after the middle of July, they still believe deep down he will rise to the occasion and vanquish Sale and the Sox? In some ways, we should consider ourselves fortunate we're not playing those games on the weekend, because USCF would be swamped with Detroit fans. As it is, that effect will be nullified a bit. I would think JR would rather give away tickets to anyone willing to support his team than see the stadium packed with Tigers' fans, to the point where listening on the radio broadcast you can't tell if the play's going for or against the Sox. And yet, as a realistic baseball fan, you have to know that all the revenue derived from this next week will hopefully be applied to putting together the most competitive payroll and roster together for 2013.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 9, 2012 -> 07:48 AM) The team is in first place. They were expected to be terrible. Even you put a stake in their coffin the first week of the season and said they wouldn't be good for a long time. Now you spend either spend your time researching their losses or have made notes highlighting their losses. Either way, unless you love to be miserable,don't you have anything more enjoyable to do? I think you picked this up in Iowa. I was at the Iowa/Iowa St. game yesterday and the family behind me made your negativity child's play. The father was done by halftime as his screaming at the Hawkeyes caused him to lose his voice. He did say James Morris was having the worst game he's ever seen a LB have. He's seen good LB work as Morris only had 12 tackles, a fumble recovery and an INT. The second half, his wife took over. See was b****ing at Iowa letting a kick returner return the ball to the 23. Why do the spend the money and the time if they are not going to enjoy themselves? I don't think anyone can describe the feeling of Bobby Jenks coming into games in the 2nd half of 2010 or Reed this year as "enjoyable" by any stretch of the imagination. Part of being a Sox fan is also being prepared for the possibility of a loss. Can you honestly say you sat through all the innings of each of the last 6 losses in Detroit? I would almost think doing so would be a bit sadistic and depressing. For example, I completely forgot Iowa and Iowa State were playing because the White Sox are actually in a pennant race again this year. This goes to show the problems the Iowa football program has, the fact that many fans don't even care about the team this season. It used to be in a past year, I would be so upset if we lost to Iowa State and be ready to jump off a ledge. It happened in 2002, when they would have had a perfect season that year if not for a disastrous second half against Iowa State. That's when we had Brad Banks, Dallas Clark, Rob Gallery and Bob Sanders. In all honesty, Iowa State probably, maybe not even probably, undoubtedly, has more talent than Iowa. That's why being a White Sox fan was so frustrating the last decade plus, we were more talented in many aspects than the Twins, and yet they consistenly beat us every season, with the exception of their falling apart the last 10 days in 2008 and the Rick Hahn's son induced lucky coin flip resulting in Game 163 at USCF. The White Sox had lost 6 in a row to the Royals coming into that game last night but I still woke up at 430 am and listened to the entire game, even though MLB.TV was blacked out. If I didn't enjoy it, I wouldn't watch. That said, there are times, like the Sunday of the first Detroit sweep or during the second sweep when Scherzer was pitching it was better for me to just turn it off and not get upset, not read all the negative newspaper articles, not go to the gamethread and read Caesar's comments at that moment. The real reason I did that is because it seems like we had about 30 horrible losses this season that could have gone either way...and it reality, it was closer to 10 or so. Those losses get magnified, in some ways, because they hurt a lot more than the joy of the winning comebacks, like the 9-8 game against the Royals or the comeback against the Mariners when we had just blown one of the biggest 9th inning leads of the entire season in the majors. Or last night's game, for another example, where the victory came more with a sense of relief than of celebration...which is undoubtedly reflected in the Game Thread and also the post-game comments by many, I'm sure you could easily note. And I also discovered that that we'd only lost 11 of the games we had blown saves in....the other 7 (two were in a single game) resulted in the Sox eventually coming back to win. Last year, when that situation transpired, 90% of the time, maybe even 95%, the Sox were dead in the water and there would be no signs of resiliency or a comeback. That hasn't been the case this year. Finally, just in terms of being a baseball fan fascinated by psychology, I'd love to believe that KW, after all this time as GM, would have discovered some insight that would help to prevent him from assembling teams that crumble consistently in the face of the same opposition. You would have thought the additions of Youkilis, Liriano, Myers and Wise would be enough to counter-balance the ingrained "hopelessness" of losing at Detroit and previously at Minnesota.

Reed's 2012 has been pretty similar to Santos's 2011, except Sergio had LONGER stretches of outright domination. Reed definitely has the higher WHIP and ERA...Sergio had a better two pitch combination going when his slider was outright one of the best pitches in baseball, like Sale's/Liriano's sliders or Gavin's/Humber's curveball when they're on. But when he blew saves, he just completely lost it and the game with it...seemed most of his blown saves were on Fridays, for some odd reason. Half of Reed's 4 blown saves, the White Sox have at least been able to rally back and win the games, against the Royals and Mariners. Then Sergio had those final two blown saves (pretty sure he had 6 on the season) against the Tigers, those two hurt, especially the first one.

That first game against the Tigers in Sweep 2, Fister on the bump....we had a HUGE chance to take that game with the bases loaded, tie game (Wise had already forced in a run with hbp I think) and YOUK ripped a liner to 3B, Dunn K's and Paulie sulked/grounded out. That and the Lance Lynn/Peavy 1-0 game in St. Louis, that Konerko hit into a DP with a chance to tie the game in the 9th inning.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/standings Sox trailing the Rangers (99%) and then barely behind the Yankees (75.9%), at 3rd best chance of making the playoffs in the AL.

Can we just add a 25% service charge into the bill for anyone trying to enter USCF with Tigers' gear? Rookie Mike Trout, in his first at-bat against Verlander, started the first by smoking a home run deep over the left-field wall -- Trout’s 26th homer of the season. Trout then ended the game by robbing his fourth home run of the season, a towering blast to center field hit by Detroit slugger Prince Fielder, eliciting cheers of "MVP!" Following the Trout homer and a walk in the first, Kendrys Morales and Howie Kendrick each doubled, and with two outs, Vernon Wells touched Verlander for a double off the wall in right-center for a 4-0 lead. Morales doubled again in the third, his fifth hit in his first six at-bats in the series, scoring Albert Pujols after his leadoff double. Pujols had three hits Saturday. This was heady stuff, considering Verlander (13-8) started the night leading the American League in batting average against (.212) and complete games, ranking second in strikeouts and third in earned-run average. latimes.com/sports/angels

I bolded the ones I remember the most or best/worst 4/16 BALT 4-1 lead into the 8th, 4-2 into the 9th, Santiago's first blown save, Zach Stewart loses in extras 4/24 OAK tied 0-0 into the 8th, Matt Thornton 4/25 OAK Sox tied it 2-2 in the 9th, Hector with his 2nd blown save in the 14th, started that inning with a 4-2 lead 5/2 CLE tied 3-3 going into the 8th, Ohman 5/4 DET leading 4-2 into the 7th, 4-3 into the 9th, Thornton 5/7 CLE tied 2-2 into the bottom of the 8th, Thornton 5/13 KCR Thornton leading 1-0 into 7th, roof caves in and Sox go on to lose 9-1 5/15 DET Peavy leading and coasting 6-0 into the top of the 6th, Peavy/Ohman 6/2 SEA leading 8-7 into the bottom of the 8th, Crain/Reed 6/15 LAD leading 5-1 into the 6th, Sale over Kershaw, tied going into bottom of 8th, Crain/Thornton 6/17 LAD leading 1-0 into the bottom of the 9th, Quintana start I think, Thornton/Reed 6/22 MILW tied 0-0 into the 10th, Jesse Crain 7/16 BOS tied 1-1 into the bottom of the 8th, A-Gone homer off Leyson Septimo 7/19 BOS leading 1-0 into the bottom of the 9th, Quintana again, Thornton and Reed collapse, Cody Ross walk off 7/30 MINN tied 6-6 going into the bottom of the 9th, AJ throws the ball down the RF line, Myers 8/4 LAA tied 5-5 going into the bottom of the 10th, Thornton 8/11 OAK leading 7-6 going into the 8th, Thornton 8/13 TOR tied 2-2 into the 11th, Septimo 8/19 KCR tied 2-2 into the bottom of the 8th, Crain 9/7 KCR Sox blow numerous scoring opportunities, Reed gives up the 2 run bomb to Hollywood Cain On the plus side, of our 18 blown saves, 3rd in the majors, only 11 of them have turned into losses. Jones and Reed both blew saves against the Royals but we managed to win 9-8 in the Greg775 Friday Night Frustration/Jubilation game The amazing 9-8 comeback victory against the Mariners where we were leading big-time, started the 9th with Humber/Veal and then Reed gave up the lead only to rally the next inning. 3-2 over the Cubs, Thornton with the blown save. 5-3 over the Indians, Sale with his only relief appearance of the season, and a blown save. 7-4 over the Mariners, Crain 8-6 over the Brewers, Ohman

QUOTE (2nd_city_saint787 @ Sep 8, 2012 -> 10:20 PM) Not necessarily, Tigers coulda won those games. Tigers haven't been that great against KC either right?? They were tremendous against KC until they got swept at Kauffman last series. Verlander exited after six innings and 97 pitches. Thus ended his streak of having thrown at least 100 pitches in 80 straight starts. That's more than double the length of any other such streak in the majors in the last few decades, according to Baseball-Reference.com. In Verlander's previous 227 big-league starts, there had been only 20 games (the recent KC start included) in which he allowed as many as four extra-base hits. He gave up that many in the first inning.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/gamelog/_/id/5883/zack-greinke TMRW, Zack Greinke Last 3 starts, 3 wins, 21 IP (7 IP in each game), total of 4 earned runs...1.71 ERA opposed by Ozzie's buddy, Anibal Sanchez Lots of pressure on Porcello and Fister the first two games next week, Scherzer has been great and Verlander has been horrible on the road. I'm going to make a silly prediction, whoever wins Game 4, Verlander vs. Sale, that team goes to the playoffs and the other team is out of the WC at the end of the season. A struggling Jose Quintana is going to have his ultimate start to set the tone...otherwise, an 8 game losing streak against DET falls onto Peavy's shoulders. Obviously, it's critical to win one of those first two games to alleviate the pressure on Liriano and Sale against the two Tigers aces. Just as much pressure on Verlander to show up on the road now in the biggest series of the season for both teams.

QUOTE (JoshPR @ Sep 8, 2012 -> 10:14 PM) How many games could the sox be up if they just beat the royals more often. 5-9 now.... 7-7 puts us 4 games up over the Tigers, 9-5 we'd be 6 games up As someone else mentioned, we probably wouldn't have beaten up on the Yankees, Rangers, Angels, etc.

Horrible defense/throw by Izturis leads to first Tigers' run. 5-1 in the fourth, RBI by Infante. Cabrera ends the threat with a tailor-made 5-4-3 DP ball.

Verlander 0-2, 5.84 ERA in the 2nd half of the road. Looks to be going 0-3, ERA over 6 after tonight in Anaheim. Hasn't won since the middle of July. Rocked again. This trend will come into synergy with all the good Chris Sale home vs. road splits at USCF next WED. Greinke vs. Anibal Sanchez tmrw, btw. And the Iowa Hawkeyes (my alma mater) suck. Ferentz is starting to become more overrated/overpaid than Ozzie Guillen.