caulfield12

QUOTE (SCCWS @ May 26, 2014 -> 09:03 AM) Closers are relievers but not every reliever is a closer. Baseball has this thing vcalled the set-up man. Think of matt Thornton. Reliever his whole career. But he has had more blown saves in his career than saves. He was a verg good reliever for us. But he didn't have the mental make-up to close. You bring up Hermananson. Another great example. Starter his whole career becomes a reliever at 31 and closes in 05 at age 32. Then his body gave out and he retired in 06. Again, not every one can be a closer. Or Jason Grilli in 2014, compared to 2013. Or Jim Johnson, one of Beane's biggest brain farts. Hard to do it on a consistent, year-in, year-out basis. Other than Rivera, Nathan until recent years, Hoffman (part of that was PetCo) and Soria before all of his injuries, there just weren't many "close to automatic" closers. Kimbrel's pretty near to that level, a notch below. For one season, sure...but not for 5+ years in a row. Or look at Gagne and Brian Wilson. When closers do have those huge save seasons, like a Thigpen or K-Rod, they're almost never the same after. Koch is 2003 with us.

QUOTE (flavum @ May 26, 2014 -> 08:53 AM) Sox aren't winning 95 games, and the Tigers will. Every other team is chasing 88 wins, and it possibly will go lower than that. For now, 88-74 gets an extra game. Games back and all of that...irrelevant until there's 10 games left in the season. Record with or without homeruns stat for the Sox: No homers: 5-18 Exactly 1 hr: 7-6 2 or more hr: 13-3 Same as it ever was. Glad you finally came to that realization. Last three starts for Verlander 17.3 28H 16 ER 9 BB 7K's 8.31 ERA and Scherzer 19 IP 18H 10ER 10BB 18K's 4.74 ERA

QUOTE (LDF @ May 26, 2014 -> 06:12 AM) this brings an interesting question, some of the young players playing in the majors now, with the sox, were they rushed??? Who besides Beckham and Semien can that argument be made about today? Webb? Petricka? Erik Johnson? Probably not Santiago. They were very patient with Viciedo...of course, with the caveat they changed his position 5-6 different times.

Better hurry and win this one, Kipnis will be back Tuesday.

http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-isla-vi...ory.html#page=2

QUOTE (BaseballNick @ May 26, 2014 -> 07:48 AM) Didn't the Sox essentially replace Sergio Santos with Matt Lindstrom - and for even more money? Well, they avoided paying Santos $8.25 million for the last 3 years. I honestly don't believe the plan was to make Lindstrom the closer. FWIW, Nate Jones was the choice, with Lindstrom in set-up. Now, we can argue in retrospect they were overpaying Matt, but Hahn believed they needed at least 2-3 veterans in the bullpen (Belisario and Downs) to go along with their young and rising arms (Jones, Webb, Petricka). It wasn't a terrible plan for a team not expected to win over 75 games. Of course, right now it's easy to say we'd like to have Mark Buehrle back, Reed instead of Davidson, Alex Rios instead of Garcia (keeping DeAza off the field/roster) and Jake Peavy back in the rotation. But then you're talking a payroll $45-50 million higher. And it's not like Peavy has been that great with the Red Sox this season (4.65 ERA, 1.5 WHIP, 7.11 ERA in 3 post-season starts for Boston last year). So, if you were clairvoyant, perhaps you could argue that Buehrle, Rios and Reed would have this team in contention. $31 million pricetag.

QUOTE (LDF @ May 26, 2014 -> 06:52 AM) first Johnson was never going to hit the mid 90's, he was slated to 90-92 range. so talking about pitchers being asked to not throw as hard was never in the books, imo. now for Johnson dropping to the high 80's, that is totally a different mystery. Everyone who watched the radar gun readings last year on him said he was consistently 92-93, touching 93 and 94 at times. According to the PITCHf/x data over at Brooksbaseball.net, Johnson showed five pitches last season, although his fastball and sinker are very close in movement and velocity. The average velocity on his fastball is 92 mph, which is good but also unimpressive in today’s world of ubiquitous flame throwers. While his repertoire is well-rounded, none of his pitches stand out as elite. The curveball and cutter were his best pitches from a results perspective, but we’re talking about a very small sample. http://www.fangraphs.com/pitchfxo.aspx?pla...=P&pitch=FA This shows more clearly the falloff from 2013 to 2014. Same thing, 92-93 down to 88-90 (major league starts) and reportedly high 80's in Charlotte.

Here's another list I found at wikianswers. Time to first from LHBB Mickey Mantle 3.1-3.3 Vada Pinson 3.2-3.3 Ichiro 3.7 Bo Jackson 3.2 (3.65 from RHBB) Ralph Garr 3.2-3.3 Rick Manning 3.3 Miguel Dilone 3.3 Mickey Rivers 3.4 Willie Wilson 3.6-3.7 Michael Bourn 3.6

QUOTE (oldsox @ May 26, 2014 -> 06:52 AM) Someone recently posted elsewhere that Micah has been timed at 3.69 to first. Has anyone here ever seen a posted time for Billy Hamilton? GOODYEAR, Ariz. -- Reds leadoff man Billy Hamilton has always been a blur. Today he is a whisper. Word from a couple quarters in Reds camp was that the switch-hitting Hamilton was clocked in a legend-creating 3.3 seconds on a run from home to first base on his drag bunt single off Rangers ace Yu Darvish on Monday. Naturally, there was no throw. Once the ball got past Darvish, all that was left was the clock. One scout who wasn't there said he had never even heard of a legitimate 3.3 time to first base, and another said the best he ever clocked was 3.5 (Brett Gardner of the Yankees). However, regarding Hamilton, that scout said, “With his speed, I wouldn't doubt it!” In any case, three point three is pretty crazy, if accurate. Many couldn't believe it. But I finally got back word from a Reds person who would know. “True,” the Reds person confirmed of the 3.3 time. Consider that on a swing a 4.0 time for a right-handed hitter and 3.9 for a left-handed hitter is considered an “8” on the 2-8 scout's scale, or all-time great. There's a legend that the Phillies' speedy Bake McBride once ran a 2.9 to first on a bunt, but that's hard to believe. Yankees switch-hitting legend Mickey Mantle, a good bunter in his day, was known to have all-time quick times. Another scout said the fastest time he ever had on a bunt was football great/sprinter/sometime Yankee and Brave Deion Sanders, at 3.33, so theoretically, the 3.3 time is possible. Others mentioned as among the fastest in the game now are superstar Mike Trout plus Peter Bourjos, Jarrod Dyson, Pirates prospect Gregory Polanco and A's hopeful Billy Burns, another switch hitter who was timed on a swing at 3.77 this spring. The scout who didn't doubt Hamilton said he is indeed the fastest he has ever clocked on a swing, at 3.8. Is it possible to shave a half second by bunting instead of swinging? Seems tough to believe, but Hamilton is a special case. www.cbssports.com

QUOTE (Joxer_Daly @ May 25, 2014 -> 05:58 PM) It was a killer. Let's see what tomorrow brings, though. More important is what happens next Monday (June 2nd) when Abreu comes back. With Viciedo faltering recently, we desperately need a threat at the clean-up spot.

QUOTE (SoxPride18 @ May 25, 2014 -> 06:28 PM) It was real nice to see a lot of people in the seats even though probably 10,000 of them were Yankees fan. As of a couple of days ago, our attendance was down 17.6% year over year. Now, it's probably closer to 13-15% down (including Sat/Sun). And, with all that that said, we still would need to average around 23,000 per month for the rest of the year to get to the 2013 attendance total of 1.76 million. From this point last season (where the 8 game losing streak hit), the attendance average actually was lower for the final 57 games (by about 500) than the average for the first 23.

QUOTE (flavum @ May 25, 2014 -> 03:10 PM) Seriously, I know Jeter made a s***load of errors in the minors, but enough is enough with Anderson. He was a suspect at SS to begin with. Pull the plug and put him in the outfield. It may actually help his offense too. Less to worry about. He famously made 50+ in Greensboro in 1993. I don't think they let Anderson get anywhere near that total. They'll put him at 2B or the outfield or even DH. I'd guess he has another couple of months before they make that determination. There has to be a growing concern his defensive problems are carrying over to the offensive side of his game.

He's also only recorded 15 saves in his entire minor league career. 277 hits in 260 innings. Yes, part of that was as a starter. Webb definitely throws 2-3 MPH harder. However, he hasn't quite mastered either the change or curve, which is the reason he was pulled from a starter's role in the first place. If you go back to 2012 in Kannapolis, he had a very pedestrian season. So even though he was quite successful in 2013 and jumped levels (just like Semien), he's far from a finished or refined product. Reed has a pretty decent slider, but inconsistent still with that pitch. It hasn't become anything like Rivera's cutter. However, Addison has been born/bred into that closer's role and mentality, ever since he was at SD State with Strasburg and throughout the minors. Some pitchers take to that role (like Jenks) like a duck to water, many others run in fear from the 9th. One way or the other, Webb's got to perfect a second pitch to keep hitters off his fastball, especially when he's behind in the count.

Make that 2 errors and 21 for the season already on Anderson. Gulp. CF might not be far away.

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ May 25, 2014 -> 12:31 PM) Daniel Webb is better than Addison Reed is. For some reason, Webb isn't closing but the White Sox basically acquired one of the better 3B prospects in the game and get to control him for 6 years for a Relief Pitcher whose numbers could be duplicated and surpassed by at least 1 member of the current team. Sounds like a damn good trade to me. Now that's pushing it. I don't think there's any guarantee that Webb's going to be an 80-85% closer. He might be able to do it. But it certainly doesn't feel like an automatic assumption, either. If Cooper felt that Webb gave us the best chance to close out games this season, wouldn't he be the closer on Sunday instead of sticking with Belisario (who's had 3 shaky outings in a row)? Wouldn't Hahn intervene and overrule Ventura if it was that obvious?

QUOTE (flavum @ May 25, 2014 -> 02:44 PM) Yunel Escobar stole 3rd. You could read AJ's lips-- "Up 5 in the 7th?" Escobar challeged the Boston dugout, Gomes came in from LF, and it was your run of the mill baseball "fight". Escobar was a b**** about it. With the White Sox bullpen, that would hardly be a guarantee.

Except Davidson's on an upwards trend recently, with a 795 OPS the last ten games, including his 6th homer today. Mitchell's OPS is completely padded by all those walks, 30 in 99 AB's. Has there ever been someone in recent history with under 100 PA's, 30 walks and 29 TB's? 678 OPS.

QUOTE (flavum @ May 25, 2014 -> 02:33 PM) Rays Red Sox fight MLBN They've lost, what, 9 in a row? They rallied to tie the game today at 3-3 and then quickly blew that lead again.

Well, the Tigers aren't doing much better this week. 1-6, Verlander got absolutely rocked twice (Rangers today, Indians earlier in the sweep) and Scherzer once. Not that it matters so much this year (Verlander going downhill), but it hopefully will over the next 2-3 seasons.

QUOTE (Hawkfan @ May 25, 2014 -> 12:50 PM) Great foot skills by Dunn there. he is a big dumb animal folks. But very entrepreneurial.

QUOTE (Soxfest @ May 25, 2014 -> 12:48 PM) Rienzo is a 1 pitch pitcher...............Yankees picked right up from yesterday. There is no momentum in baseball. Or so they say. Great catch by Eaton. And not injured on the play, so there's that. Rienzo should pretty much be unnerved with all the pitches thrown so far, missed pick-off, and the play at 1st base that was close to nullifying the 4th run.

Second time in recent weeks a Gordon Beckham "error/non-error" led to a huge early inning for the opposition.

Eaton 8/14 in this series. Make it 8/15.

Cotts is still pitching this year, haha.

White Sox 0-3 their last three May 25th games against the Yankees and haven't scored against them on this date since 1945... Well, that's not a good omen. Or this: Masahiro Tanaka broke out laughing, even before his interpreter could parse his response from Japanese into English. The Yankees pitcher had been asked if he would fix a problem from his last start (against the Cubs), working up in the strike zone too much (and the Cubs taking an aggressive approach). 
 ”Just watch me in the game,” Tanaka said. The White Sox honored Derek Jeter in a pregame ceremony that included a video tribute. Paul Konerko, also retiring after the season, presented Jeter with gifts on behalf of the White Sox: a unique bats and bases bench made by former big leaguer Ron Kittle (some of the bats include Dave Winfield, Moose Skowron, DiMaggio, Lou Gehrig, Rizzuto, etc.) a plaque and a $15,000 donation to Jeter’s Turn 2 Foundation.