caulfield12

Nathan Jones is another couple of outings from AAA. Jeez, the reaction from the Cubs' fans, never heard it that loud for a home game. Another ball that SHOULD have been caught by DeAza in CF. DeAza was there and mistimed his jump. The ball sliced away from him and he played it off to the side...didn't go over his head.

How can that be an error on Flowers when the slider hit the dirt before the glove? Throwing error? That was a pretty unusual play...to expect Flowers to make it. Viciedo has gunned down runners in 2 consecutive games now at the plate.

That last pitch was at 97 MPH. Five K's, retired the last five in a row. Cruise control. Bullpen isn't likely to factor into this one.

30,631 on a holiday. Wow...can't believe it almost ended up under 30K, and a good 10,000 of them are cheering for the Cubs.

QUOTE (Baron @ May 27, 2013 -> 06:29 PM) lol at the people that think we dont care right now. Samardzija is on today if you didnt notice. The guy is good. They're just not playing crisply, they should have a bit more bounce in their step coming off a 9-3 run...spotting them a run in the 1st didn't help matters. "The Cubs' fans have taken over this ballpark." Farmer FWIW, the Cubs are one game over .500 in in something like the last 5 years at USCF. We actually have played a lot better at Wrigley.

Tip your cap night, seemingly. Soriano with a decent defensive play there in LF. At least Gillaspie came to play tonight. Someone showed up.

QUOTE (JoshPR @ May 27, 2013 -> 06:26 PM) Why? Well, ask any of our minor league experts what would happen if those guys were given 500-600 at-bats at the major league level in 2014...

Shades of AJ Pierzynski/Josh Paul....

QUOTE (JoshPR @ May 27, 2013 -> 06:23 PM) Is Dan black and Andy Wilkins ready yet? That's the 105-110 loss team plan...

QUOTE (hawksfan61 @ May 27, 2013 -> 06:12 PM) So we need to trade Peavy because he MAY wear down later in the season? His replacements will be guys who are coming off of major shoulder surgery or young guys who have never pitched 180-200 innings (Axelrod/Santiago). What point are you trying to make here? How does trading him make the problem any better? BTW, the big game argument is stupid. With Peavy we have a better chance of playing "big games" whether they be against the Tigers in September or against the Rangers/Tigers/Yankees etc. in October. I will take my chances playing big games and hope the horses that got me there perform. Nope. Only saying why he might have more value now or in the next two months than in the off-season (when he would only have 1 year left on his deal). Peavy should be traded ONLY if we could get a PREMIUM return, AND if we were clearly out of it....meaning 8-10 games back at XYZ point in July, when such decisions have to be made. Most don't trust the White Sox to execute this kind of trade correctly in the first place. But it wouldn't be an easy move to make, because we're two bats away from being a really good team if we could clean up our defensive miscues.

Well, spoke too soon. Both walks have turned into runs. Sigh. Just not our night, seemingly. Even the Cubs' fans are more into this game...I think they feel more excitement trying to knock us out of the playoff race than their own team's ability to compete in the NL Central this season. Blackhawks just scored.

QUOTE (DukeofChicagoA1 @ May 27, 2013 -> 06:14 PM) Another walk. So tired of that. Well, there's no reason Quintana shouldn't be throwing a shutout at this point in the game...after two misplays in the first inning (the ball that landed in the first row that Kepp/Konerko didn't get to is arguable).

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ May 27, 2013 -> 05:33 PM) Bassit got slaughtered today. 5 IP, 4 H, 7 ER, 5 BB, 4 K, 2 HR Ravelo has gotten a basehit in all 10 of his games since his promotion to W-S. No power, but is hitting over .550. Until Ravelo hits 8-10 homers in a minor league season, he can't really be considered a prospect at 1B/DH. He'll be in that intriguing "Jon Gilmore" category...worth watching for awhile, but nothing to get too excited about, either.

QUOTE (greg775 @ May 27, 2013 -> 06:10 PM) Yeah, he has a sparkling 2-6 record for this horrific Cub team. And Danny Wright/James Baldwin had double digit plus victory totals a decade ago....

You never like to hear "XYZ pitcher has faced the minimum..."

Ed Farmer really hates the Red Wings. Thanks, Ed.

QUOTE (hawksfan61 @ May 27, 2013 -> 06:02 PM) Why is Peavy criminally underrated on this site? I think people are underestimating how good Peavy was last year and how good he has been so far this year. Yes I know the Tigers lit him up last year but Danks stands as a very very poor man's Jake Peavy. The only year Danks has even come close to matching Peavy's numbers from last year is in 2008, which was 5 years and a shoulder surgery ago. Keep the rotation, buy/trade for bats. Most everyone would be quite happy if Danks morphed into a Buehrle-esque, #3 starter, middle innings eater...as long as he doesn't become a huge contractual liability/albatross. The primary concern (with Peavy) is whether he can maintain it in the 2nd half. Along with that is the "Big Game" issue, especially against the Tigers. If you'll look at his pitch counts over the course of the 2012 season, you'd almost think he was being abused or overutilized to the nth degree with the thought he wasn't coming back to the Sox in 2013 and we wanted to maximize whatever we could get out of him. So there's always going to be that Verducci Effect concern with Sale/Peavy/Quintana....until they get through the entire 2013 season without any ill effects.

QUOTE (Heads22 @ May 27, 2013 -> 05:53 PM) Nice single by Conor, quickly erased. He has the title now of "shortest/quickest" swing against a FB...passed down from Paulie, finally.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ May 27, 2013 -> 05:49 PM) Did you spend the spring at Camelback or just making things up? Everything that has been written, inferred/implied....going from the best defense in the AL to the worst with almost the exact same line-up except for AJ/Flowers and Beckham's injury. Many, many more fundamentals errors, missed cutoff men, base-running....it has been endemic, and a good explanation has never been provided, beyond the carryover effect from the last 6 weeks of 2012. How else can you explain it? Farmer saying more Cubs fans there than Sox fans by the sounds coming from the crowd on the DP. From the noise, you would have thought the throw got away or went into the stands, but it was Cubs' fans cheering....

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 27, 2013 -> 05:41 PM) Prospects not panning out in KC is the rule, not the exception. There are exceptions. Alex Gordon, 2-3 years later...and not at his original position. And obviously kind of a no-brainer for them to draft coming out of Univ of Nebraska/Omaha connection. Bo Jackson. Who was a gift from Mt. Olympus as much as a product of minor league development. Mike Sweeney, originally a catcher....was on the verge of being released, then caught fire when moved to 1B. Then you have to go back a decade back to Carlos Beltran and Johnny Damon... Littered along that path are the likes of Bob Hamelin, Jose Rosado (injuries), Jim Pittsley, Dee Brown, Colt Griffin, Mark Quinn, Angel Berroa, Luke Hochevar, Carlos Febles and many many others.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 27, 2013 -> 05:41 PM) Which means...the manager needs to go into spring training knowing he needs to drill every single basic move into Lexi's head over and over. I think that happened last year. I think he got the Ozzie "he's a veteran and he knows how to get himself ready" treatment this year. The nicest thing you could say about the White Sox is that they were "complacent" in spring training this year. Which really isn't understandable with how last season ended...with a very bitter taste in their mouths, with the 3-9 mark against the Royals in August/Sept, etc. Viciedo can't load his hands up as much there against guys throwing 96. Needs to be short and quick/er.

Quintana settling down. The main question is whether our offense will show up tonight. If they can't get motivated playing in front of their 2nd biggest crowd of the season and for the first time back at .500 for weeks, don't know what to say. Tip your cap?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 27, 2013 -> 05:34 PM) The funny part is that then they gave up on that, and turned to the Kenny Williams model of trading prospects for established veterans. A lot of that had to do with the injuries/non-performance issues with John Lamb, Duffy and Montgomery. Moore was under pressure for his job and couldn't wait two more years on their younger pitchers to rehab or go into Year 2 of Tommy John recovery. The one good pitching prospect they had left was Odorizzi, who will ironically become a star in TB with their (Royals') bad luck.

And yet trading or benching Ramirez isn't going to work either... Catch-22. Remember the Olmedo disaster last year when Alexei was late and benched? Honestly, you can't play a shortstop every single inning of every single game for 2 months and not expect them to wear down or make some mental mistakes. Part of that's on Hahn for not providing another option besides Keppinger (yeah, Sanchez was DL'ed and Beckham hurt) and Tyler Greene that Ventura would feel comfortable with playing there.

QUOTE (knightni @ May 27, 2013 -> 10:38 AM) WHY? Is that like the Human Centipede? Zombie movie? Has anyone seen MUD, by the way? Am going to watch Better Luck Tomorrow, the Justin Lim (director of two Fast & the Furious movies, including the recent one), flick from about a decade ago which stars Sun Kang (the Korean star who emerged in the last 2 F&F movies with Giselle, the Israeli/Mossad gal-pal). yahoomovies.com Universal's "Fast & Furious" franchise has been a hit for more than a decade, but Latino moviegoers are steering it into the blockbuster fast lane. The latest entry, "Fast & Furious 6," roared to $120 million over the past four days and has been the driving force behind the biggest Memorial Day weekend ever at the domestic box office. Latinos made up 32 percent of its audience, as they did for the previous entry in Universal's muscle car franchise "Fast Five," and this film is now on track to pass that one as the highest-grossing in the series. "It's not just Hispanics, it's the diversity in general that helped this movie become so popular," Universal's distribution chief Nikki Rocco told TheWrap Monday, and the numbers bear that out. White moviegoers made up 29 percent of the audience, while African-Americans were 22 percent and Asians were 13 percent. Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson and their pals easily outdistanced the weekend's No. 2 film, "The Hangover Part III." The finale in the raunchy R-rated comedy franchise will finish the four days with around $51 million, and has run up $63 million for Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures since opening Thursday. Last week's No. 1 film, Paramount's and Skydance Production's "Star Trek Into Darkness," was third with nearly $47 million for the long weekend. That topped the weekend's other wide opener, Fox's animated "Epic," which brought in $41 million. The connection of "Fast & Furious 6" with Latino audiences is no accident. With stars like Michelle Rodriguez, and a healthy amount of Spanish dialog, Universal went out of its way to court them. In its marketing, the studio made a point of emphasizing elements that set it apart from summer blockbusters headlined by white males, namely a cast that included Asian, African-American and Latino actors like Rodriguez, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, and Sung Kang. "We're the Benetton of casting," Jeffrey Kirschenbaum, Universal Pictures co-president of production, told TheWrap prior to the film's opening. The result is a cast that looks like many of today's moviegoers -- social media savvy, ethnic and frequently bilingual. Broadening the base via the multicultural casting is a strategy that translates abroad as well. The effects really began began to kick in with "Fast Five," which was set in Rio and drew more than $632 million worldwide, nearly $270 million more than what the next highest grossing film in the franchise had netted. Internationally the film continued to pick up steam, more than doubling the previous high-water mark for foreign grosses on a "Fast" film. "Fast & Furious 6" could be even bigger overseas. It opened No. 1 in 59 foreign markets and took in roughly $160 million abroad this weekend, giving it a global total of $300 million, the studio's best-ever worldwide opening. At $13 million, Mexico was the second-highest grossing market, behind only Russia with $17.8 million. The increasing clout of Latino movie audiences -- who go to movies more than any other ethnic group -- is a growing reality for Hollywood. Latinos represent just 17 percent of the U.S. population, yet accounted for 26 percent of domestic ticket sales in 2012, according a study by the Motion Picture Association of America. Universal has scored by targeting Latino audiences before. Director Guillermo del Toro's horror film "Mama" surprised with $32 million over the four-day Martin Luther King Jr. earlier this year and Latino moviegoers made up 47 percent of the audience.