caulfield12

"Something is not right with Danks on the mound." 16 hits and 11 runs in 7+ coming into today, ERA around 12. Said he looks short with both his movement and velocity. Really struggling. Not getting ANY swings and misses. Now at 16 runs in 9+ innings. There's no way they can let him start the season in Chicago. Even his outs are hard hit balls.

Brantley says Danks doesn't look like his mechanics are right. Says he's hesitant, only has thrown one ball with conviction in this inning...he was shaking his head (Danks), Brantley inferring maybe something is bothering him a bit. Already 3 runs given up...Beckham messed up a sure-fire DP and it led directly to the first two runs scoring.

The White Sox are historically front-runners who fade late....see 2000, 2005, 2006, 2010, 2012, etc. The only seasons (in recent years) they've picked it up in the second half were 2003 (before fading in the face of the Twins' onslaught) and the last week or so in 2008... But they've almost never started poorly in April and May and recovered enough to win anything. We say it every year. Need a hot start and for the fans to believe the team can win to start supporting the team in late May and June, but it still didn't even happen last year. With all the skepticism about a DET dynasty, it's going to be tough if they don't come out of April with a winning record....and knowing all those head-to-head games with the Tigers loom in the 2nd half of the season. This year, we were just praying to see those games in the rear view mirror.

So 25 spring training AB's and he's done, lol? In that case, Ryan Sweeney should have made the roster based on his hot spring seemingly a decade ago and Wilson Betemit should have been the starting 3B based on his 8 ST homers. Just ridiculous. You can put yourself on the map with a positive showing, like Seth Loman this spring, or back on the map like Mitchell...but to say Gordon Beckham's future is secure now is insane, based only on limited ST results. We all know Angel Sanchez will probably end up hitting closer to 160 than 360. The only thing I'm a bit worried about is Adam Dunn, based on the finish to 2012 and how he's been hitting this spring again. He can't get off to another atrocious start like 2011. Not only that, but Rogers admits he struggled and excuses him for being tired from AFL and Venezuelan winter ball and then turns around and blames the Sox for demoting him? Sheez. Not very logical argument there.

Where have you been Greg? Missed you! (I say that only in the best, "I Love You, Man!" non homo-erotic way possible). Haha.

But how soon before the "mysticism" wears off in a suburban or Rosemont stadium...would those Cubs fans then start supporting the team based more on winning percentage than using the crutch of Wrigley Field as a touristic/entertainment destination? In other words, becoming more like the Sox fanbase?

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Mar 18, 2013 -> 07:11 AM) I don't think either the Cubs or the Sox would make that trade. Let's forget for a moment that those players belonged to the Cubs. Talent-wise, would you make any of those four proposed trades? Surely, everyone would say NOT NOW, but in 2015, they would be much more amenable to the possibility if the franchise struggles over the next couple of seasons. But some posters will be lonely posting over and over against the "mainstream" Sox fan waiting for that moment to come where a Chris Sale trade would actually become palatable. And, in some ways, we were very fortunate that Santos' season blew up last season...as that looked like a puzzling trade at best, signing a young, somewhat proven reliever with great stuff for a "suspect" in Molina who probably will never make it as a starter with the Sox.

QUOTE (Jake @ Mar 18, 2013 -> 04:20 PM) I'm interested in their thoughts on Alexei. He had some important downward stats last year, but he was coming off of a career year value-wise. He could very well be near the top next year and his placement on that list seems like a worst case scenario, which isn't that bad. They talk about ADA reverting to his "pre-2011" form -- what the hell is that? playing in the minor leagues? He had no track record until the White Sox gave him a shot and he's done well since. I think he's a candidate for regression (though his finish to the season dropped his numbers quite a bit) but that was a stupid statement. As far as 3B goes, it seems that it is just a fairly deep position in the league. Kep will do a decent job and be a HUGE improvement. I think there is some chance that they overrated Kep and underrated Gillaspie, but that's just a hunch on my part. Some platooning should benefit both of their numbers greatly. 2B seems to be on the money, though maybe on the optimistic side. I'm 99% sure that Gillaspie wasn't even a factor under consideration in that rating at the time it was made.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Mar 18, 2013 -> 02:56 AM) Chris Sale's worth right now is "Your top 5 prospects, then more" due to that contract. 1.Javier Baez, ss2.Albert Almora, of3.Jorge Soler, of4.Arodys Vizcaino, rhp5.Brett Jackson, of So let's say the trade was those five, plus S. Castro, for Alexei Ramirez and Chris Sale, or just Sale alone, for the five prospects. What about Rizzo and any three of those prospects for Sale and Viciedo? Or Castro/Almora/Soler/Vizcaino/Jackson for Sale? Or Castro/Baez/Almora/Soler/Vizcaino/Jackson for Sale and Viciedo? Who pulls the trigger any of those moves? I would definitely do it, were I KW and falling on my own sword in the process...Hahn doesn't have that same luxury, nor do we have the fanbase to easily tolerate it.

QUOTE (Jake @ Mar 17, 2013 -> 09:47 PM) My take on 21 Jump Street was that it was pretty funny but a terrible movie. Reminds me of The Brothers Solomon, where I did quite a bit of laughing but couldn't help but walking away feeling like what I saw was total crap. See Anchorman for a reference as to what a good movie that is also really funny is like. I'll get some pushback here but I thought the original Hangover was pretty damn good too. I also thought Gran Torino was absolutely hilarious, but I might be alone on that one. It definitely had its funny moments, especially with the Sue character and Walt...as well as with Walt and the Catholic priest (or the scene with Vanilla Ice walking along and then the 3 black kids trying to get in Sue's face), but they had to be in there because it was such a serious drama and difficult story that no humor would make it almost overwhelming. The whole storyline with Toad and Yum Yum was pretty funny, too. And the best...Toad/Tao walking into the barbership and showing how he'd "manned up" or talking to the contractor Mr. Kennedy about getting screwed over by the mechanic on the bill.

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/nfl--forde-mi...-225616141.html

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaab-the-da...767--ncaab.html I wonder if Calipari asked for that challenge, to go out on the road into hostile territory...? Or if Robert Morris can actually sell more tickets to host UK than they would have sold in Lexington to play a no-name team? It's definitely an interesting match-up, to see how the Wildcats respond. http://hawkcentral.com/2013/03/17/iowa-men...a-state-in-nit/ Iowa hosts Indiana State on ESPN2. Indiana State somehow beat Miami in December in OT but lost 6 of their final 8. Beaten by Creighton by 21 in post-season tourney.

QUOTE (southside_hitman @ Mar 17, 2013 -> 08:02 PM) The thing is, market share is key for the White Sox. Media attention and fan enthusiasm are key to attendance numbers. Again, we need good attendance (over 2 Million/yr.) to get more revenue and be able to compete. Unfortunately we have to be concerned with the Cubs when we are in the same City with the same media and a large but finite local fan base. A few of us have suggested improvement that the Sox can make to the stadium and surrounding area to increase fan interest in attending games. I like the RF upper tank idea, opening up an opposite view of the loop on the 3rd base line, and making improvements outside the park that play up on tail-gating and meandering on foot to a safe neighborhood bar (not the Bacardi in the park thing). As far as the direction of the team itself, I do not profess to know what to do at this point but "at the same time" (as Ventura says) I would like to see more of a commitment to become more competitive now or to resign ourselves to what is a likely going to be a mid-or lower Division finish and place more emphasis on rebuilding. So here is another idea that might be heresy for some of you. We now hear that the Yankees may find out that Mark Texiera may need surgery and could be out longer than anticipated. Would offering Dunn to them (not sure for what) be something you would consider if you were Sox GM? And how would losing Dunn impact your current 2013 win-loss prediction? The same as trading Ramirez. Season over. And the fact is, the Yankees want nothing to do with Dunn long-term, either. They've already got to pay A-Rod and TEX a boatload of money. Mostly importantly, they have Boesch, Granderson, Gardner, Ichiro and Travis Hafner to give AB's to still. There's plenty of LH bats in there.

QUOTE (farmteam @ Mar 17, 2013 -> 05:28 PM) Watched 21 Jump Street last night. Pretty funny. Really dug the cameo by the original duo. The one guy pulled off his disguise and I thought, "Oh wait a minute, that's Johnny Depp." That means I saw three movies in the past week (Chasing Amy, Mississippi Burning and 21 Jump Street) for the first time. That's a lot for me. Mississippi Burning was an excellent movie. Hackman was great (just saw him again on HBO Asia in "Enemy of the State," which I saw when it first came out). I wish Willem Defoe kept evolving as an actor, but it seems he went downhill from that point. Speaking of Johnny Depp, he also has a weird cameo in Jack and Jill. All I can say is that it's the worst movie I've ever tried to watch, and not funny even once. I felt extremely sorry for Al Pacino and Katie Holmes, not so much for Nick Swardson, who's quickly becoming almost as annoying as Ken Jeong. You know your movie's in trouble when Al Pacino playing a neurotic parody of himself is the funniest thing about it, by far.

QUOTE (The Ultimate Champion @ Mar 17, 2013 -> 06:56 PM) The Cubs are trying that classical/romanticized/ideological style of total rebuilding where you tear down absolutely everything and rebuild it from scratch. In their case however they are potentially hamstringing themselves unnecessarily by doing it. The idea should be to identify all the resources you have, all the advantages, all the major disadvantages, etc. and then come up with an action plan to use your strengths to create the best new product possible in the least amount of time. With the Cubs their biggest advantage is that the fans will support the team and spend their money even if the product quality isn't very good, and their biggest disadvantage is their need for a new or greatly renovated stadium. I don't know what they are planning to do re: the stadium but I'm not sure how a s*** team helps them get one (they aren't the Marlins) and I'm also not sure why they feel it best to test the resolve of their fans (again) by intentionally putting a dogs*** team on the field and talking about "the future" all day when their fans will happily support a mediocre club that in ST is promoted as a contender. I'm not sure why they would choose to rebuild the way they are, I mean, rebuilding from the ground up starts in the FO, deals with scouting and player development, Latin America, overall organization and communication internally, etc. and then when it makes its way onto the field that starts in Rookie League and below. The ground-up rebuild doesn'tn start at the MLB level, that's just where it ends ideally in 3-5 years, so why tear that down if you don't have to? Buy talent, take advantage of your fans commitment level, trade it if you want to collect picks, etc. This isn't the NBA where the draft pick game rarely produces stars and superstars past the first couple picks; in MLB this draft routinely produces stars and superstars intermittently anywhere from 1st overall into the 2nd or 3rd rounds and sometimes later, and often the best players aren't even eligible for the amateur draft. And the draft is the only positive of losing, Rule-4 or 5, plus waiver claiming order. That romantic type of approach to rebuilding only seems to work for the Rays. Don't count on that, don't even think about them. No one can be the Rays. The Royals made a trade and are a better team because of it, because they added proven veteran talent, and if they want to win a division in the next couple years they will have to continue on in that path. The O's only made noise after continuing to add vets around a couple developed prospects. Detroit's rebuild completed with the signings of IRoid & OEO Magglio. Etc. The EJax move was a good one & they should probably try to extend Samardjiza too. Spend some money, try to compete a little (even if you're not really trying, just get the fans to buy into it so they fill up the stadium) and add talent to the mix at the MLB level, because you can always trade that, and sometimes the best prospects you get come out of another organization. JMO. They really need, at the very least, for one of those younger players like Rizzo or Jackson to become All-Stars...and probably they're going to need to trade their psuedo-superstar SS because he's going to become expensive by the time they get around to contending. I still think sinking all that money into Soler was an overpay, but not as bad as the lefty they signed who will probably never challenge Quintana or Santiago's results at the major league level. The stadium's a huge issue because of the revenue lost...and the fact that the Comcast deal for both the Sox and Cubs doesn't come up for renewal until 2019 (not sure about WGN). Adding that $25 million per team isn't really going to help the Cubs in any considerable way...it will actually tempt the other teams in the NL Central to spend more and become competitive, specifically the Pirates. What the Cubs are doing only makes sense in the fact that the NL Central doesn't have any huge spenders, not even the Cardinals. That said, the Cards, Brewers and Reds are all pretty well-positioned right now, so they're going to have to hit the timing of this youth movement extremely accurately or they might end up having seasons that are competitive but they still end up short and leaving the overexpectant fans disappointed. If you can get the starting pitching problems fixed (see Issue #1 for the Royals since the early 90's)...then you can accomplish something. We shouldn't forget that all the rebuilds in baseball history, whether it's based on Mulder/Hudson/Zito, the Nationals, the Rays, 95% of the time that foundation is built around pitching. The Twins are one of the exceptions, in that they produced more quality position players and their "Twins' Way" methodology of teaching them the fundamentals and watching other teams beat themselves worked, but only to an extent. And then having Liriano and Santana put them over the top, but only to the extent they could beat the A's just once and usually got crushed by the Yankees in the playoffs. As far as the Tigers go, you could even say that bringing in Juan Gonzalez, even though it turned out disastrously, was the very first sign they would become competitive in the FA market.

QUOTE (IlliniKrush @ Mar 17, 2013 -> 06:10 PM) Hopefully Iowa doesn't play only HS teams in the non conf next year... There's two ways of looking at that. They were one of the youngest teams in the country (May's the only player graduating), so they needed to build their confidence and pick up as many wins as possible. Before the season, MOST Hawkeye fans weren't expecting an NCAA team until next year. So the early results got hopes up a bit too much, and then January happened. In the end, they couldn't quite push through against the elite teams at home and they couldn't get a quality win on the road. Having two freshman guards in Gesell and Clemmons as well as Marble get torn apart (like the last ten minutes of the quarterfinal game) game after game in the early non-conference wouldn't have done the team any favors at all in terms of development moving forward. They were CLOSE, but just never managed to get that signature win OR knock out MSU when they were down 33-20 and Oglesby had a couple of looks at 3 to blow the game completely open. I think it would have been 48-33 had he connected on those two occasions. But we have definitely scared the heck out of Wisconsin the last 3 seasons...a team we match up better with physically/athletically, compared to OSU, UM, MSU, IND and even Illinois or MN.

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/ventura-sold-...23263--mlb.html

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Mar 17, 2013 -> 05:09 PM) Reminds me of how much the Orioles were supposed to benefit from players wanting to play for them because Peter Angelos sided with the players during the 1993 strike. It never happened. If the rebuilding effort stalls or for whatever other reason, it is determined that it's in the best interest of the organization to trade Sale it has to be done. But not even you are going to come out and advocate doing it right now, after bringing in Peavy, Lindstrom and Keppinger, and not dumping the likes of Thornton or Crain. If the Sox, through some bizarre set of circumstances, were to have 2 seasons in a row with under 70 wins and Sale was still healthy, then I think fans would be reasonable enough to understand at THAT point the cost/benefit analysis of trading him vs. risk of future injury/non-performance. That's also assuming he's an All-Star and Top 10 MVP/Cy Young candidate during that time. And any comp to the Orioles is bunk, because the Jays were just coming off two World Series titles and then you had the Yankees and Red Sox as well in the same division. Other than accepting his overly generous FA contracts given out to all the wrong players, the Orioles went through an almost twenty year period of hoplessness since the Jeffrey Maier incident in Yankee Stadium. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Maier

Yeah, yeah. Well, Iowa's still one player short right now. Next year's the year, if McCaffrey doesn't make the NCAA's, he will be fired or have just one year remaining, but with such a young roster...and how well Alford has done at New Mexico, they should be careful they don't push him out too, right when he's starting to have some success rebuilding the program to the point where fans care again and are invested in the team for the first time in half a decade. Going a long ways in the NIT's would benefit them more than losing in the first round of the NCAA's, although it still stings to have lost so many close games and had MSU down 33-20 and let it slip away.

QUOTE (ScottyDo @ Mar 17, 2013 -> 05:37 PM) The Sox' reputation as an organization has long term, real effects. The reason we got a guys like Sale, Peavy and Konerko to sign team-friendly contracts is because people like to play here and the organization is well-respected by everyone whose last name isn't Guillen. On the other hand, the Marlins had to overpay like crazy for all their spending spree stuff last year, in part because the ownership is not at all respected. And Swisher, Javy, Cabrera, etc. But that's 90% on Ozzie, and 10% on KW for bringing in guys he didn't perform enough "due diligence" on.

On the platform front, A24's Spring Breakers was off to a terrific start with an estimated $270,000 from just 3 locations in New York and Los Angeles. That gave the much buzzed about film starring James Franco, Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens a massive per-location average of $90,000. Spring Breakers will hope to springboard off of its strong platform launch when it expands into moderate nationwide release this coming Friday. boxoffice.com I think you're referring to the scene earlier in the movie....as opposed to the one at Equilibrium HQ at the end?

QUOTE (Heads22 @ Mar 17, 2013 -> 12:32 PM) However, as a fellow Iowa Stater, I say f*** Iowa. Back at ya. Hampton. ISU couldn't even beat Iowa this year.

83-79 Stuck in the middle of the pack.

Here's your next five to ten thread ideas, Marty34. 1) Trade Sale before it's too late and he goes all Sergio Santos on the Sox 2) Danks and Dunn are horrible contracts, fire JR/KW 3) Trade Viciedo 4) Trade Ramirez again 5) Gordon Beckham should be moved to SS 6) KW sucks 7) JR and Hahn suck....White Sox will never be competitive in the AL Central again in our lifetimes 8) It was a mistake to not keep AJ because Flowers sucks 9) White Sox wasted money on Peavy and Keppinger when they should have gone younger 10) Everyone is too optimistic about the Sox....conclusively, i am 100% sure they will win 72 games or less and draw less than 1.8 million in attendance, therefore there's no reason not to start rebuilding in full

Well, let's get to the main point. KW (not Hahn) and JR okayed the signing of Danks, Dunn, etc. Danks, according to Marty's insider knowledge, will never be healthy again for the remainder of his contract. Therefore....what? They should fire KW? Reinsdorf should sell the team if he won't spend $150 million to make up for the Danks, Dunn and Alexei Ramirez contract disasters? You can't really use Danks as a reason for a White Flag, because we have five other legit starters and an obvious replacement in Santiago, who might actually be even better for all we know, so that's not going to fly. Plus, there's insurance on that contract just like Peavy's that Marty isn't taking fully into consideration, either.