caulfield12

What the hell is Melton talking about, confiance? Is he making up a new French word, or just butchering the Spanish pronunciation of confidence. Great advice, pretend you don't have 2 strikes Dunn, when you get behind in the count. First RBI of ST for the Sox. Good thing a decent SS wasn't playing there. Nice to see Ramirez at least not K....he was pretty darned spotty with RISP last year.

Has to be Andy Van Slyke's son. Getting too old, haha...when all of the former players you grew up have their kids playing in the big leagues.

Nobody's squaring up that fastball this early in proceedings, like what we're seeing so far out of Reed. You'd rather he be a bit more economical with pitches, but we survived the Bobby Jenks Era (sorry Greg)...we'll see whether Ventura is willing to make Addison the lead closer coming out of ST or if we go with the closer by committee/match-up approach.

Have a feeling Reed's slider will come and go in terms of location like Gavin's curveball. Two really good ones that AB, encouraging bite this early in ST in the desert air.

Gordon "Mazeroski" Beckham.

AJ and Viciedo aren't exactly selective hitters, but nice to be reminded by that irksome Pierzynski one-pitch AB. Well, at least he made contact. Addison Reed sighting.

Yikes. I guess we do have to be happy with Beckham at .270 or .280. Btw, Mark Parent's a pretty big guy, he makes Hermie look tiny.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 5, 2012 -> 02:30 PM) Daryl Van Schouwen ‏ @CST_soxvan Jhan Marinez went one scoreless with 3 Ks, Simon Castro threw 2.0 scoreless IP with a K and Deunte Heath struck out two in 1.0 IP. Jose Quintana allowed 2 runs on 3 hits with 2 Ks over 2.0 IP … bullpen combined to work 7.0 scoreless IP with eight strikeouts Start the countdown for the first KW trade of one of our pitching prospects in ST. F=m * a, Bill First clues about Gordon's "me being me" swing and Morel's carryover from late 2011 coming up next.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 5, 2012 -> 02:29 PM) Daryl Van Schouwen ‏ @CST_soxvan rhp jhan marinez: 1 inning, 3 strikeouts v indians in b game It would be nice if one of those RH relief candidates comes out and posts a 0.00 ERA in spring and takes the bull by the horns right off the bat for those final 2 bullpen spots. Generally Bill, no, most teams don't have 3 lefties in the bullpen.

God, Melton's worse than listening to about 95% of minor league announcers. The King of Obvious Statements. Spring is here, start the Melton complaints thread and forget about Harrelson for at least a month.

No K for Dunn, at least.

QUOTE (Heads22 @ Mar 5, 2012 -> 01:51 PM) Um, baseball's back. Any particulars? The theme of ST will be any positives about our winning percentage and how somehow this year it will be indicative of April success and how it should encourage fans to go out and buy season tickets or Pick 7 packages...."how Ozzie wanted to see a lot of young players" in Spring but Ventura's determined to win more March games and translate that to a fast start out of the gate.

Gold Glove 2012, Alexei. Too bad he couldn't get rid of the ball and cut down Ethier at third.

Hope we don't see that bottom of the 1st performance repeated in a loop for the first half of the season offensively.

Tickets "JUST" start at $73 for Crosstown Series? That's funny. Sounds not exactly like a bargain.

We're going to lead the AL in ERA, from the start of ST until the end of October.

Sparse attendance. Fire KW. LoL. The ubiquitous comment about curveballs not biting in the desert air, knew that one was coming.

Who is Russ Langer?

Who is the guy singing the National Anthem? Hulk Hogan's brother? Hollywood Gates? What? Weird to see Buehrle NOT catching the ceremonial first pitch.

We'll see how much AJ is worth at the deadline....if it will be just a salary dump, saving us $2-3 million, or if we can actually get a decent prospect or two back. As far as 2005 goes, nobody knew anything about Iguchi, only that he had good stats in the Japanese leagues but that KW had only scouted him via video. (He could just have easily ended up like Nishioka or Kaz Matsui). Pods was coming off a down year (certainly compared to his rookie campaign with the Brewers), and Dye from an injury. El Duque was a huge question mark, especially at that $6.5 million salary line. They were replacing about 40% of the roster, and there were also inevitable questions about Thomas' health as well as Everett's "combustibility." All things considered, it would have been just as easy to be pessimistic (because of the chemistry and roster turnover issue) as optimistic, as we had very strong teams in 2003 and 2004 but were turning over our operating model almost completely at that time, besides the starting pitching. And Contreras was also a huge question mark as well.

Hochevar, Chen and Jonathan Sanchez are the top 3 for the Royals at the moment. Yikes! Duffy, Paulino, Aaron Crow, Montgomery, Teaford, and Luis Mendoza (he started yesterday) competing for the 4th/5th spots. Duff, Crow and Montgomery are the well-known names in top prospect circles. Crow going through the Chris Sale transition phase.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 2, 2012 -> 02:49 PM) Heh. I got to go to a Final Four with his team. If Alford was attempting to run in the 2012 Republican Presidential primary, Herman Cain could still show up today and beat him 90%+ to whatever abysmal single digit number Alford would poll in the Hawkeye State. Michele Bachmann would crush him, too. Huntsman might actually be able to beat Alford. Well, maybe not.

http://www.baseballamerica.com/blog/prospe...beras-contract/

Couple of things that are interesting...that he tried to hire Keith Law as a scout this past offseason, and wasn't Jon Daniels of the Rangers also from a "non-traditional" baseball background? Daniels was born and raised in Queens, New York.[2][3] He went to Hunter College High School and Cornell University, majored in Applied Economics and Management, and joined the Delta Chi Fraternity.[4][5] After graduating from Cornell University in 1999, Daniels went into business development for Allied Domecq.[6] KISSIMMEE, Fla. -- For a guy who came to baseball relatiavely late in life and who runs a team that is by all accounts overmatched, new Astros GM Jeff Luhnow seems quite relaxed. He appears to have the right outlook and demeanor for a team that may again lose 100 games. "Of course, he is (calm),'' one skeptic from a rival team said. "There is absolutely no pressure.'' Luhnow, an intellectual ensconsed in the stat crowd (he just got back from the MIT Sports Sloan Analytics Conference), is always going to have his critics. He and Rays GM Andrew Friedman are the only ones to take the non-traditional route to the GM's chair, meaning they didn't start out as baseball executives. But Friedman quickly proved himself one of the best execs in baseball by now after starting out in the investment business. Pressure or not to win this year, folks are looking to Luhnow to prove himself. Not everyone is going to be rooting for him, either. Some folks like tradition, and he's taken an unususal route to get where he is. He has a dual engineering and business degree from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Northwestern University, and he got into baseball in his mid-30s with the Cardinals, in 2003. Now 45, he spent nearly a decade as an executive with the Cardinals, contributing to two World Series teams as a high-level front-office person. Though, with the ongoing old-school vs. new-school denate raging (he is firmly in the latter crowd), there were definitely some critics in St. Louis. He tried to hire ESPN's Keith Law for a top scouting job in Houston, which wouldn't necessarily have endeared him to some older scouts. (Law turned the job down.) Say this for Luhnow, the Cardinals generally thrived in his time in a top scouting and player development job there. And say this, too, he seems to have an excellent handle on where the Astros are today. Luhnow said he seeks progress, which is precisely the right answer for a team that lost 106 games last year and threatens to repeat that output. He also said their seemingly dire situation will be aided by a lucrative TV contract that begins next year and that they also hope to become a free-agent player if they can recapture their audience in what he pointed out was a big market. Luhnow provided a positive-as-he-could be rundown of the Astros playing personnel, but it isn't fair to recount any of that here because his job is to be as upbeat as possible, no matter what the roster looks like. While Luhnow mentioned several nice things about many of their players, he isn't about to pretend the team is ready to contend, which shows he's far from delusional. He does seem to have high hopes for new Astros shortstop Jed Lowrie, whom he acquired in a trade for ex-Astros closer Mark Melancon, as well as a few others. The reality, though, is that even his relatively honest portrayal of his team's situation doesn't say how bad the Astros are thought to be. Their rotation led by Wandy Rodriguez, Bud Norris and J.A. Happ is somewhat presentable, but their everyday lineup threatens to be the worst in baseball. Everyone has their own evaluation of course, but one scout said he believed that besides veteran Carlos Lee, who Houston would love to trade, only two players have a chance to be major-league average, catcher Jason Castro and third baseman Chris Johnson, and Castro missed last year with a knee injury and Johnson hit .251 with seven home runs. "Two years ago, he hit,'' the scout said. "Last year he forgot how.''(sounds like Gordon Beckham, Alex Rios and Adam Dunn) Jon Heyman

Speaking of getting on-base... Pierre said the Phillies were the only team that reached out to him this offseason, making what he said was a surprise call in January. But perhaps nobody was happier to hear the Phillies were giving Pierre a shot than Willis. Pierre is the godfather to all three of Willis’ daughters. Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/04/2673...l#storylink=cpy