caulfield12

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jul 8, 2012 -> 12:53 AM) If you are going to complain about batting average, you should shoot a little higher than 3-6 more hits. That .232 is fine, it's the strikeouts that are alarming. Dude is going to strike out a lot, but you'd like to see him decrease the rate at which he does it just a little bit. I guess it's more a matter of perception. Gordon Beckham seems okay in the .240's, but maybe not so much in the .230's or .220's, but that's not taking into consideration factors like OPS or RBI's or clutch hitting, for example. With Thompson, everyone seems to be waiting for that moment when he turns it all on and everything just magically clicks. I guess it's the same thing with promotions to the next level...obviously, there are a lot more areas to look at, BA is just the simplest measurement. And Thompson has been piling up XB hits and RBI's, so it's not like he has been anything close to useless. Maybe expectations were increased a bit by spring training, and that's always a danger, where it clearly looked like Mitchell and Thompson were making some progress as players.

You could get by with Viciedo, Nathan Jones and Mitchell, perhaps. Or including Thompson/Saladino as the 4th guy. Viciedo and Beckham both have to prove they can consistently hit 90+ fastballs. I wouldn't dream of trading them Sale for Justin Upton. I'd rather trade some riff-raff and see if we can straighten out BJ Upton. Stephen Drew is the other interesting name...if he could play 3B next year.

The main thing with that Tigers series out of the ASB is not getting swept. 1/3 is fine...a sweep puts the White Sox on their heels a bit and brings all those 2nd half slide questions back into everyone's minds.

Escobar, when you take into consideration his fielding and age, definitely Top 3. The Myers blocked by Cain and Francouer scenario is kind of a nightmare in the making... Agreed about Betancourt, that was another version of Willie Bloomquist...better to give those opportunities to a youngster. In the end, the Royals have been bitten hard by all those injuries, moreso than most teams. That said, they will have to spend money on a Hamels or Greinke caliber of frontline starter. They did it b4 with Meche, although he was really more a 2/3 guy and obviously injury-prone. Maybe an Erik Bedard...that at least has the ABILITY to be a 1/2, even if his stats or injury history is questionable. Francisco Liriano would be another possibility. Two guys like that....or one "surefire" frontline starter, and they'll be in much better shape moving the rest of the rotation back on spot.

Mitchell ends the day at .251 after going 0/5 overall. Trayce Thompson 0/4, 2 K's, .232. Needs to be at least in the .240's or .250's.

QUOTE (Jake @ Jul 7, 2012 -> 08:24 PM) You'd have to think about it...hell, give them Gavin to make it seem better and see if you can squeeze any money out of them EDIT: It still blows my mind that teams do that stupid backloading. Why won't one team just frontload a contract so the player is likely to get paid a fair rate based on his age. The problem is that with Floyd returning to form, you have to once again start considering that $9.5 million team option for 2013. Especially with Danks' situation so mysterious, Molina falling off the map and Castro's situation a bit up in the air as well. Still, we have a LONG time to figure everything out with all of those guys, including Gavin. So adding Buehrle and subtracting Floyd doesn't do anything at all for the depth issue...unless you can get two starters back somehow.

We did it with Magglio. In 2004, his contract had escalated all the way up to $14.5 million and it created an argument from the standpoint of management that there was just no way his next contract year would be better than $15 per year or could even average 15...therefore, Magglio was going to look at any offer as a cut. We backloaded AJ's two year deal as well, as another example. Or Dunn's, I think. But none quite so dramatically as the Buehrle one.

Until Humber proves otherwise, or Axelrod REALLY gets rocked in his next two starts (it's not really fair to judge him tmrw on 3 days' rest against a TOR team that's ultra-dangerous, trying to fend off a sweep and playing in a day game when the ball should be jumping out of USCF)...it will be Dylan's spot for now.

QUOTE (oldsox @ Jul 7, 2012 -> 06:08 PM) Anybody here follow the Boston papers? Pretty soon we'll be talking about signing him for 2013. He has a $12 or $13 million team option for 2013....or a $1 million buyout. No signing or re-signing argument, the numbers are already clear.

My Floyd for Liriano deal is looking silly now, but probably in another month it might look good again. Obviously, Floyd's going on one of his hot streaks again. Definitely was due.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 7, 2012 -> 11:21 AM) 26 year old with 24 career big league innings doesn't scream "more experience" to me. Well, somehow you have to have a feeling Cooper saw him somewhere and mentioned him. In the Ozzie book, Morrissey mentioned how one of the bigger conflicts last year was Cooper wanting to pitch Santiago and Ozzie preferring to go with veterans in the pen like Ohman and thinking they were still in it...

Not sure if it was announced, Axelrod will start on short rest Sunday with the whole bullpen ready to go from the get-go.

QUOTE (justBLAZE @ Jul 7, 2012 -> 07:05 AM) I was also at that game. I probably will be making the Athletics series in the second week of August, work schedule does not allow for anything sooner. Have to fly back to Shanghai/Manila the 6th...so only two series are possible for me this year.

Beckham (0 for 9) and Alexei (0 for 12) don't have a hit against Romero. Rios, ex-teammate, is 5/12 with a homer. Youkilis has to be the pick to click. 8/23, 3 HR's.

QUOTE (JoeCoolMan24 @ Jul 6, 2012 -> 11:58 PM) Kenny said that Chris Sale is going to get at least 1 more "two week break" at some point in the season to give him a rest and hopefully delay his shutdown at the end of the season. Now that last half was speculation on my part, but the "two week break" was straight from Kenny. Didn't they just have another MRI in the last 2-3 days to compare the results from the first one? White Sox enter today's play with only three teams having better records....NYY, Rangers and Washington Nationals.

The Submission was simply excellent. Now on ALEPH by Paulo Coelho, the Tiger Mother book (Amy Chua) and just finished the Guillen/Morrissey tome. Then a HUGE book, IQ84 by Haruki Murakami. Does anyone else here like David Foster Wallace?

I would trade Floyd for Liriano... Although it probably would be a wiser move to ADD Liriano without subtracting Floyd. The problem is that the Twins don't need Mitchell, they already have Span and Revere, who are similar players. The question is how long they want to hold onto Denard, and whether they believe he's worth the money they will be paying him in arbitration. The next question is what besides Mitchell would it cost to get Liriano for the rest of the season. Probably at least one other piece...they will, like all teams, ask for Nathan Jones and get turned down. So maybe Liriano for Mitchell and Santiago. That would be a trade which accomplishes things for both organizations.

July 24/25 or August 3rd/4th? Would love to meet up with anyone, even Marty34, haha. My last Sox game (in Chicago) was the one we lost 20 something to 1 or 2 to the Twins (2009, I think)...so the goal/objective of this pilgrimage is to "reverse the curse" and also because we have 16 road games (not worried, we are better on the road) out of the 19 coming out of the All Star Break. PM me if interested. I'm probably going to be driving up from the Quad Cities with my best friend's dad, he's also a huge White Sox fan...was going to go this week/weekend but it's just too hot.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jul 7, 2012 -> 02:43 AM) Hey, could it be Ozzie had a bad year last year, as Kenny had a bad year and the players had a bad year last year? Actually the last 2 years of pretty bad baseball? If you think it's all on Ozzie, fine. If you think Ozzie's performance is why the players failed, fine. I happen to not think that. I think it's shared blame with the majority of it on the ballplayers. Is ozzie imperfect? Of course. But they call it a "team" for a reason. I look at the big picture and I think the big picture indicates Ozzie was an unqualified success in Chicago. When people blast away on him, I can't help but stand up for him even though he and his millions of dollars do not need my support. Even though he'd tell me to f*** off if I met him in a bar and told him I stand up for him on soxtalk. He'd call me a loser. Too bad, I think he was a good Sox skipper. If the answers to all your questions are "it's Ozzie's fault," fine. I do not believe this to be the case. Yet I also do not believe Ozzie is perfect. Now you're sounding exactly like Ozzie. Why does his financial success always get brought up? Many would argue that actually he's not a very happy person in actuality, hence all the drinking. That he has become a victim of the monster that he created in 2005 and is trapped by the Ozzie "public persona" of always having to one-up himself to get attention. Ready my signature for further clarification.

SAVAGES is freaking awesome. One of the best movies of the year. And Blake Lively...never a huge fan of hers, but that was one of her best performances. Taylor Kitsch was actually decent even. Del Toro was right up there with one of his most detestable performances. Stone still has it, occasionally, at least, despite all the conspiracy theory stuff.

Ranking the system right now would be a huge pain in the ass. Thankfully, there's the new infusion from the June draft. But, for example, the Dominican kid (16 yo SS) we signed, there's just no way to know where to stick him in the rankings. A few guys have been pooh-pooing Hernandez, for example, because of his K rate, but at some point, where do results start to move him up the charts, ala Axelrod and Quintana, versus more toolsy/stuff pitchers? Where do you put someone like Molina, who KW would still probably say with a straight face is one of our top 3 prospects? Which Mitchell is the real one? Same thing with Thompson and Saladino...how do you rate a bullpen arm (Soptic for example), versus a starting prospect, like Simon Castro?

Jared Mitchell must have gotten a call from KW. Get hot for at least one month again kid so I can package you for Hamels/Greinke.

1) Ozzie Guillen ALWAYS defends his veterans over the younger players, see Pierre/Viciedo or playing Rios all last season or Dunn over Lillibridge. Already publicly defending and then simultaneously not defending Bell is going to get him nowhere in the clubhouse. 2) Greg, how can you explain why the White Sox have the best outfield defense in recent years when last year it was probably the worst? 3) Greg, how can you explain why the White Sox are actually having very good success throwing out and holding on opposing baserunners? 4) Greg, how can you explain why the White Sox actually having a consistent line-up from day to day hasn't been a stabilizing influence? 5) Greg, how can you explain why some of the players like Peavy, Dunn and Rios who have been pretty bad in recent seasons with the Sox (to the point where a lot of fans wanted them waived/released/salaries dumped) are suddenly playing the best and carrying the team this year? 6) Greg, how can you explain why Ozzie and Cooper are now dealing so well with 10+ rookies on a team when Ozzie struggled to deal with 1-2-3 on a roster? 7) Greg, why have Robin's "Sunday line-ups" been working, whereas that strategy hadn't worked for Ozzie for YEARS? 8) Greg, why are we now having some decent success against journeymen/left-handers/soft-tossers/AAAA pitchers? 9) Greg, why are we hitting so much better with RISP this season?

QUOTE (RZZZA @ Jul 6, 2012 -> 10:47 PM) The pitching and fielding on this team is so awesome! How does it all come together like this? It amazes me. Even the rookies who nobody expected anything out of are coming up and pitching beautifully. When things come together like this you can only say...championship? Hold on. We still have to get Sale, Quintana and Peavy through August and September. We still have to get another starter and probably one more piece for the bullpen. That bullpen is doing fine for now, but they're all ntested in the heat of a pennant race. Who knows, that might actually work in their favor, but not counting on it.

Maybe they just want someone with more experience over Septimo or Omogrosso? Not sure. Their bullpen could use another veteran, especially if Crain's out an extended period of time.