caulfield12

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jun 7, 2012 -> 10:32 PM) I'd actually prefer the Tigers get that one....I know in the long run they are probably the better team, but I don't want anyone getting too hot...I was happy with the way that series split. Yeah. You actually worry with all the players the Indians have theoretically coming back in the coming weeks that they could start to believe (just like last year) they're going to be in it all the way to the end. 6-0 against the Tigers in the season series, including a sweep on the road...that would have been tough evidence to refute. And Detroit, even being knocked to 7 games back, there's no way they won't make a run at some point. The Twins and White Sox were about that amount behind the Royals in 2003 at the ASB and quite quickly blew past KC. It's only early June. Keeping first place feels good.

26,000 in attendance is encouraging after the 2 previous losses. Any game we draw 25-30K is a moral victory this season.

That Tigers game easily could have gone the other way had Berry not made a miraculous bases-loaded catch when he turned the wrong way on a ball blasted directly at and over his head. That ball lands, the Tigers are down 8-7 (having blown a 7-1 lead) and they're in serious trouble. They also had runners at 2nd and 3rd with only one out the following inning and escaped...Cabrera had a ball he should have thrown to 2nd for the force, he waited too long, missed the runner going for 3rd and almost ended up loading the bases except for the fact it was Marson running. And Miguel's actually been a defensive surprise on the "plus" side of the ledger for them so far, all things considered.

Giving Doyle a shot would demonstrate to the minor leaguers that even players who have been unprotected or weren't considered top prospects would get their shots eventually if they performed well. Stewart, since we acquired him, really hasn't been able to justify or defend his presence on our roster. Whether it's Doyle or Bruney, one of those guys deserves another shot for being persistent and resilient and not giving up in the face of high odds against them making it to the White Sox 25 man.

QUOTE (sunofgold @ Jun 7, 2012 -> 09:27 PM) Peavy hasn't pitched 200 innings in a long time, coming back from injury. Sale has never pitched 200 innings in ML, Danks coming bak from injury and has been ineffective, Going to a six man rotation protects your vulnerable pitchers and in this case gives you a chance to give Q some more starts. I wouldn't stay with a six rotation the rest of the season. it could also help you sort out your starters and then you can send one to the bullpen or Q back to minors. Or they throw in the towel on Humber. But starting pitching's too valuable, and experienced SP moreso. Just can't imagine trying to compete for the division relying on the likes of Quintana, Axelrod and Castro for another 4 months. Isn't that the whole reason that Hudson was dealt for Jackson?

Seems like we dodged a HUGE bullet with this win. Great job of Peavy getting his act together, the clutch hit there at the end, obviously needed this win badly.

He got a HIT?

Going to need another wild pitch here. Hudson fighting for his MLB career with this AB.

C'mon Ventura. There's ZERO reason not to PR Lillibridge now.

2 run deficit, we PR Lillibridge? But not here? Hmmmm....

Finally, a hit from Dayan. Cue Lillibridge and another caught stealing?

Thankfully, Hudson is only the White Sox version of Starling Castro, or vice-versa, but he can easily be cut loose. It would be 100X worse if the current franchise cornerstone was forgetting outs and making mental mistakes over and over again.

Well, at least Addison was able to pitch around that mistake. Let's improve our record in one run ballgames, currently a less than sterling 6-8. Need a walkoff in the worst possible way.

Pitches 6 and 8 in that sequence both got a good part of the plate but called balls.

And there we have the dreaded leadoff walk. SIGH.

Dreading a Thornton appearance with runners on base...

QUOTE (Soxfest @ Jun 7, 2012 -> 07:58 PM) Visquel saved Jays a run. The ball that Dunn hit? Looked like a sure single? Be very careful with Peavy this inning, RV. He's already at 109 pitches. You'd almost rather turn it over to the bullpen, but he can perhaps quickly go 1-2-3 and give the offense a chance to get him the W.

That will help. Hopefully the momentum can swing back in our favor and we can pull this game out and salvage 1/3.

At least Konerko got a hit. And Peavy's only given up 3, it's not like he has gotten bombed out of the park, exactly. Shoddy defense, as usual, didn't help matters.

There goes 31 points off Viciedo's batting average. Well, we knew it was coming. FIRST PLACE, FIRST PLACE, FIRST PLACE, repeat no matter what happens in this game.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jun 7, 2012 -> 06:55 PM) How could they not give Hudson an error on that? That would have been his 4th or 5th error already, right? Not to mention a number of misplays or plays just not made that could have been...like the game we lost to the M's when we were up 7-5.

Or against the Indians. Well, only a two run deficit. There was some weird statistic where only 6 pitchers in MLB history have finished the season with a K per 9 innings pitched ratio of 3 or lower. Henderson Alvarez would be one of them if he continues at this pace. Two others, former Tigers Bill Gullickson and Nate Cornejo (2003). Hudson's too poor defensively to hold 3B, and his offense hasn't come close to counterbalancing it. Well, whatever happens, we're still in first and the Indians have to play at STL and at CINCY.

Boesch singularly embodies the Tigers' collective collapse through the first third of the season. Many envisioned a breakout season for him in the No. 2 hole in the batting order with Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder following him. But during this home stand, Boesch is hitting .053 (1-for-19). He couldn't get a ball out of the infield in four trips to the plate Wednesday. One barely crawled 6 inches in front of home plate. He's screwed up offensively, and the Tigers can't screw around, with each loss making the next game more precious. They should send Boesch to Toledo once Austin Jackson returns from his injury rehab assignment in Toledo, perhaps as early as the final game of a weekend series at Cincinnati. Make rookie Quintin Berry, who made another dazzling defensive play in center Wednesday, the everyday rightfielder. Boesch's roster spot is too valuable for a club scrambling for an emotional lift anywhere to waste it on a part-time designated hitter hoping to correct the flaws in his swing with extra time in the batting cage and limited at-bats. Talk about your harsh beat writers. I can't remember a time when a Sox writer called for a player to be sent down to AAA or benched like Sharp just did here. http://www.freep.com/article/20120607/COL0...ews|text|Sports

We'll find out soon enough when they launch a Bourne-themed movie without Matt Damon. It's one thing to ditch Megan Fox from Transformers or Tobey Maguire from Spider-Man, but Bale has become THE Batman of the last 20-25 years.

Customer reviews of new Ozzie Guillen/Morrissey book But even from afar Ozzie's antics the last few years i.e. battling general manager Kenny Williams on everything under the sun... both business wise and personal... his public threats and whining about a contract extension with owner Jerry Reinsdorf as well as Williams... wound down to the equivalent of a broken scratched record... extremely irritating. The author's constant hashing and rehashing of the same exact thing over and over for two hundred pages... becomes... well... you know. It probably isn't humanly possible to tell the reader more than they've been told here regarding... that he's a players manager... or that he always wants to take the blame for any losses or problems with player's performances. But somehow... you are told more. Probably the best line in the book is when the author describes Guillen as ** THE CHARLES BARKLEY OF BASEBALL **. The only subject that statistically is in the same "ballpark" as his loyalty to his players... is his protective nature to his family. But I believe when the reader makes note of some of the tweets and comments his sons make to the public about the White Sox... it's hard to side with Ozzie's blind... repetitive... loyalty. How about some "tough-love" with the family? And talk about loyalty... it becomes repetitively non-sensical all the many times in this book that Ozzie swears loyalty to the Sox while considering an offer from the Marlins while still under contract with the Sox. It's made abundantly clear that Ozzie was probably vaccinated with a phonograph needle... as he yaks and yaks to anyone... and anything... and normally about the same few subjects... and so does the author. The following observation is for the benefit of potential readers that may have different moralities than I do because what I'm about to share doesn't bother me... but may bother others. There are probably more F's and MF's per page in this book than in any book I've read in the last five years. That's the way Ozzie and a lot of people talk (I'm one)... so no problem for me... but just a heads up. It's also very interesting/amusing that this book was written right before Ozzie's mind blowingly offensive comments about Fidel Castro got him suspended for a few games. (And Oz also has the Marlin's knocking on first place's door!) One of the many reasons I love baseball is the characters you find associated with the game. Since a prime example of those characters is Ozzie Guillen, I was happy to win this book from LibraryThing. I thought it would be full of hilarious stories from his many years in the game, and since Morrissey is a Chicago area journalist, he should know the "real" Ozzie from Guillen's years with the White Sox. The subtitle is "Lessons from the dugout, the clubhouse, and the doghouse." Even more reason to believe this would be funny. Now I wasn't born yesterday so I'm well aware that Ozzie's language is offensive, but I figured it would be easy to overlook. Well, this isn't the first time I've been totally wrong. Ozzie cannot form even a partial sentence without saying F--- at least once, if not two or three times. Just for variety he often precedes this with "Mother" and he uses these words as nouns, verbs, adjectives and in every conceivable situation. And he's LOUD. It sounds like he's actually proud of his language, and yet he brags about how he learned English when he came here from Venezuela so he could fit in! This book would have been excellent as a longish magazine article, but it just isn't right for a book. Morrissey tells the same things over and over so that as you get into the book you feel like you've read it before. And many of the stories just aren't that interesting, seemingly chosen more as examples of his foul language than for humor or insight. I don't mean to completely demean either Ozzie or the book. Ozzie is a dedicated husband and father. He can be brilliant as a baseball manager, and there's a lot to be said for his way of communicating with his players. The cover shows him in full rage, right up in the face of an umpire, but that's his way of defending his players and showing them he's on their side. I think it would take a special person to get along with Ozzie but if a player can get along with him, he's got a friend for life. When he's criticized for the way he spends money lavishly on his family, he tells people he works hard for his money and intends to enjoy it. He doesn't wish to save it up so his widow's boyfriend can have a good time with it. Now that's funny! This is a review of Rick Morrissey's new book about Ozzie Guillen, titled "Ozzie's School of Management." I received this book free as a review copy. So there's that. For his first book, Morrissey picks an interesting subject in Guillen. The profane, voluble Venezuelan is never dull to be around, and that shows up in this book. Guillen has a natural talent for stirring things up and attracting publicity. He was a favorite of the Chicago press for his availability and quotable nature (once you bleeping out about half the words) and he is no less interesting here. Language alert: the author and editor do not censor Guillen in the book. Lots of four-letter words, especially ones starting with the letter "f". The major problem with the book is the struggle the author has with moving from the world of newspaper column writing to operating at book-length. It's a big change and Morrissey struggles with it. The chapters in the first half of the book feel very repetitive. There is an attempt to write an introduction and then chapters based on different aspects of Guillen's managerial philosophy, but the author has limited success with the format. It's a lot of, "Boy, that crazy Ozzie, he'll say anything and he sure does cuss a lot." Not until the second half of the book does Morrissey show more skill at separating into chapters. One way to write a book is chronologically, which has the benefit of mimicking the way we live our lives. It feels right to us to see something written out in sequence as it occurs. We tend to assume such is true even when it is not, because it feels right to us, and that is why a movie like "Benjamin Button," which plays with our perceptions, seems so strange. Morrissey chooses not to do that, instead looking at Guillen's managerial stint in Chicago more by themes, and the execution does not always work out. He also pays little attention to the past or Guillen's playing career, except briefly as background. It's a choice that can work, but the book feels choppy, with sentences crafted more in the style of newspaper writing than book writing. For all that, Morrissey has chosen his subject well, because the story of Ozzie Guillen holds the interest and will keep the pages turning. For all the faults of the book, the story wins out. Guillen, his family, and the politics of decision-making in the major leagues are all on display here. Fans who can't understand why baseball teams aren't run in real life like they run their fantasy teams may learn something here, and others will just be entertained. I recommend the story of the never-boring Ozzie Guillen. http://www.amazon.com/Ozzies-School-Manage...howViewpoints=1