caulfield12

114 pitches. Last pitch at 96. Slow grounder to Beckham. Joyce and Luke Scott looming. Sean Rodriguez hit the game winning homer against Boston yesterday. That's the TROP DOME record for strikeouts, beats 14 by Pedro Martinez. Pretty good company, considering how many good Yankees, Red Sox and Blue Jays (Halladay) pitchers have gone there for nearly 20 years.

Wow, Ventura's going to let Sale start the bottom of the 8th. That's a surprise, especially with Robin being the one who most wanted to protect Sale by putting him in the pen.

Stupid Royals. Just gave up a 5 spot to the Indians, Mendoza pitching for KC.

Scrubs with a 4 run lead late in the game against the Padres, 11-7 in the 8th.

15 K's. That probably was his last hitter.

Molina 5 for 37 at home. This is the time of the game where the Brothers Molina always seem to come up with huge, clutch hits.

Luke Scott and Matt Joyce are on the bench. Sale's FB has ranged today from 89-97 MPH. Dammit AJ, that's not helpful. Would be a shame if two runs scored today by getting to 2B in that fashion.

Tough match-up for Carlos Pena, but also equally dangerous for Sale.

Bunting? LH/LH match-up doesn't usually end up well for hitters against Sale. OOps, forgot Johnson was a switch-hitter. Great play by Orlando Hudson down the 3B line. Saved a run possibly, definitely would have been runners on 2nd and 3rd.

Jesse Crain warming up. 100 pitches...101 pitches. 2nd walk of the game. Uh-oh.

http://www.mangphoto.com/btp/html/news/htm...layer_3293.html Harshman was a lefty. So he was the all-time record of 16 K's in 1954, and obviously the record for a Sox lefty as well.

You'd have to think that with 95 pitches, at best he'll get the 7th inning to tie the White Sox all-time record of 16. Can't imagine he would get pushed up into the high 110's or low 120's. Guess it depends on how Chris is feeling, but you just can't afford to chance it. 23 pitches last inning, and a few foul balls. Only four "regular" outs.

That might be the Sox record for strikeouts by a LHP. Was Harshman in 1954 LH? Alvarez's career high?

16 the record for Sox strikeouts in a game, Jack Harshman in 1954. 14 K's...would have a legit chance at 20 K's, but absolutely no way they're going to push him well over 100 pitches....would they?

Didn't realize Farnsworth's father was shot down twice in Vietnam. They were just playing a snippet of an interview with him and he was absolutely bawling reminscing about his dad, his sacrifices, how lucky he was to survive...about "adopting" a soldier through one of the many military/veteran websites out there.

Now the question is if Moore can get settled down again or whether he implodes... Sale definitely righted the ship after the gift run scored instead of letting his anger get to him. 9 homers is a ton for Moore at this point in the season. 2nd homer by a lefty. Dunn's LHP struggles last year aren't such an issue in 2012. Seems like so long ago that Lillibridge seemed the much better option there at DH against LHP.

Leyland and Lamont got thrown out of that Tigers/Red Sox game. Looks like the Cubs are in danger of actually winning a game, up by one in the 7th. Maybe that will jinx them, like usually happens in the wrong way with Indians and Tigers games. And it's not like they have a closer these days. Dave Wills said Ventura is taking a page out of the Rays' playbook. Flew from Chicago to TB with shorts, flip-flops, t-shirts. Doesn't seem to be so concerned with them being dressed up like businessmen on the plane, especially when the team is playing well and so loose and relaxed.

Stanton has 11 homers this month...a bit hot. OzzieBall. Forgot that Dan Johnson hit that homer against the White Sox, thanks for the reminder, Dave Wills...reminiscing about Hickey and Skowron, and how the White Sox were in such a fog that game they lost the day of Hickey's funeral. Fond memories of all the first-name stories about Mickey, Roger, Whitey, Yogi, etc. Baseball history, primary source...was that Moose.

The problem is that trading Ramirez right now is that his defense has been so important (missing the tag on Zobrist notwithstanding just now) and he's been showing signs of life offensively as well. We all know by now the Cubans hit much better in the summer heat. And we're not going to get a major league ready SS back, so that would force Escobar/Lillibridge into the line-up. Perhaps, down the line, Saladino can stick there, but he's at least 1 1/2 seasons away from being ready (August/Sept, 2013), and that's being pretty optimistic.

Rare AJ strikeout. Viciedo's getting his share of infield groundball hits now these days...used to hit everything on the ground weakly at fielders or into DP's. 4/19 on the season so far for Hudson. I guess that's not entirely unexpected, based on how he was hitting in SD and how he looked for the Twins two seasons ago.

Dave Wills was mentioning that the Rays should attack Dunn and/or Hudson by bunting more frequently, and he's probably right. That was shades of Frank Thomas playing 1B there and attempting to throw across the diamond. First MLB RBI there...he was something like 3/33 in his minor league rehab assignment. Oh, well.

QUOTE (CaliSoxFanViaSWside @ May 28, 2012 -> 09:58 AM) Caulfield. I might be one of the few who doesn't mind your "longwindedness" . I don't mind at all reading well thought out posts like yours that cover many angles. Just because it's a message board doesn't mean every post has to be a witty sound byte type post. I applaud your intellect however... you are not above mocking people. I have seen you do it to greg many times with your lie detector comments. Yeah, I guess quite a few piled on with the "remember the U.S.S. Paul Konerko" comments, lol. Maybe it's because I actually believe Greg posts sometimes simply to be a contrarian, especially about all things Ozzie/Cowley/Wise/Pierre/Pods/Harrelson/Jenks/any member of the 2005 WS team. And maybe I felt differently about it because it came from a mod and not Dick Allen or Marty, too.

QUOTE (sunofgold @ May 27, 2012 -> 09:50 PM) I think 93 runs over the last 13 games. If you cannot credit the hitting coach during a streak like this, you will never ever praise a hitting coach. Lol. We would be better off next year with a robotic hitting coach, video and computer simulations. Then we can answer the question once and for all about the value of a human hitting coach. Even in Atlanta, Walker has an assistant hitting coach in Scott "Scooter" Fletcher who's spending as much time, if not more, with their young hitters. And apparently their two approaches are very, very different. So can we realistically ascertain which one as actually had the bigger impact?

QUOTE (SoxAce @ May 27, 2012 -> 10:48 PM) Heh.. That's what SHE said. I'll open your dome, baby.

Here's another barometer we can use to compare 2010 and 2012 (although the 26-5 streak happened in June/July, when school was already out). Home games in the middle of hot streak Tuesday-Thursday series against the Braves, 29,137 average Monday-Thursday series against the Angels, 27,212 average (38,000+ for the Monday discount night) Friday-Sunday against Royals, 28,984 average (this is when we moved into 1st place) Then you had the Cubs home weekend series in there as well, where we took the first two and lost the 3rd. But all told, we were a bit unlucky to only have 13 home games and 18 road games in that stretch.