caulfield12

Juan Uribe wasn't too shabby, either.

11 straight starts for Santana into the 7th inning...

Because the Tigers don't have a second starter if the playoffs were to start tomorrow, it'd probably be Scherzer. (They are five deep through 2014, so they could easily afford to just "rent" Buehrle for the final five weeks and post-season). The Yankees clearly don't have defined 2nd or 3rd starters. We're going to need to save every penny we can payroll-wise the next 2-3 seasons, might as well start now. It already began with Teahen and Jackson being shed.

I'm sure Kendrys Morales will somehow end up on the White Sox roster soon... The worst part about this game is we're going to have to use the bullpen for at least 2 innings, but I guess it doesn't matter with all the offdays this week. Crain warming up.

This.team.is.dead. God, Buehrle obviously hasn't been sharp or locating his pitches, but this game is so typical of the White Sox in 2011. And frustrating. Basically, four errors in four innings just gave the Angels 2 runs.

We might as well just go ahead and save $3 million and get back a return from either the Yankees or Red Sox. The only problem is that the Tigers would probably claim him first and then we'd have to pull Mark back. But all those teams could desperately use a veteran, proven 2nd or 3rd starter for the playoffs. Note: The only way I would do this is if they were pretty sure from all indications that he wasn't interested in coming back to the Sox in 2012...or if he agreed to come back and they could get a nice return when the team's essentially out of the race and will be bleeding red ink with abysmal attendance the final 5 weeks as all attention turns to the Bears, college football, Blackhawks and Bulls, etc. It doesn't matter whether they win tonight, this team is just not going to be able to play well enough when you make the types of lackadaisiscal plays we've seen from Ramirez, Pierre (that's about the 3rd or 4th time this season we've seen someone go from 1st and home on a single because of an outfielder's nonchalance or lack of awareness of the baserunner.... Alex Rios can't go back on a ball to save his life. I don't care if he had a double. He's been a horrible outfielder this season. He consistently misreads balls hit over his head and just as consistently misreads balls that end up landing in front of him. Really, there have already been four defensive errors because if Rios doesn't overrun that ball coming in and ending up having to throw from almost a dead stop, he gets the runner at home and this game is now tied. Adam Dunn is really going to kill off the fanbase and might be the end of JR too if he has to watch this for another season.

Wonder if the Indian can pull off the comeback from 10-2 down? Now 11-5 in the 6th. Revere's basically going to be fighting with Span for that spot benchwarmerjim, don't see any way they can possibly fit into the same outfield. With so many questions surrounding Morneau, Mauer's power outage, Cuddyer and/or Kubel possibly on the way out...where are they going to get even 20 homers from? They might even have to bring back Jim Thome next year...? Unless they would be willing to take Dunn, in which case he'd probably club 38 homers for another division winner.

All I know is Danny Glover or the kid from Little Big League should be our manager for the remainder of the season in order to pull this off.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Aug 23, 2011 -> 04:29 PM) Ohman is a LOOGY, and a good one at that. Look up the definition of that, and you'll see that he's only good against lefties and that's all he's supposed to be used for. Our manager is the only one that doesn't see that. http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/splits/_/id/4563/will-ohman This is the problem, because he exists and is a "veteran," Ozzie overuses him in higher leverage situations. Our "LOOGY" has the same exact number of appearances against LH batters as RH batters. Exactly 79 AB's versus both. He's been pretty effective against lefties, as you would expect. However, he's giving up a 266 BA, 801 OPS and 3 HR's and 17 RBI's in those appearances against RH batters.

Amazing...well, even the White Sox have come from behind to beat League. But 15 times in a single season at home? And an actual earthquake in CLE to boot? So much for that 5-4 Mariners ninth inning lead. Choo, who nearly missed the game following the birth of his daughter, hit the first pitch from Mariners closer Brandon League(notes) (1-5) over the wall in left, helping the Indians end a four-game losing streak and avoid falling further behind first-place Detroit in the AL Central. Choo was mobbed at home plate by his teammates, a fitting welcome for the versatile outfielder who has had a rough season on and off the field. “As I rounded the bases, a lot of things were going through my mind,” said Choo, whose wife gave birth to 7-pound Abigail on Monday. “I thought about my family, my wife, my newborn daughter. I’m not an emotional person, but it was a great feeling.” Chris Perez(notes) (3-6) got the win despite giving up a two-run double in the ninth to put the Mariners up 5-4. If not for Choo’s heroics—Cleveland’s sixth walk-off homer and 15th win in its last at-bat at home this season—the Indians were in danger of dropping below .500 for the first time since April 3 and effectively kissing what has been an unexpected season of thrills goodbye. Cleveland’s hanging on.

If we can't produce a random lefty who can produce better than a 1.333 WHIP for a minimum salary, we're in trouble. I don't have the energy to go through every single appearance...it just seems that we're spending way too much as an aggregate on these guys like Ohman, Vizquel, Teahen, Pena and Castro. Heck, we paid Linebrink $3.5 million NOT to pitch for us. In the end, that's the difference between paying Paul Konerko or being able to go after someone like Adrian Gonzalez or Miguel Cabrera long-term. If we had a better minor league system, those overpay contracts for veterans wouldn't be necessary. I mean....I'm sure you could take one of DJ Carrasco's seasons with us and point to similar numbers of inherited runners scored and say he wasn't THAT bad, either.

Try listening to what the random interstate long-haul truck drivers are saving about a certain chief executive from Illinois. It's 10X than what I've heard "old timers" ever say about Reinsdorf, and that's quite a lot.

But the near certainty of winning every single Verlander start mitigates any possible advantage the White Sox might have in depth at the back of the rotation. If we had a starter pitching like that, it would be more realistic to imagine them going on this huge run or streak.

Someone earlier said it well. We're forcing ourselves to trade away "good" assets like Thornton or Ramirez because of the array of bad/terrible decisions all over the roster. Because we didn't have what is essentially a "3rd lefty/LOOGY" in our minor league system, KW reached for Ohman. All those $1.5 and $2.5 milllion contracts add up at this point. We'd be much better off as a team if we had kept Thornton and never signed Ohman in the first place. He has added about zero, because if you had nameless rookie down there (Santiago), Ozzie would have been tempted to use him with the Sox leading or tied in a game...or even 1-2 runs down. He's failed more often than not in those "close or tied or leading" appearances if you were go through every single appearance.

And God knows, but we've had 4-5 positions in the line-up all season long hitting like pitchers, anytime you can get an 800+ OPS into the line-up is a huge bonus offensively and you absolutely have to go for it.

2006. 2009. The fact they've never won the AL Central... However, we're not the Twins chasing them down. And this is a different Verlander than we've ever seen, a juggernaut. Sure, we've had good luck against him (this year), but can we expect that to last? Perhaps the greatest argument is that Jose Valverde has been pitching with smoke and mirrors all season and is due to implode. But the odds of the White Sox exploding over .500 are a LOT less than the Tigers collapsing. How much they can fall back....to 5-6 games over .500, that's probably what it would take. We're incredibly unlikely to go 24-12, 23-13, even 22-14. You just can't trust Peavy or Humber at all, and Stewart's a wild card from appearance to appearance.

So we should definitely trade Konerko. Beckham should have been traded after 2009. Oops...then we will have no young/affordable players, because we'd have acquired Adrian Gonzalez, who would very soon become too expensive to re-sign. Rios should have been traded last offseason. Jenks and Crede should have been traded a long time before they both became worthless to the organization. Problem is...there weren't very many out there (I guess there were a few on Rios) confidently expressing those thoughts at the time. There was always a "sinking" feeling with Crede's back and Jenks' loss of "stuff" but KW never pulled the trigger. Timing. In the end, we might have a 2012 roster of DeAza, Santos, Lillibridge, Sale, Flowers, Milledge, Stewart, Morel, Beckham and Viciedo...all "youngish" players, but that doesn't mean they're all going to produce. But at least there's more upside to it than watching Dunn and Rios flail away. Of course, the problem is that absolutely everything has to go right with the entire roster to offset the four big contracts (Peavy/Dunn/Rios/Konerko...and maybe Buehrle again).

There's more than one member? How many followers does Rongey have at twitter these days?

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Aug 23, 2011 -> 09:08 AM) Yesterday you had problems with math. Today it's names. What will tomorrow bring? Well, not exactly. Your mathematics left our Frasor, Humber, Beckham and about 7 more first and second year players who will total around $8-12 million dollars. That's two of your Matt Thorntons (or one Matt Thornton, one Alexei Ramirez) you're trying to dump, so I wouldn't call it an insignificant amount. And there's still no "proof" yet about the 2 million in attendance subsidy. That would be quite the story....the State of Illinois renegotiating TWICE in order to give more public monies and free rent to billionaire baseball owners when the majority of the state is suffering from an intransigent recession. I'm not understanding why they would agree to raise the amount from 1.2 million to 1.5 million (already renegotiated once) and then all the way to 2 million. It wouldn't make any economic sense for the State of lllinois to buy 200-300,000 White Sox tickets. Or what? The White Sox would threaten to leave again? What leverage do the White Sox actually have to extract any more concessions?

Knowing the way things have gone this season....they'd finally bench Dunn, ruining him forever (according to Rongey) and then Thome would go all Manny Ramirez 2010 on the White Sox.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Aug 23, 2011 -> 07:30 AM) The title of this thread makes me want to self-mutilate. Would you feel less in a mood for self-immolation if it was "performing like Michael Morse?"

Weren't we tied with the Indians as of last night? Who would be awarded the claim first? Did we have the same exact records, 63-63? Or was one team percentage points ahead or behind? With Hafner on the DL, the Indians definitely make some sense for the short-term.

Here we go again, Marty/Joe. Yesterday, Ramirez...today, Matt Thornton. Never heard any of the rumors of who was actually offered for Matty. Who were they, albeit "rumors"?

JD Drew Ortiz off and on for last 3-4 years Dice K Varitek Crawford The difference is that the Red Sox have that extra cushion and the minor league system to adsorb all those bad contracts, especially Lackey and Dice-K. And we've been able to cover the pitching issues with Peavy, more or less. The problem is we don't have Pedroia, Youkilis, Ortiz, Ellsbury and Adrian Gonzalez (who we could have had for Beckham). Instead we have Morel, Dunn, Rios, Beckham at those positions.

www.ranyonroyals.com (Why the Frenchy deal for Royals makes less sense since Cain is blocked now and Cabrera shouldn't be in CF) Cain and Francoeur both bat right-handed, while Cabrera is a switch-hitter. If the Royals commit to Cain in center field and trade Cabrera, the Royals will have six right-handed bats in the lineup almost every day next year, with little hope that the ratio will balance out in the near future. (Incidentally, this is one of the main reasons why I think the Royals would be foolish to let go of switch-hitting Brayan Pena as their backup catcher.) Francoeur is the only one of the three who could neither play good defense in center field nor bat from the left side. The obvious solution for the Royals was to promote Cain, move Cabrera to right field (or possibly to left field, with Gordon switching corners), and to wave Francoeur good-bye. That would have upgraded their outfield defense while maintaining the platoon advantage in at least four spots in the lineup. By re-signing Francoeur, the Royals put themselves in a difficult decision. Maybe they are able to trade Cain for a starting pitcher, in which case they’re stuck with a bad defender in a crucial up-the-middle position. Maybe they can turn Cabrera into prospects, in which case they’re going to be eaten alive by tough right-handed pitching. But the Royals have created a situation where, no matter which way they go, they’ve left the 2012 team with a significant tactical weakness. Maybe the Royals get really creative here, and trade both Cain and Cabrera in order to open a spot for Jarrod Dyson (which honestly isn’t as crazy as it sounds). Or maybe they trade Butler and DH Cabrera (which is as crazy as it sounds, as I don’t think the Royals can get fair value for Butler). But as it stands now, bringing back Francoeur is the first domino in a chain reaction that, whichever way it goes, doesn’t end well for the Royals. I hope I’m wrong. I hope that, between now and Opening Day, the Royals come up with an outfield arrangement which maximizes their chances of winning in 2012. The problem is that they already had such an arrangement at their fingertips, and let it go rather than relinquish their precious Francoeur. Re-signing Frenchy certainly isn’t a crippling move along the lines of the Jose Guillen contract; it doesn’t clearly make the Royals worse like the Mike Jacobs trade did. But the Royals spent a fair amount of money on a player who doesn’t have a long track record of success, and who the Royals didn’t really need in the first place. There were better ways to spend that money. Love may be blind, but it ain’t cheap. If Dayton Moore’s love is requited, this contract won’t hurt the Royals. Unfortunately, “not hurting the Royals” is about the best we can hope for.