caulfield12

Tie ballgame, Dunn made contact there when he needed to. Got it off the end of the at-bat. First time Smyly has given up more than 1 run in a start. Bullpen coming into the game soon. Below? Looks like he's leaving him out there, 96 pitches. Didn't realize AJ was 8/23 already this year against lefties. Make that 8/24. Probably the end of the night for Smyly.

Two really good at-bats by Ramirez tonight...that's encouraging. Now, needless to say, we need to score this run. No option to fail.

Only 6 pitches for Peavy there. Still, doesn't really matter if our offense continues to sputter. Haven't won a game in which we scored 3 runs or less all season.

What did Harrelson say?

Great battle there by Beckham. Patented flare to RF. Up to .225. "White Sox ran wild on the basepaths last year and were terrible and it even got silly at times." LOL. Ozzieball, trying to spark the offense.

29 K's for Morel. He's probably starting to press even more knowing that Ventura said both him and Beckham need to start producing soon.

Replace DeAza against LHPer's, that's it. He came into the game right around 800 OPS overall, that's great for him. But 3/27 against LHP isn't. Then when you add that to Dunn, AJ's struggles the last couple of years against LHP, it turns into a big problem in our line-up turning over consistently.

Not easy to hit an opposite field homer at Comerica, especially at night. Avila's the envy of every team that needs a catcher in the majors. 2nd homer in 41 innings of work surrendered by Peavy. Tigers' announcers accusing the White Sox of dirtying up the baseballs (I've never seen such dark baseballs, says Avila)....returning to the comments about the batter's box being a foot off against Cabrera. That's it. We've solved the problem. The White Sox/Chicago have a reputation for the dirtiest/darkest baseballs in the game. Maybe we should try to whiten/shine/buff them, lol. Because that hurts our offense as much as it helps the pitchers. Probably orders from Don Cooper, haha.

Lillibridge has to start playing more for DeAza and they've got to bring up Dan Johnson or just about anyone ELSE from Charlotte not named Ozzie Martinez to replace Escobar. Even Tyler Kuhn would be an improvement.

That's two balls that would have been homers in Chicago, one by Rios and one by Ramirez. Sigh. Just loud outs at Comerica.

Let's hope the main comment after this game is that we didn't waste another great Jake Peavy performance. Who'd have thought 6 weeks ago that he would be the most interesting pitcher to watch in our starting rotation in 2012? Gordon Beckham's statistically better this year than 2011, 600 OPS now. Viciedo at 612. Morel mired at 439. How soon in May is it acceptable to worry about Alexei Ramirez? Never would have thought I'd be worrying about the contracts of Danks and Ramirez MORE than Dunn. Still not more than Rios, though. (Although at least Alexei finally showed some power with his earlier out, 479 OPS out of him so far is pretty hard to believe.)

Would have been a homer at USCF for Alexei Ramirez, lol. Of course, we can't manage to hit balls like that in Chicago. The crazy thing is that all the teams in the AL Central have winning or better records on the road than at home, especially the Indians. The Tigers, Indians, Sox and Royals all fit this pattern. The Twins are bad at both home and on the road.

QUOTE (Jake @ May 4, 2012 -> 06:43 PM) Why does everything that goes wrong have to be somebody's fault? Because drafting Sale high in the first round with his mechanics and frame and thinking he was going to be more than an elite reliever was obvious to most of this board and surely to scouts and front offices all around MLB. Other than that, there's nothing and nobody else to blame besides God, anatomy/physiology and physics. Continued bad luck for this organization going back for 3+ years, if you believe in that.

It worked, but I still want Brent Morel to come up in that situation and feel confident that he can hit a double or homer rather than thinking the better move is to give himself up...or, likewise, for Ventura thinking it's better to sacrifice him than have him K or hit into a DP.

It's pretty clear we're heading directly into 1998 and 1999 again with the White Sox, with Dunn being our version of Albert Belle, Konerko as Thomas and nothing resembling a young C-Lee, Ordonez or Durham on the horizon. Not even a Crede or Rowand. Without Sale, I can't even say our pitching staff is stronger overall than the 2000 version. Pitchers should learn not to hang sliders inside against Dayan. Note to Ventura...tying the game against DET on the road with the "bunt approach" there isn't going to win any games for us. It just puts pressure on Beckham.

QUOTE (fathom @ May 4, 2012 -> 06:23 PM) Astros farm system blows ours away now And they're outdrawing us by 2,900 per game. The fans there seem more genuinely excited about that team of unknowns (see the Mets series this week) than Sox fans do about theirs. Despite having arguably a worse team, the Cubs might end up nearly doubling our attendance this season.

With the way everything else is going in this organization, we might as well pretend without Greg Walker around that Brent Lillibridge has reverted to the 2009-2010 version, too.

Yeah, see Moore, Matt. Too bad we gave Danks $65 million. That makes even LESS sense now with Sale unlikely to be a member of the starting rotation again. Too bad you don't burn first round draft picks on relievers. We've done that twice now with both Sale and Royce Ring. It's like taking a punter or place kicker in the first round of the NFL draft.

So we're going to build Chris Sale into an elite, Billy Wagner-esque closer on a rebuilding team that will need that final piece the least? Except for Mitchell in AA, with the Sale news, our future might be about as bleak as the Astros. The main two things most of us were looking forward to were Sale pitching every 5 days and Viciedo getting a full season of AB's.

Probably because everybody is afraid to suggest Williams, Jr., be released or sent to W-S...and/or because most of the front office and scouts aren't THAT high on either one of those guys.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 4, 2012 -> 02:13 PM) It's quite hard to get Montero from the Yankees these days. I would probably be convinced by one of their "ranked" guys, Banuelos, Betances, Sanchez, or Williams. I wouldn't make the deal if I wasn't getting something legit back. LOL. Kind of doubt Ramos is available from the Nationals, too. Just throwing out a couple of names as reference points. And hopefully the Sox pitchers don't forget Montero, because he hit some of the hardest shots in that series for the M's, including the homer to straightaway CF. I meant grabbing a future starting catcher with that kind of cache.

But what kind of prospect are you going to legitimately get from the Yankees for Matt Thornton? Not one of their Top 3 prospects. Maybe 6-10? If it was in 2010, when his contract was more typical of a set-up guy, I could see us getting something really nice, but not so much now because of his age, salary and failures in 2011. Probably nothing like Wilson Ramos or Montero, which is what we really need. This would be our wish list, theoretically. 4. Gary Sanchez, c 5. Mason Williams, of 6. Dante Bichette, 3b 7. Ravel Santana, of 8. Austin Romine, c 9. J.R. Murphy, c/3b 10. Slade Heathcott, of

Mitchell 3 for his last 18 (.167) with "just" two doubles.

I'm sure DJ will probably call Young a "knucklehead," not sure how much stronger their comments will be. Depending on his mood and flow of the game, Farmer MIGHT be willing to go a bit more political/controversial, but not really DJ's thing to criticize players as much as Ed. He'll chime in after Farmer has said something negative, but he usually doesn't initiate criticism as much as Farmer does.

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20...lb&c_id=mlb I think it's a little bit too gimmicky and marketing-centric. For example, the team that won the World Baseball Classic would play against the American All-Star team in July...or the Japanese professional league champion team or an All-Star team from Japan or Korea would face the American team.... Venezuelan or Dominican teams versus each other....4 game "playoff" tournament in the middle of the year, etc. Of course, we already have the WBC, but that's always in the preseason and doesn't have full participation...and the Olympics, but that's different, too. Maybe you could have a six team tourney (US, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Cuba, Japan and Korea) and seed the teams 1-6 with the top two teams getting byes? Plus, you'd have to go back to the alternate-year home field advantage for the World Series, although I guess that wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to occur.