caulfield12

Hangs the two strike breaking ball. I guess it's simply a matter of the baseball gods getting you back for beating Pineda and King Felix. Can't believe he's already thrown 110 pitches in 6 innings. The John Danks special. Bullpen better hold 'em. Ozzie, don't throw Harrell out there please, just because we're trailing now.

QUOTE (Real @ Jun 8, 2011 -> 08:31 PM) here we go gavin doesn't throw his curveball enough, i'll say that right now, he hasn't thrown it much all year from the starts i've seen him pitch i could be completely wrong but it just seems he throws the curve less and less year after year He has been relying more on his slider tonight. Usually he doesn't have both breaking pitches going, it's one or the other that's effective. Seems he only has that knockout curveball once every 3-4 starts.

27 consecutive innings without a run scored there for Gavin against the M's, streak now broken. Too easy on that SB. C'mon, Gavin. You gotta use the slide step.

Vargas must have really good movement and command, because almost every pitch he throws is between 79-88 MPH. C'mon, some offense here would be nice. Don't make Floyd pitch the whole game on pins and needles.

Can't walk Figgins there. Ichiro is still dangerous with runners on base.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Jun 8, 2011 -> 07:55 PM) Dan Uggla? Dice-K Matsuzaka, considering he might never pitch again. Hope there's a lot of insurance on that deal.

QUOTE (forrestg @ Jun 8, 2011 -> 07:46 PM) one fo the players that this site members coveted but KW never pulled the trigger on a deal was Chone Figgins. Just noticed he's hitting .185 before his last at bat. I guess that other coveted players also have bad seasons. I guess we're lucky in one sense. From everything you read, Chone Figgins on a bad team or when he's not playing well is a borderline disaster. Figgins was never a good sign at that age AND for that many seasons. Speed players in their 30's almost never work out with long-term deals. Rios might be apathetic (appearing, seemingly), but Dunn, Peavy and Teahen are all pretty well-liked in the clubhouse...at least there's that. I might be tempted because of extra year of commitment we'd be ridding ourselves of, but I still wouldn't take Figgins for Rios straight up, Silva for Bradley. Is the White Sox crowd as disinterested in this pitcher's battle than the board is? Pretty interesting lack of activity considering we're the closest we've been to first place since the second week of the season. With Ichiro seemingly aging before our eyes and Smoak struggling recently, there's not much to get excited about for fans of either team. Just watching Quentin and Konerko hit.

QUOTE (whitesoxbrian @ Jun 8, 2011 -> 07:39 PM) Going by expectations, production, and money, is Figgins the worse player in baseball, or is Dunn? Rios and Teahen.

Be careful. Ryan's pretty dangerous.

Do we really have to put up with Alex Rios for 3 1/2 more years? I'd much rather have Lillibridge in CF and Dunn in the line-up. 75-80% more confident that Dunn will eventually figure it out than Rios. Interesting in all the JR quotes that he's said very little about Rios or Peavy.

Their "high water" mark of the season since 7-4 and that ugly 4-18 stretch of baseball (filled with numerous bullpen and defensive meltdowns) to follow...now "only" 5 1/2 games back. We had an even bigger margin at the 2003 All-Star Break.

http://highschool.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1229040 The comments on Walker will add more fuel to the fire for detractors of the Sox scouting department. But who knows, I really liked the Mitchell draft pick and it's not like the White Sox have any control over freak injuries like that happening.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jun 7, 2011 -> 08:59 AM) I miss stuff like that, but I sort of understand it. I think that's the hope of the organization. Honestly, I don't mind this draft philosophy. Draft athletes who project to CF (or SS, though they haven't done that yet) who can grow into their bodies. If they grow so big and get good enough offensively, you can switch positions. If you draft a 1B at 47 overall, you better know that dude is either going to hit 30 homers a year or is going to rise quickly. Having multiple tools doesn't hurt. Thought I read he had a good arm too. Seems to me Walker at the moment is a 20/40 Bat 20/35 Power 75/80 Speed 40/80 Field 60/80 Arm The two that bug me the most are the bat and power. Those, especially the bat, are the most easily coached and able to go above the initial scouting report. If they can develop him into a 50 bat with a decent eye at the plate, then the rest is golden. The stealing will translate over time and the fielding and arm will get better through mere repetition. Hope and pray that the worst case scenario is Carlos Gomez. At least then, if he's still broadcasting (and alive, quite frankly), Hawk will be able to gush about how big of a Twins kills Keenyn Walker in. http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/players/7562 Can we starting getting some credit for developing this guy? Typical "big athlete" who never really profiled as a true SS and ended up getting moved all over the field. His power was questionable for a corner infielder or outfielder. Seems like he's finally found a home at age 29.

On the plus side, they're something like 12-1 or 13-1 against the M's at USCF since 2008. That sub .500 stat is a little bit misleading, we've beaten up the Mariners pretty good and they're now just 2 games over that mark and were below .500 when we played them in Seattle at the start of the West Coast road trip.

Didn't work so well with Royce Ring and Aaron Poreda.

Quentin's going to have a 50+ double season. Thank god we didn't let him go or we'd have no offense this year to go with Paulie and Alexei. I'm calling Greg out for jinxing Santos. LOL. He never jinxed Jenks when he blew games against SEA or various critical Twins/Sox games in 2008, 2009 and 2010.

It's pretty amazing with that offense that they've won 15/20 and Ichiro has been hitting around .170 during that time. Pineda and Hernandez help, but their bullpen over the last 5 seasons hasn't been able to protect that many leads on a consistent basis.

Well, at least Chicago can be proud of contributing 5 or 6 out of the worst ten contracts in baseball. Can't believe I was almost rooting for Dunn to strike out...instead of hitting into a DP. Now an error. He's falling into Cory Snyder/Steve Sax/Jaime Navarro territory.

I don't care much one way or the other anymore about Peavy, but at least he wants to win. Same with Pierre and AJ. I do wish we'd see a little more of this same sense of pride out of Rios, Dunn and Teahen. They're all getting paid multi-millions of dollars to be professionals, and yet they don't SEEM to care all that much about not being in shape or being prepared for the season. Same thing with Jenks the last couple of seasons with the Sox. At least Peavy and Jenks don't "shrink" from the big moment and trying to get it done. For Bobby, maybe he's learning a dose of humility after being able to get by on talent alone for the first half of his big league career. Starting to wonder if maybe it's NOT a coincidence how often players like Orlando Cabrera and Juan Uribe end up on winning teams. KW always has this philosophy that just assembling talent (Edwin Jackson also comes to mind) and throwing it together will magically work and create chemistry (by winning, or winning, by assembling a roster of talented individuals) and it has rarely worked out that way for us.

QUOTE (kitekrazy @ Jun 6, 2011 -> 02:02 AM) Is it that difficult for a NL hitter to transition to the AL? Adrian Gonzalez says "not so much"

At least Beckham battled him and helped to elevate his pitch count. If we just had decent seasons from Rios, Dunn and Thornton, we'd be running away from the division. Then again, who could have expected Lillibridge to far outhomer Dunn and hit higher than him in the line-up? But the even bigger joke is Rios with the mid 500's OPS in the heart of the order. I'd almost rather have Pierre there than Rios.

Has anyone seen "Win/Win," the Paul Giamatti movie where the adopts the champion wrestler?

For the first 7-8 years of his career, Thomas and Griffey, Jr., were arguably the biggest stars. Piazza was pretty high up there, too. Before them, you had Puckett/Gwynn/Ripken/Boggs, that generation of players. Griffey was definitely #1 to me, and then the injuries hit both guys. And, not coincidentally, that's the same time that Sosa/McGwire had their historic 1998 season and Bonds broke the HR record not long afterwards. The fact that Thomas didn't get to play in that 1994 post-season really hurt, too, in terms of national exposure in his prime. If you look at all those huge homer guys from 1998-2006, how many of them have emerged as completely clean? Thome...Thomas, and Griffey, and that's about it.

X-Men: First Class was quite a bit better than I'd expected. Thought McAvoy and Fassbender were excellent in their respective roles, and it's always easy to hate Kevin Bacon. To me, the Pirates of the Caribbean movie has been the most disappointing so far, with the Hangover 2 a close second. I guess it just depends on your perspective...if you come into it never having seen the original, it's not bad. It's one of those movies where the expectations lead to the usual disappointment, although it wasn't horrible and nothing like the critics have claimed. The movies I really want to see now are The Tree of Life, Midnight in Paris and Bridesmaids. Here in the Philippines, they're still showing the awful "Dylan Dog" so it's that or Kung Fu Panda 2 if I want to watch an English language movie in the theatres.

QUOTE (JoeCoolMan24 @ Jun 1, 2011 -> 02:44 AM) http://www.fangraphs.com/pitchfx.aspx?play...&position=P His velos have stayed the same basically. His cutter has gained a few MPH, but everything else is pretty much the same. However, this year he is throwing his fastball 6% less than career avg, his cutter slightly less, his changeup 9% more than any other year, and his slider almost 5x as much. AJ must call a better game than he ex-battery mates. If AJ has anything to do with turning things around with Humber this year, he's pretty much worth his salary. Although I'm guessing most would prefer to give credit to Don Cooper. Also, does anyone believe that Tyler Flowers would have had the same effect? I guess we'll never know. But you can be pretty sure that KW wasn't willing to risk it in an "All In" year, so to speak. On that subject, has anyone seen quotes from Humber about who he credits for his turnaround? Just having the confidence of being presented the opportunity to have a regular slot in a rotation? He's probably never going to put up a 725 OPS again, but AJ has been a lot better recently. It took until last year, when he was with the Kansas City Royals, for Humber to believe again. ‘‘I think I turned a corner last year with Kansas City,’’ Humber said. ‘‘They gave me a chance. I felt comfortable. It’s about relaxing. Sometimes I put too much pressure on myself. It’s relaxing and letting things work for you. I don’t think I shook off A.J. [Pierzynski] more than once or twice.’’ Pierzynski said Humber, whom the Sox claimed from the Oakland Athletics in January, made it easy. ‘‘He was great,’’ Pierzynski said. ‘‘The way the game ended Friday [a ninth-inning loss] especially, he just shut them down. He was the story of the game.’’ Toni Ginetti, Chicago Sun-Times