caulfield12

A lot of it has to do with the durability of Sizemore, too. He was Ozzie's favorite player in baseball not so long ago. How long will the likes of Masterson, Tomlin and Alex White continue to pitch so well? How long can Chris Perez continue to pull his Houdini Act? Of course, looking at us, any fan would question Humber's success....Peavy's durability and what the heck's going on with Gordon Beckham and Matt Thornton.

Sergio "The Silencer" Santos?

If we can just go 10-9 the next 19 games against TEX/CLE/LAD and then survive another 10 game road trip to Texas, Toronto and Boston. That's the big if for now. At that point, we've finally got to beat 2/3 Detroit at home (they have a current eight game winning streak against us) AND sweep the Mariners out of USCF. Doing all that, we'd still be 2 games under .500 but with far and away the most difficult portion of the season out of the way. Then it would mostly be a battle within the AL Central itself to see who survives, like it has been every season since 2005.

QUOTE (scenario @ May 13, 2011 -> 11:45 PM) Nice outing for Lucas Harrell against the Twins AAA team. 6 innings; 1 run on 5 hits; 9K's; 1BB Just imagine how bad they are if you look at the Twins' major league offense and most of these guys ostensibly aren't even good enough to replace the guy's below the Mendoza line up there.

There's your White Sox All-Star representative. Awesome save, way to shut down the A's and not even give them a breath of life.

Santos' slider is almost as devastating as Mariano's cutter. Wow. Can't believe they didn't give him more consideration as the closer coming into ST. He's definitely earned it by now.

RH hitters now 1/26 against Santos. C'mon Alexei, you idiot. That was a ROUTINE play. Let's not f up another game against OAK, please.

Simple. Crisp thought he could make it because Thornton was going out of the wind-up. It did take a great play by AJ to notice him and jump out in front of the plate proactively. That was a gift. The way Thornton's gone, you had the feeling Jackson was going to tie it and send the game to extra innings. Then we'd probably have been using Chris Sale, which wouldn't have been likely to work out, either.

Looks like AJ hurt his hand slamming it down in celebration after the play. He's still shaking it out. CORPSEBALL STRIKES AGAIN. C'mon Sergio, it's all on you. Be the man you've been all season long.

And Conor Jackson's a dead FB hitter, too. Ozzie was really set up there by Geren. Apparently, Rod Carew's rule stealing home was to go any time the opposing pitcher went out of the wind-up. Great play by AJ there to go after him and not let him get to the plate with his hand.

Does that count as a caught stealing for AJ's percentage, LOL??? Don't think so. That has to be the dumbest baserunning since the Carlos Lee days.

Sweeney up here. Conor Jackson to PH. Bring in SANTOS now. WHAT THE HELL CRISP?????????????????????????????????

QUOTE (fathom @ May 13, 2011 -> 11:09 PM) Was Crain's pitch count high? NOPE.

We need to carry 3 catchers and just have a designed Molina brother to elminate the running game in the last 2-3 innings.

What NEW Thornton? 19 hits in 12 IP? Jesus. Yep, 93/94 instead of 96-97. I'm guessing this is indirectly related to him being overused that inning he threw almost 40 pitches.

QUOTE (fathom @ May 13, 2011 -> 11:05 PM) You just don't swing at them, as he doesn't throw them in the zone. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of Wuertz. Has he pitched that much this year? I know he was out when we faced them the first time. Around 10 IP I think.

For the record, Crisp has base hits the last two times opposing managers tried to flip him from LH to RH with lefty relievers. Wonder if Ozzie's aware. According to his tweet, he doesn't read scouting reports.

I call this potential loss on Fathom for jinxing us. LOL. Nothing to do with playing in Oakland or Thornton coming in at some point. You just have to watch to see what will happen next this year. Just when you start having faith in the team again, and think you can pick up ground on the Indians again, we flip from 8 GB to possibly 10 GB.

And so goes Beckham's season. He was up to .232 and now he's mired in the 210's. McCarthy has faced the minimum of hitters with the exception of the four run inning. On cruise control now. Thornton for the bottom of the 8th apparently.

At least Rios could have tried....but you don't want that tying run on 2nd. Kouzmanoff actually thought it wasn't quite deep enough. Guess the Humber wild pitch and McCarthy's errant pick-off throw equal themselves out now. Now the Sox offense has to wake up against a tough OAK bullpen.

There's no such thing as an easy win against Oakland for the White Sox. That series at home against the A's was the key turning point of 2011. Great K. He's piling up the strikeouts. Need the DP ball here.

Well, this game went south in a hurry. Can't blame Humber for making a bad pitch there. It's not like they're knocking him around the ballpark. Crain time. Maybe he'll get one more batter. Uh-oh...now things are really getting interesting. We'll be lucky to have a 4-3 lead at the end of this. Another game where the Sox offense shut down after getting an early lead.

One can only hope KW doesn't sign Humber to a long-term contract extension after tonight.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 13, 2011 -> 10:26 PM) This is one case where their business acumen makes thing worse for some fans. Want the teams to perfectly serve the public interest? Nationalize baseball then let taxpayers vote on the rates. Think thatll work? We could get into a political argument, but there's no point. Baseball has always been protected by the anti-trust exemption and Congress, and Congress is basically run by corporate interests, and among those elites are the owners of 30 major league baseball teams. The "average" baseball fan (with a family of 4) will never enter into their considerations, any more than Congress will care about the effects of cutbacks on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, food stamps, Head Start, WIC, etc. That's one of those things lost from the Bill Veeck era. While he could hardly balance his checkbook, one of his primary concerns was always about entertainment and the fan experience. Things have obviously changed...for both the good and bad. In many ways, we're lucky the team is still in Chicago, and once again you can give credit (or blame, for those against public funding of sports facilities) to government for that.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 13, 2011 -> 10:09 PM) We also have the 2nd most expensive average tix in the league IIRC. there's a reason the sox don't try to sell the stadium out, they've made a different and valid business decision for their franchise For box tickets, bleacher seats.....fine, we can argue. But I still think they need to lower the upper deck seat prices, do more promotions specifically for those sections and have value/discount food pricing. That makes a HUGE difference to fathers planning a family outing. In the end, all the franchises know that the new broadcast rights deal will go from something like $430 million per season to $1 billion per season after 2012. Attendance/stadium construction is becoming less and less of a driver of franchise values. I have the A's feed from DirecTV Latin America....not pink here on the computer.