caulfield12

LOL at Kotsay. Well, hopefully that won't feel the same way it did after Andruw Jones' homer late Sunday to put us down by just 1.

Quentin injured again a bit by a late slide. Well, they have some fight in them, and aren't completely giving up. There's that at least.

Yay! Bobby Jenks is in the dugout. Maybe he was giving AJ and Ozzie helpful advice about pitch selection that inning. Glad he's earning his $7.5 million somehow.

Congrats on your 30th, Paulie. At least you're not laying down and dying like a dog in August. You've earned yourself a nice contract for 2011 from someone.

Well, I hope Ozzie and AJ get into a fight over the pitch selection that inning. Maybe that will light a fire under this team, because it's certainly not going to be the added motivation of playing the Twins.

Why speed up Thome's bat and call a cutter when Danks throws a 91-94 harder version??? STUPID STUPID STUPID AJ. Goodbye, I think we just need to start over next year with a new catcher.

I'm just glad Game 163 was not in Minnesota in 2008. That's all I will say. Their pitchers are getting us out with breaking balls. The Twins have done most of their damage against fastballs. Yet we continue to forget about the scouting report of everyone in the AL that Minnesota is a fastball-hitting team.

Ozzie saw better energy and enthusiasm out of his team today compared to Sunday. Great!!!

Great, Harrelson will blame the entire series on the missed strike call to Orlando Hudson, basically... UGH.

Why do you play Mauer like he's a pull hitter when even the Twins' personnel are actively questioning the White Sox positioning?

Great 2 homers in a week for Hudson. Thigh high, center cut. Hanging change-up. Almost catching up Hudson to Mauer in the homer totals.

What is the reason Ozzie gave for starting Kotsay over Teahen again? FREE VLADIMIR GUERRERO.

Not exactly setting the tone early here. Hmmm...

Or because the Twins choked against the Royals when they could have easily put us down for the count.

I'm sure he mostly meant the last decade before the new stadium and the Mauer mega-contract. They had to shed the salaries of Torii Hunter/Santana and a couple of seasons ago there was a lot of concern about how they could possibly keep Morneau/Mauer in the fold, along with Joe Nathan. It wasn't so long ago their answers were Livan Hernandez, Mike Lamb and Adam Everett. The days of filling in the final 2-3 roster spots with washed up veterans seem to be behind the Twins for now. Look at this way....the Twins have made very very few errors with personnel. David Ortiz, although they simply couldn't get him in shape and working with their hitting system, their one notable failure. Kyle Lohse has ended up doing well outside MINN, although you could say the same thing for Kip Wells, Josh Fogg, Jon Garland, Clayton Richard and Daniel Hudson when they're all in the NL. They really had patience with Young, and I think they would have traded him away the last two off-seasons had Smith been able to find anything bordering on value for Delmon based on his actual ability. I'm still happy they don't have Garza, but we should have drafted Garza anyway, we went before the Twins that year. The Santana trade would have set back most organizations 2-3 years and the Twins didn't miss a beat, competing the last 3 years, and very narrowly taking down the Sox one year before they were expected to be competitive for the ALCD again.

QUOTE (elrockinMT @ Aug 17, 2010 -> 12:55 PM) We should place our own team on a pedestal for a change Gordon Beckham was placed on the biggest pedestal that I can remember last year. The White Sox were walking on water after 2008, and almost nobody was disappointed they fizzled in the playoffs. But you have to do SOMETHING to earn that pedestal head-to-head against your biggest rival, instead of wetting the bed.

With Thome, the best theory I've heard (I think it was Fathom's) was that it was going to be very difficult for Thome to come back as one of the lowest paid members of the team after having been the second or third highest player on the team in 2010. Although I don't know if you'll ever come close to hearing Thome say that was an issue, the guy's made so much money in his career, and he doesn't seem like the type to fritter it away, either. No doubt, in some clubhouses, this would be a huge deal for a veteran to be asked to take a $10 million PLUS paycut and still come back to the same team. I'm not sure how many times that has actually happened in modern baseball history, actually. Perhaps that was Ozzie's thinking process, that it would be sad to see a Hall of Famer who meant so much to the Sox in a diminished role where he'd only get 125-150 at-bats or having to release Thome like the Mariners ended up doing with Griffey as it tore their clubhouse apart. Maybe KW and Ozzie feared the repercussions with the veteran leaders of the team (Buehrle, AJ, Konerko) if they brought back Thome/Dye only to cut them lose. Who knows? And part of that wasn't even KW's fault, he inherited a huge contract from the Phillies and wouldn't have dreamed of taking it on without the subsidy to go with it.

QUOTE (Cali @ Aug 17, 2010 -> 01:31 PM) For comparison sake, what's the first half record? From 2000-2011, the White Sox are something like 5 games over .500 against the Twins in the first half. 2000=3-3 2001=2-11 (oops!) 2002=2-2 2003=7-5 2004=7-3 2005=4-1 2006=5-2 2007=5-7/4-2 (interesting, Ozzie's worst team actually played .500 ball against MINN this season) 2008=7-4/1-6 2009=5-4/1-8 2010=2-3/2-5 OVERALL=49-45 Take out that 2-11 in the disastrous 2001 campaign (14-29 start), it's 47-34. Huge, huge difference on a consistent basis.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Aug 17, 2010 -> 01:03 PM) The Twins have won 2 divisional titles, 2006 and 2009. Other than that, I have no idea. It seems as though the Sox have no sense of urgency until it's either forced upon them or it's too late. In regards to the Sox actually realizing that their backs were up against the wall and they were about to be put into a position of potential elimination, I can only think of 3 memories in my history as a Sox fan that the team, in some fashion, actually responded. In chronological order... 1) (Rally) Crede walk-off homer against Cleveland. 2) Pierzynski's strikeout in game 2 of the ALCS 3) Game 163 (and really, that was 3 guys who did most of the dirty work in Thome, Griffey, and Danks). You can argue they did it in game 162 in 2008 too, but they were playing a Tigers team that ultimately finished in last place, so it wasn't stepping up against good competition, it was simply beating a bad team. You could probably add the Iguchi homer off Wells and the El Duque bases loaded situation that Marte brought on himself... Who did the White Sox beat that Sunday? I think it was the Indians, yes? I'm pretty sure the Twins were playing the Royals that final weekend.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Aug 17, 2010 -> 09:02 AM) Older players generally break down faster than younger players do, and it's something that's been highlighted since the banishment of all amphetamines. I don't think Jermaine Dye completely lost his ability to hit a fastball at the end of last season. I think he was simply worn down from the everyday grind of playing baseball for 5 months. It's something Ozzie thought he could help prevent by rotating his DHs, but it hasn't worked to this point, and the pitching has begun to fall off the tracks recently too. So here we have another theory. That Ozzie overplays the veterans and doesn't give them enough rest...and then he doesn't trust the younger/fresher/inexperienced players in the heat of a pennant race (although I've been surprised how quickly he's gone to Sale in critical situations, it perhaps more than anything is an indication of his lack of confidence in Pena and Linebrink). Still, Gardenhire is accused of the same thing, of overplaying Nick Punto year after year when his offensive numbers are abysmal. Punto is Minnesota's version of Mark Kotsay, especially when he's playing 3B and putting up those OPS numbers.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Aug 17, 2010 -> 08:57 AM) In 2000, Ron Schueler threw together a patchwork starting rotation that stayed healthy and performed well for half a season, and began to fall apart in the second half. Meanwhile, the offense gelled early and it stayed relatively strong throughout the season. And Cleveland's rotation fell apart, as they had 13 guys start atleast 2 games for them (including Jamie Navarro, Bobby Witt, and Jason Bere). We started Ginter, Garland, Barcelo, Beirne, Lowe, I remember that Eldred's hot start was one of the main reasons we got off so well in the middle months of that summer after the late April fight with the Tigers that seemed to turn everything around. Sirotka, Baldwin and Parque would all see their Sox careers fall apart not so long after that season, in various ways. Buehrle was one of the few bright spots. Fogg, too. I remember we kept up Bradford and Josh Paul for the playoffs, those were two pretty controversial moves by Manuel that backfired.

Actually, I would love to hear (and it will never, even happen, I'm sure, maybe Cowley would try) Thome give his honest appraisal of why...from observing both clubhouses, as well as taking what Crede, Jon Rauch (obviously he has axe to grind against Ozzie) and Orlando Cabrera had to say. Guerrier might be able to provide some insight about the difference between coming up as a pitcher in the Sox minor league system but having found a home in Minnesota with Anderson as his pitching coach. How are the philosophies different between the two organizations? There HAS to be some type of insight to be gleaned from that...it's one of those "off the record" interviews we'll never be privy to, and I don't think Thome would ever disrespect the White Sox directly by providing fuel to the fire even when he has every right to feel vindicated (by his performance in 2010) the way we pushed him out the door. Seems to be the type of article Phil Rogers might write.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Aug 17, 2010 -> 08:46 AM) The 2004 White Sox also had Freddy Garcia for the second half and Jose Contreras from August on. Garcia wasn't anything special and Contreras was bad, however, Loaiza had put up an ERA of 6.04 in his final 11 starts with the Sox, and wound up pitching to the tune of about an ERA of 8.50 with the Yankees. They'd also reacquired Carl Everett, Rowand and Uribe had great years, Lee had his best season as a member of the Sox, Konerko put together a great, full season for the first time in his career, Gload was great...I won't argue that they weren't banged up or anything to nature, just that, even without Thomas or Ordonez, they still weren't a bad team. The 2007 White Sox may have also played their best baseball in September, but they also played their worst baseball in August. During that time frame, they went 9-20. And, just because they were a bad team doesn't mean you can automatically discount their contribution to the White Sox ineptitude during the second half of seasons over the past 6 years. If you can do that, then I can discount the 2005 White Sox second half record simply because they were a good team. Looking further into the 2005 season, the Sox were a worse team in the second half than they were in the first half by 110 points (57-29 for a .663, 42-34 for a .553). Perhaps they played over their head in the first half, but I'd also say that they played worse than their talent (or productivity) level in the second half. Again, just because they were a good team doesn't mean we can suddenly ignore that they were not nearly as good as they were early on. Throughout Ozzie Guillen's tenure as manager, his teams have historically performed worse in the second half than they did in the first half. There is no evidence to the contrary. Going way back to 2000, that season 100% defined slipping and crawling into the playoffs and peaking early. So that's the question, why? What is it that allows other teams, usually the Twins, to peak in the last two months? (Yes, I know, we "peaked" the last week of 2005 and into the playoffs, we "peaked" for 3 days in late September, 2008).

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 17, 2010 -> 08:37 AM) Gimme a break on that one. The 2004 Sox losing Thomas and Ordonez is like the 2010 Twins losing Mauer and Morneau. The Sox might have had a shot to survive one of those 2...they had other guys, Lee and Konerko in the lineup who could pick up some of the slack, but there's zero teams in baseball where losing their 2 best players wouldn't murder them. Yankees losing ARod and Tex? Rays losing Longoria and Price? Hamilton and Guerrero for the Rangers? Pujols and Holliday? Votto and (I guess) Phillips? The White Sox were without Quentin, Crede, Contreras and Linebrink in 2008. They're without Peavy, now. The Twins have been without Morneau for 2 years now...not to mention Nathan. Mauer's been hurt all season long, basically.

I'm not talking about the specific OVERALL won/loss record anymore. How can we consistently play the Twins better, year after year, in the first half of the season, then collapse against them in the second half? 2003=2-5 (including the final five in a row) 2004=2-7 2006=4-8 2007=4-2 (you can argue this is the one time when the pressure was totally off, along with 2001) 2008=1-6 2009=1-8 2010=2-5 So looking at 6/7 years, we're 16-41 against the Twins. If you include 2005 (7-6, not exactly amazing), it's 23-47. Basically over that entire time span, we're winning 1 out of every 3 games played after the Break. Yet we're five games OVER .500 before it.