caulfield12

By the way, Dave Wills has really become a very good broadcaster. It's a pleasure to listen to him, because he knows the Sox so well. He was making a remark about the lack of ability for the White Sox to deal with pitchers (like Davis b4) they're seeing for the first time, soft-tossers and junkballers, etc., since the mid 90's. Beckham really seems perfectly suited for 2B. Now just get your OPS up to 750 Gordon.

How many games has Pierre been thrown out bunting? Seems like his success rate has been about 10-15% at best. Rios still completely locked in...the antithesis of Peavy.

http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/gameday...indaaa_chraaa_1 Former Sox 1B Myrow takes Hudson deep for a 2 run homer in the first, but still early. http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/milb/st...ox&did=milb Brandon Short out of the line-up. Justin Greene leading off for one of the first times of the season...please promote him, Buddy For Whom the Bell Tolls. Leesman starting.

Twins score six to blow open game with the Rangers, now 8-2. Well, the positive of that is that the Rangers will become more and more desperate to trade with someone in the next 2 months.

Yeah, give me a 10 game stretch. Like the team, Beckham seems like he's coming out of it, then he'll go into a funk and disappear again. A low 500's OPS isn't going to get it done, obviously, unless you're Chris Getz and that's your MLB ceiling. We just need to figure out a way back to .500, we've been stalled between 5-8 games under now seemingly for weeks. Of course, playing TB and Texas, it's not so easy to reel off 4 or 5 victories in a row, but we're pretty lucky to get the Rays when they're struggling like they are now.

Jordan Danks 2/2 in K'ing tonight

Is Thornton's fastball velocity down quite a bit? He always used to be 96-97, now he's at 93-94-95. Wonder if it's the arm/shoulder/wear & tear?

It will be interesting. Do you go with Thornton or Putz against Jaso, who's a switch hitter. I'd probably go with Thornton and then bring in Putz against Longoria. On second thought, with Pena lurking, I'd just take my chances with Matty. I don't like Pena coming up against Putz at all, just has a bad vibe/feeling to it.

QUOTE (maggsmaggs @ May 27, 2010 -> 10:09 PM) I am pretty sure we have the worst farm system in baseball now. When out of your so-called top six prospects: Hudson, Mitchell, Flowers, Danks, Morel and Viciedo (since there is a clear drop after those six coming into the year) one is having a great year, two solid years, two bad years and one out of the year, you system is going to decrease in the rankings. Add in the s*** we have minus those guys and it's bad. I am not even excited about Hudson or Viciedo because I just view them as White Sox prospects who will come up the majors and suck. Then, either toil in the minors or get traded. Thompson might end up being a bust or far better than all of those names (combined). Escobar has a good chance to be a quality player, with some decent punch and "plus" defense at SS. Nathan Jones and Santos Rodriguez have intriguing arms. I've enjoyed following Short, Gilmore, Greene, etc., at W-S this year. I think we're somewhere between 23-27th, in all honesty.

Trayce Thompson 2/4 with 2 doubles, KAN pulls it out 3-2. .237 BA now, 1 K.

Flowers, Retherford and Danks all struggling mightily. If we didn't have Hudson, Viciedo, Thompson, Morel and Mitchell recovering, we'd be really depressed. Maurice Gartrell continues to fly under the radar, 3/1/2/4 tonight, almost back to 800 OPS. Ozzie Lewis with W-S is another player who's opening a few eyes with his results.

We need to take down the picture from the top of the site ASAP. The Cuban Miscue.

I would rather go to a Hall and Oates Rays' summer concert series than watch our offense.

Why do our veteran players make so many idiotic decisions? Why does Mark Teahen suck so bad and try to guess pitch/location every time up there....how can you strike out 125 times per season, play horrible defense, not hit 10 homers and get a contract extension at a corner INF spot?

How the hell is TB 19-5 on the road and only 3 games over .500 (with all the speed and athleticism on that team) playing in a park that's seemingly built for them? I guess it's like explaining what happened to our USCF home field advantage in 2009 and 2010.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=5227063

QUOTE (fathom @ May 27, 2010 -> 03:59 PM) I'm looking forward to a clubhouse led by guys like Peavy/Beckham/Rios/Thornton. I think things will improve greatly. The tide has finally shifted from Dye/Thome/Konerko/Buehrle/Crede/Rowand/AJ.... The question is whether players like Rios (seemingly Jon Garland's twin personality-wise), Quentin, Ramirez...your most talented players, what kind of leadership do you get out of them, if anything? Danks would be one I'd look to emerging in this area big-time, Floyd, not so much. Teahen's a very good clubhouse guy, but how can you lead anyone if you basically suck as a player? That's why the personalities of Flowers, Viciedo and Hudson will be critically important to their being "accepted" or rejected by the veterans...particularly Tyler and the pitching staff.

QUOTE (Thunderbolt @ May 27, 2010 -> 03:57 PM) The most telling example of clubhouse discord to me was the fallout behind the Getz comments coupled with Dye's obvious discomfort with having Rios on the team. Something was at work behind the scenes between the veterans and the younger core. Forgot about Getz and Fields. Of course, you can argue neither of these guys were that great to begin with, especially Getz, but Fields....let's hope Beckham's 2009 doesn't equal Fields in 2007 and we never see the same results out of Gordo again. That's almost too devastating to comprehend....Gonzales wrote how one scout said he'd be surprised if the league didn't figure out Beckham in 2010, and he was pretty much right on the money. OTOH, if you said the same thing about the top five rookies every year repeating their succcess (dealing with league-wide adjustments, especially hitters), you'd be right at least 50-75% of the time on those sophomore slumps. Same thing happened with Ramirez and Quentin, although he wasn't a rookie in 2008, he wasn't so far removed from being a rookie, either.

QUOTE (iamshack @ May 27, 2010 -> 03:51 PM) And OCab calls up to the official scorer to complain about errors and Torii Hunter comes out every year and says that white players shouldn't be wearing Jackie Robinson's number on Jackie Robinson day. Neither of these guys are infallible either. I just think that baseball is like any other industry or collection of professionals. Everyone has some people they like and some people they don't particularly care for. My feeling is some people think Ozzie is a loud mouth and others think he is freaking hilarious and would be a joy to play for. Just depends on what you enjoy about a leader. Like not everyone loves playing for LaRussa or Scioscia, for example. Two managers definitely known as being among the top tier in the game, along with Maddon (Scioscia's protege), Torre, Leyland, Gardenhire, etc. Dave Martinez is a name that is mentioned quite frequently....and he has that Angels/Rays mentality already ingrained, which seems a good fit for the current roster composition of our ballclub and it's strategic approach. But I agree with FATHOM, it really kind of stuck out, usually Gonzales is pretty "even-keeled" and it almost seemed like it was something put out there (a floating bullet point in the long list of ammunition against OG from KW or Hahn?) for some unknown reason, but it's definitely not insignificant, it's quite an important admission from our best beat writer.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ May 27, 2010 -> 03:41 PM) Not at all. Oh, chalk another player onto my long list of players with potential reasons for grief: Orlando Cabrera Nick Swisher Brandon McCarthy (a good kid) Sean Tracey (who is an amazingly good guy) Ryan Sweeney Brian Anderson Jermaine Dye That is a decent list of players. Some might have BS reasons for being upset but regardless it is a list of guys. Once Jenks is gone, I think we will see him on the list as well. It is no secret that Jenks has had some heat with Sox management (including Kenny). It's also interesting to see articles now starting to come out about how the team (both in the line-up defensively and his clubhouse presence) misses Uribe so much. He was the glue that held everything together, and the bridge between the Hispanic cliques and all the other players on the team. One of Buehrle's best friends, too. Jon Rauch (July 2004 trade, mostly a beef with KW, but I think Ozzie was involved here, too) Jayson Nix (mystifying lack of playing time compared to last year) Magglio Ordonez Carlos Lee (???) Miguel Olivo It is a bit curious that before Omar Vizquel, we haven't had much luck at all bringing in Venezuelan players, like, say, Abreu....and I would hardly classify Omar Vizquel as a huge "get" as a FA!!!

ESPN recently polled 100 MLB players about various topics. Among them: the last manager they would choose to play for. I was a little surprised to see that Ozzie Guillen was rated worst, getting 30% of the votes! What's your take on how the Sox players feel about Ozzie and could he be a factor in free agents going elsewhere? -- John M.; Vienna, Austria I would look to the annual Sports Illustrated survey, which samples more major league players. In the past few years, I had three agents grumble to me about the way their clients were treated by Ozzie. I asked them to go on the record with their thoughts. All three declined. One agent still represented a few players in the organization and feared retribution. As the roster gradually changes, it will be interesting to see which free agents elect to sign here or go elsewhere after being courted by the Sox. But free agents usually make their decisions based on money and opportunity. Torii Hunter made his decision based largely on money, and I don't blame him for that. mark gonzales/tribune.com

Ginger, hallucinogenics are bad for your health. Not even the CLE bullpen can wake up our slumbering offense. Agreed with previous sentiments, this game seemed a big turning point to get to 5 games under .500 and sort of sniffing getting back into it with Minnesota facing the Yankees, the one team in baseball they always struggle to beat (with the exception of the last game they played which broke the string).

Mike Mussina will/should get into the Hall of Fame, he's another pitcher that comes to mind in the "very good" but not "great" for most of his career category. And Pettitte, because of his time spent with the Yankees, will get stronger consider for the HOF than Mark Buehrle, 100%. I know many will argue that point, though (about Mussina), especially those who saw him pitch in the first half of his career with some so-so Baltimore teams. When I think back about great pitching though, I think of Dwight Gooden in his rookie year or Saberhagen every other year in the 80's. Maybe Verlander and Greinke, the way they pitched last season. I think Buehrle, at most, ends up around 225. But IMO 175-200 is just as likely.

LOL, didn't realize until I heard this from the Indians' announcers, yesterday's loss was the 2nd worst in the history of interleague baseball.

Kotsay=1 for 17 with RISP We are better with RISP than the Orioles, 29th in MLB. Kotsay now 2 for 18, .111, will have to call him out every time, haha.