caulfield12

If these 6 games don't kill us, 10 in a row at Detroit, KC and Cleveland should definitely do the trick. Thankfully, KW can't make any desperation moves with Viciedo until the last 5-10 days of July and by then it will all be academic.

The murmurings of boos are starting with Rios groundouts now. Not quite so demonstrative as with Dunn, but humorous nonetheless. Wonder if Rick Hahn is watching "Horrible Bosses" and having thoughts about taking matters into his own hands with KW and Guillen. Beckham, "Bend It Like" can work for balls hit down the lines that come back into the field of play...you might think about running.

June 8th, against Mariners. 2 homers in a 7-4 loss. Had one the previous game. So over a month of typical Carlos deepfreeze. Wow, we've had the lead for 3 innings so far is this series...progress from the Royals' games.

White Sox offense shutting down again after the 1st and sleepwalking through the middle innings. Poor Buehrle. Too bad he wasn't out on the mound yesterday with that 5-1 lead to work with.

Nothing yet on Gammons' twitter. Trout debuts@19. Trumbo walkoff. Eddie Bane drafted them and the prospects that brought Haren and he was dismissed. C'mon Rick Hahn, sign us a better scout(ing) diretor. Trout, Trumbo, Conger...etc.

Reported that he would likely be fired over the All-Star Break. I tried to find something at WEEI website but it's too early for any of their podcasts or "Full Count" broadcasts from today to be archived. Maybe Cafardo from the Boston Globe will pick up on it as well, if Gammons doesn't have a weekend column there.

Are there any other sources popping up about the Gammons/WEEI comments speculating about Guillen getting fired over the ASB? We should put it up at mlbtraderumors, lol. Or start a twitter campaign until Cowley, Rogers, Van Dyck or Gonzales actually pick up on it. What is our average with RISP and two outs? It has to be around .150-.175 over the last 2-3 weeks.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jul 9, 2011 -> 03:44 PM) First run Morel has created in a long time Too bad RUNS CREATED PER 27 AB doesn't take defense into account or he might be putting up a negative number the last 10 days. They need to have that +/- stat for baseball like they do with basketball and hockey.

Morel, your days are numbered. Typical Twins' unearned run scored against the White Sox. Two bunts that are actually executed. 2-1. And...it continues. Not a single hard-hit ball in the inning, of course.

Seems like Dunn and Rios really are waiting for next week to get serious about rallying the White Sox. Ramon Blastro strikes again with another XB hit.

He's married to Leslie Visser, I think. Good upgrade for him. He's violating the "never date or marry someone two or more better than you on the 1-10 scale rule" I think. Got rid of Thome one year too early...this year he's really struggling to stay healthy.

2 for 59 now. At least no K. Hopefully Ozzie (or whoever is manager) will leave Alexei alone in the 2 hole.

Well, started off well enough. Of course, we said the same thing yesterday after the 1st inning, too. Didn't realize the Twins were already tied with us in the loss column. Yikes! At least this time we didn't hand them them the lead right off the bat.

Cora, Walker and maybe Baines SHOULD leave with Ozzie. I'd give Baines the option to stay, just because it seems shabby to run him off, but no way ANYONE in the entire fanbase would be excited about Cora managing.

QUOTE (Stan Bahnsen @ Jul 9, 2011 -> 11:16 AM) I'm just shocked that one of our own would predict such a demise and jinx us like that. In a gamethread no less. Well, at least Ozzie hasn't blamed negativity from SoxTalk for the White Sox record against the Twins. I wonder if the WSI board is having a total meltdown about right now. It's getting harder and harder by the day, hour and minute to defend the organization. To me, the mood around here is more or less calm and resigned. Unfortunately, that seems to be the same attitude as the players and manager have. "We'll just have to work harder. We'll get it going after the break. It's still early, blah blah blah..." There's just no sense of urgency or fight visible. Except for the vow by Dunn and Rios to "put the team on their shoulders and carry the Sox in the 2nd half."

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 9, 2011 -> 10:58 AM) Rios was questionable at best. If he really was so great, he wouldn't have been let go for nothing. I loved the Peavy trade personally and it still may work out OK. Its not like Clayton Richard is going to the HOF. As for Dunn, no one could possibly see a drop of this magnitude. There were some warning signs there, but still........anyway, had KW overruled OG and said you know what, Mark Kotsay DHing isn't really a good idea, and re signed Jim Thome for peanuts, a couple of things may have happened. Maybe the Sox win with Thome and Twins without him. If he had the year he had, maybe he brings him back for 600 and doesn't go after Dunn. The bottom line is KW gets paid a ton of money to make the decisions, fans don't get squat. KW has a bloated payroll and a team that just doesn't click. Ultimately fans will love the trades and signings that work out and will not like the ones that do not, even if they thought at the time it was the right thing to do. That's life. I think its time KW and OG move on. This entire circus needs to be closed. 1) Borchard becomes a franchise player and there's no need to trade for either Thome or Swisher probably. We already had Dye to supply RF power. That would also have allowed us to hold onto Gio Gonzalez. 2) If any of our pitchers drafted around 1998-2001 had worked out (Rauch, Ginter, Wells, Fogg, Danny Wright, Barcelo, Stumm, Brian West)....then there would have been no need to trade for Javy. As it was, we already had Buehrle, Garcia, Contreras, Garland and McCarthy. Adding that sixth pitcher never made a whole lot of sense to me, because we traded Chris Young and Anderson wasn't able to get the job done. 3) If we had kept Thome for 2010, there's no doubt in my mind we would have won the division. It seems overly simplistic, but if we'd managed to develop Borchard into what Dunn actually became AND kept Chris Young in the fold, things would look very different right now. That would have avoided the entire Rios debacle as well. Whatever they do, after learning their lesson with Hudson last year, they absolutely cannot trade Viciedo as well.

And you can add Jackson to the "secondary pitches" not working list for a good 6-7 weeks. Perhaps even moreso than Gavin. The Twins always preach getting ahead in counts and throwing strikes. Our hitters are seemingly always down 0-2 or 1-2 (thinking of Dunn and Lillibridge, but almost the entire line-up recently) because they're guessing too much and getting the opposite of what they expect on the 1st and 2nd pitches). Even when down in the count, they're not adjusting their approach to just make contact. For whatever reason, our hitters don't adjust well to the game situation or count. It's a collective or group mindset that needs to be addressed SOMEHOW, by SOMEONE.

Dunn and Peavy, yes. Rios, not so much. Everyone in baseball (message board fans included) knew the pro's and con's with Rios. It was a huge financial gamble, largely caused by failure on the part of KW to competently develop a CF internally (namely, Brian Anderson). And there were lots of concerns about Peavy's delivery/mechanics, pitching in the AL and being acquired while injured. But yeah, most applauded the move because at the time we were giving up what amounted to a long reliever/5th starter, Poreda (who most had already given up on as a starter at that point), Russell and Carter. So it was a very low cost in terms of talent surrendered for a former Cy Young winner. That's a move most fanbases would get behind, as long as they weren't writing the checks personally.

Peavy is the other player who seems to "get it." Unfortunately, without his best stuff, he's just an average pitcher in the AL, more like a 4th starter. From everything you read about that injury, just like TJ, it's expected that eventually full capacity will be there at 100% over the next 12 months...improving as he builds up his strength, muscle memory, getting better and better, but it's not there yet and he probably pushed himself too hard again. The coaching staff absolutely has to reign him in, or they'll completely destroy any benefit we might be receiving from that contract in 2012 and 2013.

I'll state this again. At least through May 2009, Ozzie was 51-47 against Gardenhire. You could have argued we were outcoached/outmanaged down the stretch in 2006, but there were a number of well-documented reasons that team finally ran out of gas. You had 2003, but that could be placed on Manuel. But 7-30? To go from a winning record to putting up the worst record in baseball of any team against another (with over 20 games played) during that time period. That's almost impossible to do, even if you try. There has to be a deeper explanation which nobody in the White Sox organization seems to be able to acknowledge, admit or comes to terms with.

Yeah, like Javy, Rios, Swisher and Orlando Cabrera were. Make-up and the mental side of the game are often a lot more important than pure physical talent. Heck, that's the main reason Daniel Hudson was traded....because he wasn't "tough enough" for the pennant race last year. But Edwin Jackson and one of the roving instructors (Darryl Boston) seemed to think it was perfectly okay to laugh and play/joke around at the end of game yesterday...the laugh's really on the fans for ever believing in them. And Jackson sure hasn't been "Chicago tough" this year. Dunn, too. With Gavin Floyd, he has the same "mental" issues that Alexei Ramirez is constantly being sniped at with or accused of lacking....something "missing" upstairs that all the great players seem to have. I just don't get why our team has so many players you have to question their mental approach to the game. Beckham, Rios, Quentin...the list goes on and on. Seemingly the only players who have conquered this issue are Buehrle, Konerko and AJ, ironically the only players still left from 2005. And Konerko had an immense struggle mentally to get to the current "autopilot" that he's on. I don't think it's a coincidence that we really started to lose to the Twins in 2009. By that time, the majority of the 2005 team had already been deconstructed and sent packing. The only other players still around at that time were Jenks and Dye. Greg Hibbard pointed out that the Tigers were something like 15-30 against us in the middle of the decade. That's okay, as long as you beat the other teams in the division...and they did reach the World Series in 2006, after all. But 7-30? The Tigers still won twice as many games as we have against the Twins...and the Twins' teams in 2009 and 2011 were nowhere near as good as that 05-06-07 Tigers team in terms of overall talent. In the back of their minds, they just EXPECTED the Twins to come back yesterday and that the game was far from over, you just had a feeling, despite all the good vibes from the offensive explosion. Someone wrote something to that effect in the game thread, and they were right on target with their prediction of an impending implosion.

QUOTE (Pale Sox @ Jul 9, 2011 -> 01:39 AM) The only guys in the lineup performing better than most expected are our two remaining 2005 members. Quentin's at about what people expected, given his health, and the rest are well below. I'm not sure what to make of this, but I find it interesting. You can make an argument that Alexei is at his "natural" home of a 725-775 OPS at shortstop as well.

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_leagu...urn=mlb-wp11986

"I felt good at the beginning, and as the game went on, I lost command with my fastball," said Floyd, who hasn't won in six starts since June 1. "Chalk it up to a bad start. You just keep working hard and get on to the next start." Love the enthusiasm, Gavin!!! "We are halfway through the season, and there's a long way to go," Rios said. "We still have some guys — me included — that are struggling, and when we get them (hitting), we'll have a totally different team. The only thing we can do is to keep playing hard and wait until that happens." Dunn also struck out twice to raise his season total to 115. "I feel like me and Alex, we've been as bad as you could possibly be," Dunn said, "and if we're doing half of what we normally do, we're not even talking about this. We talked about it, and we're putting it all on us in the second half basically." GREAT, because putting all of the pressure on yourself as a hitter really tends to work well!!! www.chicagotribune.com/sports

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jul 9, 2011 -> 12:44 AM) I could see them trading Viciedo for Granderson and two minor leaguers or to the Braves for some stiffs. If KW is gonna trade him, it will be at the break or shortly after cause he hasn't been up to make us all fall in baseball love with him again. Greg, who would the Yankees play in CF then? That's the reverse of a typical Yankees' deal. They're not going to trade away one of their best hitters in the middle of the season for an unproven prospect. And it would cost a lot more than Viciedo to acquire Granderson anyway.