caulfield12

QUOTE (GoodAsGould @ Apr 18, 2010 -> 12:23 PM) Tony Pena is too good to be wasted as a long man, wsox need to drop Randy already and call up Torres. Deck chairs and lifeboats, meet the Titanic. The irony is that we had a perfectly serviceable long innings guy in Carrasco, and spent that money on Vizquel/Kotsay/Pierre/Teahen instead. Well, that's about ITEM 13 or 14 on the offseason complaint list I guess. But it created yet another problem in our bullpen, the lack of a long guy/innings eater.

Would we really offer the GM job to Stone? Something needs to be done, but I would prefer to keep Williams over Guillen. Seriously, I would rather see DJ, Ventura, McDowell, Fisk or even Lance Johnson managing this team over Guillen at this point. I'd actually rather have Walker as the manager, too. Or Cooper. Just not Cora.

Yeah, I think the Iguchi homer off Wells was the key. You can argue that, or the Josh Paul/Pierzysnki/Escobar incident...followed by Crede winning that game with the smash to left. Everything went right that offseason, except for Contreras, the best pitcher in baseball at the time, losing to Paul Byrd.

Ozzie, have you LOST YOUR MIND? We can't burn through our entire bullpen today. Williams and Linebrink are not 2-3 inning pitchers.

Choo with more RBI's in the first three innings than the White Sox in the entire series seemingly. We're now officially at the point where it's worse than 2007 with Fields/Owens/Wasserman/Gonzalez.

Indians' announcers making fun of all Ozzie's quotes this week. Farmer wants to manage today, said he'd do a better job managing than Ozzie would broadcasting. I think it's time for Steve Stone and Farmer or DJ as GM and Manager!!!!

Ozzie, please have a complete meltdown just to make this team interesting again. Or KW next week at home. The Indians' announcers are basically saying the White Sox look like a team that's just playing as fast as possible to get out of town on getaway day.

LOL at Teahen going. Maybe Vizquel missed the hit-and-run??? This just is becoming almost comical. You can't even get mad anymore. At least they gave Omar some cheers, unlike Thome. I guess if you're traded, it's okay...but leaving via FA makes you a villain and traitor.

The scary thing is that there might be more closet Rays fans at the games next week than White Sox fans. We'll be lucky if we can salvage another one with some AJ theatrics with the umpires again.

Gavin Floyd has a 95 MPH fastball today and twice he's thrown curveballs with full counts. Interesting.

Floyd with a career ERA of around 6.5 in April and 5.25 in May. LOVELY. And 30+ pitches to get out of the first, which means he'll be lucky to get to the 6th inning, further destroying our pen. Just send Williams or Linebrink out there I guess as sacrificial lambs to the slaughter.

Who would you rather have at 3B? Peralta with his long term deal and statue-like range/defense, or Mark Teahen?

Well, at least Floyd's throwing 95 MPH. Throwing a curveball to Sizemore before he has control of it with a full count? We always manage to make Choo look like a superstar...and we overexpose Thornton to their line-up to the point where he's consistently ineffective against CLE.

That's great...although the idea is that you score the runner from 3rd with Konerko's sac fly after Pierre steals and THEN you bunt. Jesus.

Great, Pierre is a gunshy leadoff hitter who can no longer steal. Brilliant, and Beckham's been reduced to his worst asset, bunting. Idiotic.

I think it hit me when I was more excited to look up what Hudson, Danks, Flowers, Viciedo and Retherford were doing than our box score. The funny thing is that I woke up in the middle of the morning here in China and didn't even realize we had blown the lead...so I was saved from being really really aggravated from having listened to the whole disaster, which was almost exactly like the Twins' game the previous Saturday but this one was even more frustrating. I remember last year listening to many of the Barons games in the first half, until they broke that team into 1,000 pieces. Heck, I'm even a bit excited for Cub Scout/Sin City villain lookalike Mr. Lillibridge.

The only good thing that you can say is that Ozzie didn't single out Nix and also included Vizquel/Kotsay for the bashing. But dang, aren't you upset you're not getting thrown under the bus, if you're Donny Lucy? You might think Ozzie feels you're totally irrelevant if he's not even thinking about your name...haha. I'm also mystified why we don't think Quentin, Beckham or Rios would need guidance/assistance from time to time with their hitting? Quentin looks fine on paper, he's got his stats, but his overall approach at the plate these days reminds you of Juan Uribe/Joe Crede/Frank Thomas/Brian Anderson in their final days.

If you look at the Twins, look at all those guys they developed internally... Bartlett, Casilla, Morneau, Mauer (yes, we know about Prior and this was the ONLY pick they could have made), Garza, Blackburn, Baker, Slowey, Perkins, Liriano (the trade of the century), Span, Cuddyer, Crain, etc. Then you have the likes of Duensing, Swarzak, the list goes on and on...and they ALWAYS seem to unearth bullpen gems like Rincon (steroids), Reyes/Mijares and Neshek that can dominate the 7th-8th to bridge to Nathan, although Guerrier/Crain was A BIG HOLE last year. We have had to go out and BUY talent, the likes of Dotel and Linebrink. Our answer? Wasserman? Maybe Santos will help out, but it's ironic that someone drafted at another position becomes our best young reliever in five years. They teach their pitchers how to value first pitch strikes and the best possible IP/BB/K and WHIP ratios. They maximized "value" when they got Garza look in the first, whereas we have targeted the likes of Royce Ring, Broadway and McCulloch in the same areas of the first. They have a slew of athletic young outfielders, most notably Revere and Hicks. The scary thing is they completely whiffed on the Johan Santana trade (Gomez did net Hardy eventually, who's solid) and on the Bartlett/Garza deal, although Young is getting more consistent PT and producing finally. Then you have the annoying Piranhas like Denny Hocking, Koskie, Rivas, Mientkiewicz, Blanco, Punto, Redmond, Jason Tyner, Lew Ford, et al, that have killed the White Sox over the years. AND YES, I KNOW THEY'VE ONLY BEATEN THE A's ONCE AND WE WON IN 2005. TIRED OF THAT ARGUMENT.

The same division we're 2-6 against...if recent history has taught anything, the White Sox have good seasons when they dominate in the ALCD intradivision games and they play well at home. Last year, we completely lost the home-field advantage we'd have for most of the decade, with the exception of the 2007 disaster/debacle. Something needs to be shaken up, no more tinkering....the engine needs to be totally overhauled and rebuilt with a better BLUEPRINT.

Hudson was just so-so yesterday...decent. But it wasn't one of those "look at him go" starts that begs a promotion yet, either.

We can't have a consistent line-up simply because we don't have enough major league regulars. Simple as that. The ONLY players who deserve the right to play everyday are Konerko, Beckham, Rios and Quentin. The jury's still out on Jones, but he's earned the right to get MORE consistent playing time. That's only FOUR or five PLAYERS out of 9. AJ is another mystery...right now Lucy is more dangerous.

If Kotsay and AJ don't do anything today but roll into GIDP's and weak outs, Ozzie will really be under some media and post-game call-in fire. I really think he's trying to get fired. He keeps playing Vizquel 10 years too late. Andruw Jones is our most dangerous hitter, and he's nowhere to be found for 2/3 games. Right up there with Jones is Quentin...so great, let's take Jones, Quentin, Thome and Dye and replace them with: Pierre/Kotsay/Vizquel/Teahen I've never said this as a White Sox fan, but we DESERVE to lose if we're going to make completely ASININE line-ups. I know it MIGHT work, then Ozzie will be a genius for "shaking things up," but he's lost his marbles, his ego knows no bounds. And Jayson Nix is just sitting there rotting away. It's 10X worse than what he did to Brian Anderson, Sean Tracey and Jon Rauch.

Dick Allen, just be happy (or not, this year) you can actually watch the games on TV. Here in China, the broadband strength isn't close to strong enough for MLB TV. Since 2005, the only games I've seen were all the playoff and World Series games in 2005 (various sites in Colombia), the disastrous 2nd half collapse in 2006, the 2008 playoffs (somehow Thailand ESPN carried them) against the Rays and the first two months of the 2009 season. I've really come to love listening to all the other teams' radio broadcasts through Gameday Audio and AT BAT now this year...in this day and age of technology, it feels old school/retro but it's the best way to experience baseball, IMO. It's probably the best investment I've ever made of $9.95 or $14.95 that I can ever remember in terms of the entertainment value derived. Just going to Alice in Wonderland in 3D here in China costs that same amount of RMB.

Teahen can't be considered a plus offensively simply because of his walks...because getting on base for Alexei or Juan Pierre doesn't really do much good these days. Beckham's come up short in a lot of RBI situations too so far, although it is only 12 games, he and Pods were nails with RISP last year. Konerko is Konerko. He is what he is at this stage of his career, a slightly above average offensive 1B and slightly below average defensively who's making about $6-8 million more than he will on the open market in 2011. He did ALMOST tie the game up yesterday...he's certainly far from being anything resembling a problem compared to our other pressing issues. It's really Pierre, AJ and Ramirez that are damaging the offense the most... FINAL THOUGHT: Pick a philosophy and stick with it KW. SEE MARINERS, SEATTLE. Teahen is not and never will be a good defender, see Fields, Josh. If the White Sox had an infield of Uribe, Ramirez, Beckham and Orlando Hudson, we'd at least be a .500 ballclub, GUARANTEED. It would give us at least a 50-75% chance to hang with the Twins all season long. (One other problem...the Twins have the resources now to go out and address any flaw in their ballclub, which means they can easily add a 3B and middle relief or even closer at the break. We simply cannot make a significant, $5 million plus or more, addition...) Plus we'd have the flexibility to rest a struggling player. We can't really sit Alexei because neither Vizquel nor Nix are long-term options at that position.

And for Gavin to pitch better than the norm on the road...not that playing at TOR, KC, BALT or CLE can truly be considered road games anymore.