caulfield12

Two runs on FOUR hits. Typical. Still have ABSOLUTELY ZERO belief the bullpen can match-up against NY. Beckham finally woke up at least. Thome is basically 4 for 27 lifetime against SABATHIA, but all four of them are homers. Would have been nice to have had him come up, because a tie game doesn't do us any good. At least we'll see Thornton now instead of someone like Pena or Linebrink.

Ramirez should have just bunted. Castro, all he had to do was hit a ball to 2B or SS and the game's tied. Basically, WE SUCK. This is the worst, clutch-hitting White Sox team in late situations that I've seen in my lifetime. Not even close.

QUOTE (Melissa1334 @ Aug 28, 2009 -> 05:28 PM) and JD It's not about "balls," that is the only thing he IS pitching with when he doesn't have his command, stuff and he has to rely too much on the cutter/FB. One can never question that aspect of Mark's game, and JD just had a very solid swing that would have been a homer 9.5 days out of 10.

Lucky not to be down 3-0....that ball to LF was a homer and was brought back by the wind. And then we just got a double that was caused by the wind. Buehrle's problem is very simply...he doesn't have any location/command with the change-up and he's over-relying on the cutter. Now DYE just lost a sure homer due to the wind...so they're even I suppose.

Who can EXPLAIN why this team, with INARGUABLY more talent than last year's squad (post June version with Beckham, Pods, Rios, Castro, etc.), isn't able to dominate at all in home games like we did in 2008? Is that Walker? Guillen? Sheer luck or chance? If anything, from 2005/06/08, you could count on this team being very dominating at home when the weather finally warmed up, but we're just a slightly above average team at home, and most of our offensive statistics are much better on the road. Why? Just bad chemistry on this team, like the 01-04 White Sox teams (also injuries) or coaching failure?

To Dick Allen... You're right, there aren't many counterexamples past Swisher and Cabrera has played a tick better this year than last. None of those, alone, are enough to condemn Walker. With AJ, has he adjusted to the new park (from MINN) or simply changed his approach because of his team or Walker? He's having his best season (although RBI's will end up way down) statistically in terms of OPS and AVG. Of course, the core of the line-up's getting older. Dye's career was resuscitated here. Can we blame Walk for Dye falling off the face of the planet along with Konerko the last two months? It it conditioning or age? Better competition/scheduling? The Dog Days of August? Konerko, Thome and Dye have all been accused of having slow/er bats over the past two seasons. Can WALK really do anything about Mother Nature and Father Time? Ryan Sweeney has been about what was expected...a starter on a below average team but probably a 4th OFer or poor man's Aaron Rowand....with Rowand being a poor man's Hunter. If Brandon Allen or C. Carter tears it up somewhere, it has no conection to Walker really. So we have to look at some of the players who failed and why they failed....Joe Borchard, Josh Fields (and he might get a second chance), Brian Anderson, those 3 names come to mind right away. Borchard was more of a scouting FAILURE...as he did nothing when he left here and is out of baseball. Did we fail with Fields and Anderson...we'll see? How much of it was Walk, we'll see again. On the positive side, you have Nix, who nothing was expected of coming into the season. But the problem is that Nix and Quentin have been hitting in the 220's and 230's, so you have the whole OPS versus BA argument again. I tend to agree with Fathom and many others that a change CERTAINLY couldn't hurt or make things any worse in terms of our approach and preparation. In terms of handing Quentin, Rios, Beckham, Nix, Getz, Viciedo, Flowers, Fields, Alexei Ramirez (if he's not traded, personally, I'd put him back at 2B and move Beckham to SS and either find another 3B or give the position to Nix/Fields to fight it out, Getz has been too injury prone and sports a low OBP for his rate of production)....that's a young core of players that will need a lot of instruction and tinkering/guidance (except for Beckham probably, stay out of his way, just let him collect doubles and RBI's please). This thread made me wonder where we'd be had we taken a flier on Andruw Jones as our CFer with Rudy Jaramillo as our hitting coach as well...would be be any better off than a .500 team? Maybe, maybe not...with all of our talent, though, I'd like to think we should at least be 8-12 games over .500.

Well, the funny thing is we should be leading 4-1 and Jose was throwing 95 MPH tonight at age 40+. But not to be...this whole season just feels like one big missed opportunity.

6 UNEARNED RUNS.... OZZIE actually SPIT as soon as the contact was made by Lowell on that center-cut FB.

Thanks for handing this game and probably the series right back to the Red Sox...you know Garcia's going to get lit up like a freakin' Christmas tree against this line-up. GAME, SET, MATCH.... End of his career as a White Sox starter and maybe about to be released...sad to see, OZZIE, you suck not to have yanked CONTRERAS out of this game earlier. Too late.

Contreras has NOBODY to blame but himself. Classic meltdown at Fenway for him...it's like the White Sox as a whole play against Minnesota, but 10X worse for Jose in BOSTON.

Welcome DJ Carrasco to the game soon.

Jose....thanks a lot for helping out. God, our defense SUCKS. Two gift runs, and the Red Sox are right back in the game.

QUOTE (daa84 @ Aug 24, 2009 -> 06:09 PM) Jose's performance against the red sox is basically what punched his ticket out of new york....his first two starts he got lit up like a Xmas tree IIRC....that was a different boston O back then though...not that this one is bad, but they had some ridiculous offensive teams in the middle/early part of this decade And the two starts in the 2003 playoffs sealed the deal. By the way, AL umpires, even the Boston homer announcers called PETEY Pedroia out at 3B and admitted Beckham tagged him in the chest...thank god that run didn't score or Hawk would be b****ing all night long.

QUOTE (fathom @ Aug 24, 2009 -> 06:08 PM) Contreras is relying a lot on his fastball so far, and Boston seems to be getting good swings on it. The second time through the order is going to get ugly. Is he dropping down more tonight or going over the top? Kind of a strange decision to play Pods in CF because Rios has a ton of experience playing in Fenway, but Rios just hasn't been hitting much better than he did with the Blue Jays.

Contreras 3-5 with an 8.68 career ERA against the Red Sox, but mostly as a member of the Yankees. He did manage to get at least one FB up to 95 tonight, Bucholz has been 94-96 pretty consistently. C'mon Jose...NO WALKS. BTW, how the heck did we manage to let Bay score from 3B on that play...?

QUOTE (The Ginger Kid @ Aug 24, 2009 -> 01:47 PM) I've always thought that whoever makes the schedule for the AL central is a twins fan who hates the Sox. Well, yes, it usually seems we are playing them on the road to end up the season... On the other hand, they were really wiped out psychologically and drained by that 20+ game road swing caused by the GOP convention...they actually didn't play horribly, overall, but the it exposed some holes in their short relief and bullpen, Nathan was even human last year. So I guess we should thank McCain, Bush and Gl. Beck, but not the schedulemakers in this instance. (And it's not their fault we are .500 against KC, CLE and BALT, either). Still, they had the Royals the final weekend of the season (those rivals in the division who are mathematically eliminated and playing loosey-goosey are always tough outs) and couldn't close the door, particularly Mr. Liriano, whose career has gone off the side of a cliff.

LOOKS like the Tigers are down 4-1 now after a 3 run CUST jack against Porcello. Yet, at no point in the 9th inning did I truly believe that we were going to come through....the last time I really had faith in our ability to make a comeback consistently was the final series of the first half against the Red Sox and Papelbon in July of 2006. We had our moments last year, but we still were a very much flawed baseball club. Make that 20-20 against terrible trio of BALT, KC and CLE this year...reason enough alone why we don't deserve to go ANYWHERE this season but to the local country club.

Well, 4-5 against the MIGHTY Orioles this season. We can't even beat teams like the Royals and Indians this year on a consistent basis. We aren't as bad as 2007 because we have way too much talent to underperform at the 72 win level, but that was almost funny....this is just depressingly frustrating, knowing the ability this ballclub has. Hopefully, KW will do what he has to do this offseason. Thanks for another great Sunday line-up Ozzerrrooo.

QUOTE (sin city sox fan @ Aug 23, 2009 -> 03:44 PM) Williams is looking good.....I think he may be our set up guy by the time the playoffs roll around. The playoffs for the Tigers? What team are you talking about?

This team just doesn't have it.... Buehrle, Dye and Konerko are not leading this team at all. The "denial" stage (that we're not going anywhere) is about to set in. As evidence, look at the scant number of posts in this thread. I guess, if nothing else, this victory will serve as prime evidence to the Orioles for keeping this kid in their rotation next year. If we had the Ross Gload/Ray match-up here, maybe we could sneak off with a win.

QUOTE (oldsox @ Aug 22, 2009 -> 05:07 PM) The entire Swisher escapade should make Kenny blush. Also, the Keith Foulke trade to Oakland for whatshisname, made worse when Kenny gave him $6MM. Foulke still had 2-3 good years left. UMMM....N. Cotts didn't help us out in 2005 very much, did he?

http://espn.go.com/mlb/attendance And the White Sox are now 17th in attendance, too, and closing in on SEA for 16th. Let's hope the next ten days don't knock us out of it, or the attendance down the stretch will really nosedive. I think we have the Red Sox, though, for one home series, so that will do really well attendance-wise no matter what the Sox are doing on the field.

QUOTE (knightni @ Aug 22, 2009 -> 05:23 PM) I don't know if they'd bring up pitchers and hitters from AAA in a pennant race just to sit them. Viciedo, Flowers, Egbert, Whisler and Marques may not see the majors in '09. Having Flowers and Viciedo around the ballclub will be great experience for them, to see a pennant race firsthand. All those other pitchers who don't figure into our future plans (Whisler, Egbert, Marquez, Van Benschoten), forget about it. I'm reallly hesitant to say that Link will get much of a look in the future, when Omogrosso/Nunez/Santeliz all have much better pure stuff, maybe even F. Hernandez now has the advantage over Link.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Aug 22, 2009 -> 05:23 PM) So if they won last night, I'm guessing we wouldn't see this thread. Probably not. Then again, we all felt that 4-2 was the "worst case scenario" for this stretch and hopes were high for 5-1/6-0. This team just doesn't have anything close to a "killer" instinct, with the particularly damning evidence of all those lost opportunities to sweep our opponents gone by the wayside and the likelihood of ANY sweeps the next 3-4 weeks virtually non-existent on the road unless the starting pitching miraculously finds another gear and the offense gets a second win (Konerko, Beckham, Dye, Ramirez, Quentin, Rios)and really kicks it into gear again down the stretch. Likely? Not really, about 25-35% odds I'd say. But possible.

Well, the odds are not looking that great. On paper, we should be better now than last year's team, but we're certainly not proving that on the field of play. It just doesn't "feel" like we have the team to get it done this year, but Minnesota really handed it back to us the last week of the season after we'd been swept up there and things were looking really, really bleak. 11-12, 10-13, 9-14....those look like the three most LIKELY records to come out of this upcoming stretch (the Bataan Death March of games, like Minnesota's road trip during the GOP Convention). Detroit is back close to their high water mark of the season, and they're showing the ability to rally (in two games this week, ironic, because the White Sox were ALSO able to knock out former pitcher Aardsma, our ONLY come from behind victory of the season in late innings, amazing!), at least at home, we're they're winning .667 of their games. They're not a good road team, 25-36. We've play fairly well this season on the road, but it's expecting too much for Peavy to just come in and pitch like an ace and for all the cogs of the machine to suddenly click. We're one of those teams that appears to be better than it really is, the opposite of 2005...a team that just knew how to get it done and had the confidence that nearly every 2 and especially 1 run lead was their game for the taking. Where the team was much better than the sum of all its individual parts but a well-oiled machine that just knew how to get it done. We've had a couple of nice runs since May, but those were followed up by implosions against sub .500 competition when we should have been putting ourselves 10-12 games over .500 and squarely into the thick of things. This mentality of waiting for the Tigers to lose or choke when they're getting such good starting pitching on a consistent basis from Verlander (really the best AL pitcher since the first month of the season), Jackson and Porcello and surprising contributions from rookies like Thomas and Raburn (we've been able to produce one rookie OFer in years to put up an 800+ OPS for the Sox), the Jackson trade (stroke of genius), releasing Sheffield, winning the biggest games of the season against us (particularly the DeWayne Wise out at home, or not, game)... You can't really make ANY argument at this point that we deserve to WIN the division. If we play better the next 35-40 games and beat DET, great, but I don't see them imploding (barring a pitching injury) like MINN did down the stretch, especially at home, where they've had wonderful fan support nearly all season long.