caulfield12

The Royals have made some other interesting decisions since Glass took over the club, most notably the huge contract for Meche, which was a smart move for awhile, the contract notably for Jose Guillen and then Rick Ankiel. They keep getting "stuck" between trying to compete and going all out with the rebuild and do neither well. Another example of veterans who have flopped, Farnsworth and Juan Cruz. In the end, with the Royals, it has always come down to pitching. If they trade Bannister because they don't want to pay him, that would be another step backwards. Jorge De La Rosa, yet another pitcher they gave up on too quickly. But like Joe Borchard with us, the failure (so far) of Alex Gordon has been the biggest set-back for this franchise. Hochevar has moments of brilliance and moments where he looks like a White Sox 5th starter candidate.

The problem here is that the Royals are going to ask for Beckham for DeJesus. And that will be the end of the conversation. And there's no way we have the pieces for both of those guys, let alone one.

Not to mention the fact that Gordon Beckham looks to be back. But I'm still not ready to trade away Viciedo or Hudson...we should just ride with what we have and let's just see what happens.

QUOTE (AWhiteSoxinNJ @ Jul 18, 2010 -> 03:26 PM) 3 horrible losses in a row to a division rival in a playoff hunt. It's going to go worse. Horrible losses? What are you talking about? At least we came back Friday night and made it a game, the Tigers just lost four in a row to Cleveland. It sucks, but that's what happens in a long baseball season. After Thursday, the White Sox had made up 14 games in a little over a month against the Twins. Even without Morneau, the Twins are not as bad as they were playing, and they still have a ton of pitching question marks. However, we really did manage to bring them back to life when we could have knocked them 5 1/2 back or more.

It's not really a surprise loss to anyone, you almost expect it when Jenks and Minnesota come together. That we didn't get a single out that inning was the only shocker....usually Jenks can sort of make it interesting when he implodes.

Great. Complete meltdown. We might as well give them their 3rd walkoff win of the season without them getting a single out in the inning.

That just sucks. To go from 3 1/2 game lead to 1 1/2 in ten minutes. You had a feeling it was coming when Pierre didn't get the 7th run in.

Praying for double ball ball here.

Everyone saw this one coming....just hope we can get out of the inning with a tie.

Jenks can never have an easy save in Minnesota. I think Guillen will be very tempted to pull Bobby if he gives up another baserunner.

Apparently Scott Baker had to get a cortisone shot in his elbow. Just hope the Indians can keep up their hot play of late in Minnesota, Laffey versus Baker tomorrow night. Let's go Jenks, these 3 run leads make you nervous, it's almost a given he will bring the tying run to the plate.

I wouldn't mind a run or two here and Putz staying in the game.

Putz has been almost as good as Politte/Hermanson in 2005. That's something like 24 appearances in a row without giving up a run.

Pierre is just a terrible hitter with RISP. It seems he has more AB's than any hitter in that situation this year....he's done "okay" the last couple of months but it's just not a situation where he's very comfortable or confident, for whatever reason. Somehow, you know that 7th run will end up being important, at least that's how it used to be in Minnesota. We'll see.

Quentin hurt his hand on that slide? Wow...talk about a guy constantly battling injuries over the last two years. At least it's not his knee again... Now they can't get Beckham out. Typical Twins' hit there by Gordon. First four hit game of his career, 9 hits in the series.

The other thing is that our prospects, unlike Robin Ventura, haven't been allowed to develop in low-pressure situations. All those guys in the late 80's, they weren't expected to do anything or win...it was just developmental/transition time for the ballclub. If nothing else, that has really hampered the development of players like Borchard, Fields, Getz, Owens, Anderson, etc. They simply cannot afford for Dayan to learn how to play 3B "on the job" when every game could be the difference between making the playoffs or not. Some will argue those guys might never have become big leaguers, since they also failed with other organizations or are in the process of failing.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Jul 16, 2010 -> 03:38 PM) From FanGraphs. Interesting... Well, if Morel and Flowers are B prospects, it will take that and Santos I would guess.

Theoretically, if Morel can put up a 700-725 OPS, they can live with that. But they've got to be getting a lot of offensive output from Viciedo, Flowers/AJ, Beckham, Ramirez, Quentin, Rios, etc. The easiest solution is Teahen at 1B, Viciedo at DH and Morel at 3B (for the future), but that puts a tremendous amount of pressure on the rest of the offense because you expect to get a lot more pop from those two corner spots. You also would like to give Viciedo time to at least try to develop into an adequate 1B, we all know he has a very strong arm (but his height, not being LH, his ability to dig balls out of the dirt or athleticism in leaping for the ball, there are quite a few question marks)...ultimately, they might decide LF is the final destination, that he needs to be playing the field everyday to stay focused on the game, I'm not sure. Obviously, we seem to have Pierre as our leadoff man into 2011, but things have a way of changing quickly in baseball (as we've seen the last 2 months).

On the subject of Beckham, he shouldn't get a free pass defensively. The guy's on a pace for 20+ errors at 2B, that's not very good. Yes, he has the potential to be an above-average MLB second baseman, but he's not there yet. If we're going to rip Viciedo, the guy hasn't even played that position much this season, he played more 1B. Undoubtedly, he would be better as a DH, but so would Teahen, and Vizquel clearly isn't the long-term solution. And I have a feeling Morel will be the Ryan Sweeney of 3B. Another error. Just not our night. Floyd has never been good at fielding his position...not quite Clayton Richard-esque, but pretty bad.

There's our error. Three run bomb and the game's tied again.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jul 16, 2010 -> 08:28 PM) Defense hasn't helped them out, but we couldn't really count on them continuing their historic starting pitching performance. Gavin should have been out of this inning with an easy double play. Viciedo cannot keep playing 3rd base. The problem is that Teahen isn't the answer, either. It's no coincidence we started to take off without him in the infield defensively. That leaves a 43 year old who has a 625 OPS (overachieving) who will probably wear down in the next 2-3 months of Chicago heat. And you can't move Beckham back.

The White Sox have responded throughout this streak to being down and not out. This will be a big test of that theory. At least CLE isn't lying down and dying tonight. Seems like we were playing with fire with Viciedo at 3B and it came back to bite us, Gavin couldn't pitch out if it, but it's not exactly like he was knocked all over the ballpark.

What if Ozzie got hurt, lol? Is he covered by insurance? If he goes crazy like Zambrano and has to attend more classes....? Joking... Greg, I'm not sure why you are giving up on Peavy so quickly. He's a competitor, he's not going to see his baseball (and pitching career) end unless there's simply no way to deal with pain or injury, like what happened with Brad Radke at the end. Yes, it's a rare injury, but who's to say he won't be even better when he comes back and is throwing pain free? And we still don't even know if the White Sox are getting some of that $37.5 million back in insurance settlement payments....maybe.

How many of you guys have seen DUEL, the first Spielberg movie? What a great first movie...so much intensity and drama out of a singular situation.

Would echo the sentiments about INCEPTION. Saw it here in Thailand already, will go for 2nd time tonight to catch up on a few plot points I missed or overlooked on first viewing. One of the main criticisms, perhaps, is that the film doesn't change your life, it doesn't stay with you or linger on....but I prefer to think that's kind of the point, that dreams are the same way, they're ephemeral and don't often stick in your subconscious. People look for deeper philosophical meaning in movies like 2001 or Blade Runner or Brazil or what have you...I really enjoyed it, yes, sometimes Leo DiCaprio feels like he's playing the same role over and over again (after Shutter Island), but this was an excellent film. I'm not even a huge film of the French actress, M. Cotillard or whatever her name is (Mal, which means evil in Spanish) in real life, but she was good in this one. It was nice to see Tom Berenger again, he was something of a big thing in the 80's and kind of disappeared. Obviously Nolan likes to work with Michael Caine and Cillian Murphy...Juno (Ellen Page) added a female touch, and Joseph Gordon Levitt has been one of my favorites since 28 Days of Summer. They even had the Indian scientist from 2012 as part of the team, interesting cast that worked together well. Eames (Tom Hardy) was my favorite character, THE FORGER, he's something of a cross between Daniel Craig, Sean Bean and Jason Statham.