caulfield12

And if you add O. Hudson/Thome to our lineup (taking them away from the Twins, of course) and also subtract Pierre/Teahen, it's pretty clear we would be much closer to first if not leading the division. Not to mention a lot more payroll flexibility going forward to boot.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Jun 29, 2010 -> 03:20 PM) Yeah that killed us. I was all for going another route but they had no alternative plan in place. I wonder how realistically KW thought acquiring Damon would be when they officially cut ties with Thome? If he assumed that getting Damon with the numbers that were bandied about was going to happen, that was a pretty big miscalculation on his part. KW has come up short enough times with situations like Torii Hunter, Fukudome, trading for Miguel Cabrera....he had to have the sense that the Tigers or another team would probably outspend him in the end. Sure, the White Sox had the starting rotation, but it's not like Damon and Boras couldn't have just as easily reached the conclusion that Detroit would be equally as competitive, which they have been. Nobody expected Boesch to come out of nowhere though...or Austin Jackson to play as well as he has, although he's fading offensively. Seems like every year they can produce a rookie like Raburn or Clete Thome who puts up an 800+ OPS, and now this year again, Boesch. We had four months of Beckham, which has been the biggest rookie contribution along with Josh Fields in 2007. Yikes.

Another trade that was speculated about and then reported prematurely was the Hal McCoy one about Dye for Homer Bailey. The Garland/Erstad one as well, when it became obvious that the Disney/Cap Cities group felt that Erstad was one of their core marketing omponents and didn't want to part with him. Or Garland to the Astros for Taveras and 2-3 pitchers that have never amounted to much For former prospects team: Brandon Allen or Chris Carter 1B/DH Getz 2B Andy Gonzalez SS (just kidding) Fields 3B Ryan Sweeney, Chris Young, Aaron Rowand, Br. Anderson OF John Ely, Gio Gonzalez, Frank Francisco, Matt Guerrier, Jon Rauch, Charlie Haeger, Clayton Richard, Aaron Poreda, Russell Actually, in terms of major leaguers produced from the Sox system, we rank somewhere around 15-20 in baseball, but in terms of true "impact players" or All-Stars, probably somewhere in the 23-27 range I would guess over the last decade compared to other organizations. Of course things look a LOT different if you just included players who at ONE POINT played for the White Sox.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jun 28, 2010 -> 07:53 PM) Through May 30th, Chris Coghlan put up a .217/.268/.272/.540 line. He was at .275/.338/.400/.738 before tonight's game, and that improved due to a 2-3, 1 HR, 1 BB night. That means he's hit .380/.456/.630/1.086 since that point in time. My query, quite calmly is, why, in the blue f***, can't Beckham do that same f***ing s***? Because he's more lost than Alex Rios last year and Walker and the coaching staff simply don't seem to have any answers to help him.

Twins now down only 5-3. I have a feeling our lack of offense is going to really hurt us in the next week. Guess now that we're "close" KW will feel he doesn't have to make a move quickly....and if our getting back into it against NL competition turns out to be an aberration, you shouldn't gut the farm system. There's a good chance we'll be 7-12 combined against CLE and KC after tonight. That's just not acceptable if you want to win the ALCD.

QUOTE (southsideirish71 @ Jun 28, 2010 -> 07:41 PM) How exactly does one explain only 3 hits against this hot garbage that is pitching against us. It makes no sense. Bad advanced scouting, or simply not enough of our budget allocated in that area. Cora called that pitch-out. Probably saved a run there for us.

QUOTE (Kalapse @ Jun 28, 2010 -> 07:25 PM) It wasn't a blatantly blown call. These things do happen, I'd prefer if we didn't afford the umpire the opportunity to blow such calls. For the record: I've b****ed in the past when he was safe in that exact same situation, there just isn't a lot to be gained but there is a lot to be lost. Aviles playing like an MVP still against the White Sox. Wasn't it Rios' fault for the bad slide on that call at second? 21/29 isn't a great stolen base ratio. Wow, White Sox getting bailed out there by the Royals' bad baserunning.

Now we're back to the old White Sox. Royals doing an imitation of the Texas Rangers with their Augusta National infield. Just not quite enough offense...and Rios was safe, so it should be 3-2. Jones is as cold as he was hot at the beginning of the year. But perhaps most troubling, the problems we've had for a decade with pitchers we haven't seen.

Now we're back to the old White Sox. Royals doing an imitation of the Texas Rangers with their Augusta National infield. Just not quite enough offense...and Rios was safe, so it should be 3-2. Jones is as cold as he was hot at the beginning of the year. But perhaps most troubling, the problems we've had for a decade with pitchers we haven't seen.

I don't think Ozzie would find it very easy to DFA Jones, FWIW. They need him as PH power off the bench and for spelling anyone defensively, and just in general as injury insurance. The obvious concerns going forward are 3B, Beckham and Pierre, along with DH. For mid-season, that's quite a few questions marks to have offensively. I sincerely doubt they would trade any of the key components right now off the big league roster. It's going to come down to taking on additional salary commitments (or swapping them out for a Linebrink/Teahen/Pierre) OR which minor leaguers are expendable and not integral parts of the plan going forward. That's probably someone like Morel, Danks 2, Gilmore, Justin Greene, Brand. Short, Cleveland Santeliz, Nathan Jones, Santos Rodriguez, etc. I just don't see trading Flowers, Hudson, Mitchell (that's obvious) or Viciedo.

With BP taking huge projected losses because of the spill, I bet they will renege on that commitment. Unless it's with a "local/regional" affiliate insulated from the issues of the parent company, but I don't see that as being very likely.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Jun 27, 2010 -> 07:31 AM) I was thinking the same thing the other day. Or at least it would have been nice to play this series mid-week and have KC roll in over the weekend. 13 Detroit 36 1,077,696 29,936 74.6 37 30,095 67.4 73 30,016 70.7 14 Atlanta 33 983,027 29,788 59.5 42 30,552 70.0 75 30,216 65.0 15 Houston 40 1,100,123 27,503 67.2 35 34,751 75.2 75 30,885 71.2 16 Texas 39 1,042,949 26,742 54.4 35 27,406 63.9 74 27,056 58.6 17 Seattle 38 1,013,296 26,665 55.8 36 24,334 54.5 74 25,531 55.2 18 Arizona 36 925,660 25,712 52.4 39 31,539 69.8 75 28,742 61.1 White Sox now 19th, at 24,913 per game after Sunday. Good job by the Astros, Mariners and D-Backs to draw the crowds they're drawing. With the Mariners, there was a lot of enthusiam coming into the season and increased season ticket package buying.

Yes, CQ for Chris Carter. So that's 3 moves in 5 years, pretty good track record. We also had the common training camp together for many years in Tucson and picked up the scrappy Alex Cintron. The main question, though, is if Hinch and Byrnes keep their jobs all the way through the end of the season.

What is the argument here? Obviously, Ozzie having faith in the players on his roster had SOMETHING to do with them eventually coming through in the end, PROBABLY. Obviously Ozzie didn't give up on Peavy or Floyd or Jenks or AJ or Carlos or Alexei or Pierre, etc. Say what you will about him, his showing confidence and faith in his players and backing them up (when not throwing them under a bus, which is USUALLY deserved) has worked out pretty well. Let's not forget Ozzie has a higher percentage of playoff appearances in years attempted than KW. KW is 2/10, Ozzie is 2/6...but someone will argue if anyone but Jerry Manuel was manager in 2003, we SHOULD have gone to the playoffs, well, that's also KW's responsibility, isn't it? The worst run of Ozzie's managerial career, we're something like 11 games under 500 since the 2006 ASB. But you can also turn that around and say we're 15 games over .500 from 2008 through 2010. I'm going to become like Greg here in a minute and just defend Ozzie just for the heck of it.

QUOTE (The Beast @ Jun 27, 2010 -> 02:33 PM) I don't see how having poor seasons or being kept on the team by the GM is incompetent on their parts. The only time we've eaten a big contract this decade was MacDougal, but Linebrink is inching closer. If this was the final year of his deal, he'd be gone one way or the other. KW wasn't incompetent, he simply over-reached by 2 years on that deal for Linebrink. Williams should have been replaced by trade or Threets a long time ago.

QUOTE (The Beast @ Jun 27, 2010 -> 02:31 PM) I am so glad that I am listening to the Cubs broadcast on WGN because I don't have to listen to that jackass argue with every call, obvious or close. Also I hope Ramirez quits this "I'm safe" s*** at first base because eventually he's just going to get shown up by an umpire. As an umpire I hate when anyone says "SAFE!" or "OUT" when I'm making a call. It is distracting and could impair the judgment on the call since it is a bang bang play. Pablo Ozuna says "hi!"

Yeah, I'd really like to see what Threets can do. Even Santos, it would be a lot better to get some more work in for the youngster. Linebrink and Williams, yuck. Unless they really think they can get Linebrink on a hot streek for a couple of weeks of "Carrasco time" innings and package him for a hitter with a bad contract.

White Sox, for the moment, only 1 game back with the Twins' loss, but that probably won't stand. Linebrink time? Or Williams? Threets?

For two months, you basically hated watching everyone hit but Konerko, Rios and Andruw Jones while he was hot. It's pretty amazing that Quentin is on a pace for well over 100 RBI's, considering how much he's struggled, seemingly.

Alexei is getting ripped off today. Beckham at least took a solid swing there today....not flailing, feeling or reaching for it.

We've traded with the D-Backs for Vazquez and then the Brandon Allen/Pena move, any others? Difficult position for KW...go for broke with Fielder/Dunn or take the safer choice, but one who probably doesn't put you over the top in LaRoche. I think they'll be very hesitant to remove Kotsay and especially Pierre when the team is winning.

Just one of those days. If AJ gets a hit to put us up early 4-0 or if Ramirez isn't incorrectly called out on the Beckham strikeout, probably we would have just buried the Cubs early. 15-1 or 16-2 ain't so bad. And Danks just didn't have it, location was off, just not in synch after the first two innings. Pena came in with really flat stuff out of the pen, too. That said, we're only down three runs against the Cubs' pen, and they can't use Kashner (unless it's against Paulie, hopefully).

Or Justin Verlander. Or all the pitches Dusty Baker's starters were left out there for...Hudson/Zito/Mulder threw a ton of pitches with the A's, too.

Yes, but you have to let the market settle a little bit, if you over-reach out of desperation, you end up paying way too much. Shedding Flowers or Hudson now, before we see how well the White Sox stand up head-to-head against Minnesota and Detroit...probably not the smartest move in the world, because obviously AJ and Freddy Garcia aren't going to be around forever. And it's not like the White Sox just took off and cruised when they added Rios and Peavy. Obviously, Peavy was hurt, but Rios was in a funk all year long, and that funk was passed on to JD, who saw the writing on the wall in terms of his future and he started moping and it affected the attitude/chemistry of the entire team. So you have to be very careful when you tinker with something that's going so well. Like in 2006, all the changes KW made were "logical" ones but sometimes you can mess around with a good thing too much. We just need to ride this out to its conclusion, then, you can start thinking about changes/tweaks/improvements to the roster. Who knows how long we can ride Vizquel, how Beckham ends up...but we need to give this at least two more weeks of constant monitoring.

I don't think the Cubs are to the point where they do that yet. Imagine if you're the owner, would YOU try to rebuild his value to get something back for him, see if they can get his fastball back in the mid 90's and dangle him before teams in playoff contention or just hold onto him into the offseason, or would you simply eat that contract and cut your losses? It's probably going to be similar to what happened with the Silva/Bradley deal...two bad contracts exchanged, with the hope at least that both prosper in new environments.