caulfield12

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Sep 18, 2008 -> 09:10 AM) Yet we've only managed to gain like 2 games on them in that period. Well, the White Sox can always hide behind the excuse of losing Quentin, Crede, Contreras, Konerko and Linebrink for large stretches of this season. The Twins don't have a similar excuse...their bullpen has really imploded dramatically, whereas ours has been pretty horrible for the last 2-3 months...really, since the beginning to middle of July, right around the All-Star break. Nathan has lost 2-4 MPH off his fastball, his location is way off, he's throwing an alarming number of pitches in each appearance...and his 3 BS in the last month are what he usually has in one season. I think the Twins' bullpen was SO good in 2006, only one game lost when leading going into the 8th inning, it's hard not to describe it as a choke. You can argue that Crain, Guerrier, Reyes, Nathan and Guardado are choking...or that, for whatever reason, they simply aren't VERY good right now. Hard to say which...but I think the Twins have had the lead in quite a few of the games they've lost in the last month. Not to mention numerous games they barely hung on to win that should have been blowouts. Once again, the Twins received no immediate punishment for their sins because the Yankees defeated Chicago 5-1, keeping the Twins 2 1/2 games back in the American League Central with 10 games to play. The White Sox are 8-11 in their past 19 games, but the Twins are in an 8-16 spiral. They boarded a late flight to Tampa, Fla., where they'll open a four-game series tonight against the Rays, who own the majors' best home record at 55-22. "At this point, you just see what we're made of," Guerrier said. "We lose three here at a time we need to be winning some games. It's going to be tough going to Tampa. They're fighting for a spot, and we've got pretty much our backs against the wall." from startribune.com

Maybe the scheduling Gods are finally shining upon us... Bannister, K. Davies and Brandon Duckworth for the next three games. No Gil Meche or Greinke, who gave us a lot of trouble the last time we faced him...actually, both pitched well, if I remember correctly. Of course, it's very possible that the Royals will also be riding a 7 game winning streak coming into Friday!!! OTOH, you have to think that their luck has to turn soon, and our Top 3 against (well, Danks is equal to any of them) against their Bottom 3 SHOULD SHOULD SHOULD be good for at least 2 wins out of three. And we've never historically struggled playing in KC like we have at Minnesota, Toronto, TB, etc. BTW, does anyone want to buy 100 shares of AIG??? I completely forgot buying it in 2005 at $50 per share, of course, now the brilliant Edward Jones stock brokers call my mom in Iowa advising her to sell. Great advice!!! Please tell me why the brokers never have the "inside info" to call maybe when the stock isn't down 96%!!!!

Well, this definitely is an interesting turn of events for the election. You would have to think this would favor the Democrats, but if the GOP can somehow deflect this, well...anything is possible. You can blame greed, you can blame deregulation and lack of institutional controls (remember Enron, when their accountants were also their "consultants"?), you can blame Wall Street or Main Street, but everyone has some level of responsibility. Of course, the Fulds and Thains and all the bank executives purged months ago are sitting on deserted islands with their martinis and daquiris and laughing with the Golden Parachutes softening the blow. The problem, of course, is how can anyone trust the numbers put forth by the banks, or any company, for that matter? Now you have "short selling" as a bubble, where every single bank (see the comments today from MSDW president Mack) is being shorted, doesn't matter why...just for being banking institutions. I'm not sure it's such a good idea to eliminate the short-sellers though...maybe by buying the housing giants and AIG, we're only prolonging the ultimate disaster. So far, the Dow's down about 25% off its high of a year or so ago. You just wonder where's the floor? I'm not thinking about selling any investments yet, and it's illogical to do (buy low, sell high!!!) because if you have a long-term orientation, things SHOULD come back to equilibrium, but there are many people out there overleveraged with debt who will be tempted to try to get at least something back...nobody wants to be the one left at the end of musical chairs without a place to sit down. I was/am a big follower of Bill Miller (Legg Mason Value Trust) and he has gotten absolutely creamed for 3 years in a row after 14 years consecutively beating the market. But disciples of Buffett (such as Oakmark Fund/Oakmark Select) have also been hammered. It seems even "value" investors are having trouble identifying the right market niches to get into. I manage assets for my mom and she's 80 years old. Fortunately, she receives enough money from my father's pension (he passed away 9 years ago) that she's okay without having to live on any of the investment income. However, I'm starting to feel it would have been better to be 80/20 bonds-to-stock instead of 20/80 stocks to bonds, something like PIMCO's Total Return Index instead of some of the Vanguard Index funds and Oakmark/Legg Mason. Well...I'll try to call her from Thailand and reassure her. It's scary, because we don't have long-term care insurance, and long-term nursing care can wipe out hundreds of thousands in as little as 5-10 years. We rode out the tech stock bubble, hopefully this one won't throw us into Great Depression II. But you have to wonder...all those people living beyond their means, all the credit cards, student loans, mortgages, you certainly have a feeling it will keep getting worse before it gets any better.

QUOTE (oralsoxpodcast @ Sep 17, 2008 -> 03:29 PM) Josh Fields needs to be traded to the Texas Rangers. They like their young home run hitters down there. He strikes out too much and plays a lousy third. The current White Sox don't need another player that is slow, bad defensively, and only hits homeruns. Enough of that. Besides, Crede will still be here next year, along with Juan as his backup, IMHO. I think they have to part ways with Crede, for a number of reasons...it will be either Fields, Uribe or Beltre/Blalock.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Sep 17, 2008 -> 02:52 AM) Have I ever told you how smart you are? lol Seriously though, I just think Beltre is the perfect choice for the Sox; there's no long-term committment, you should get compensation at the end of the season, he doesn't cost an arm and a leg monetarily (though he's not cheap by any stretch of the imagination either), he shouldn't cost an arm and a leg to trade for though he won't be stolen either, and he's a very underrated player - I don't think .270 30 .825 is seriously out of the question for him, and he plays fantastic defense at 3B too, which is incredibly important. As far as I'm aware, there are no serious injury concerns (though he is having surgery for a torn ligament on his hand...he wanted to play through it so it obviously wasn't effecting him a terrible amount). Beltre just seems too perfect. I also don't want to look too far ahead either because there's still plenty of season left to be played. The funny thing is this is decidedly the single biggest issue for the Twins in the upcoming offseason as well...and they have more room to negotiate, as they could package someone like Cuddyer and a minor league prospect. That still leaves them Span, Gomez, D. Young and Kubel for pretty excellent depth. I doubt they would trade Perkins or Blackburn (that was the Washburn deal that was nixed ultimately by the Twins)...unless they were very confident someone like Bonser could bounce back into the rotation. They will try to avoid a repeat of the Livan Hernandez disaster this past off-season. If the Twins lose, not using Liriano until mid August might be one of the obvious things to point at as a reason for the Sox winning the division. The Twins are also in the same spot we are, looking for RH relief help. The irony is that we have MacDougal, Dotel and Linebrink, but can any of them be counted on for next season??? The Twins have Guerrier, Crain and possibly Neshek coming back at full strength. I would say both clubs are in similar situations...we'll see how well Octavio and Scott do the next couple of weeks and possibly in the post-season.

QUOTE (Princess Dye @ Sep 17, 2008 -> 10:44 PM) Vazquez has seven strong starts coming in. In general though I'm really happy w/ our starting pitching right now. I like the thought of that staff turning things over to Thornton/Jenks in the playoffs, but we have to get there first. The problem is that the stress of the post-season is so much higher on the pitchers...and the managers tend to over/micromanage for individual match-ups starting in the 6th or 7th innings. The only hope or prayer we have is that our starters can go at least 7 and that Thornton and Linebrink are lights out. However, there are some questions lingering over Linebrink and even Bobby (although most of his troubles have been caused by 4 run leads or not pitching under intense pressure to begin an inning). Thornton always scares you if he doesn't come in to begin the inning with a clean slate. Dotel and Carrasco haven't been reliable...in fact, you've seen Guillen tempted to use MacDougal more and more often. The way things stand right now, the odds against either the Twins or the White Sox advancing past the first round are not good.

Morneau 3 for 3 against Lee. 1st and 3rd with one out.....please, the GIDP from D. Young!!!! Okay, strikeout works for me too. Walking the tightrope and gets out of it. WOW.

QUOTE (whitesoxbrian @ Sep 17, 2008 -> 07:31 PM) How can you boo a .300/.380/30/100 guy? Well, as Farmer noted, he tried to opt out of his contract and negotiate (hold hostage) the Yankees in the middle of the World Series. No Yankees WS victory in eight years now. The Yankees are paying him his whole salary now, without Rangers' subsidies. Because Jeter is so beloved, he has to play the villain, and does it well. Off the field issues with wife, Madonna, Scores strippers, etc. Attitude....aloofness, the same things they're saying about Obama, basically. Horrible late innings, RISP, and tremendously disappointing playoff stat lines. Throwing errors a season or two ago....the fans know they can get into his head.

Tie game in CLE. I guess I inspired Hafner by getting on him, lol. 2-2. Baker not much longer for this game, but neither is Lee. It will come down to Russian Roulette with the bullpens. Let's hope Gardenhire's choices end up throwing grenades on the gasoline instead of putting out the fire/s.

QUOTE (daa84 @ Sep 17, 2008 -> 07:21 PM) great effort from clayton tonight...any sign of trouble ozzie has to have DJ ready You still feel confident in DJ??? Really? I think the magic is gone from that option. I would go with Danks...call me crazy. But he can easily pitch 2-3 innings and get us to Linebrink and Jenks. We don't have any good options in middle relief to accomplish that same task.

Gomez goes deep for the Twins. 2-0. Luckily, there was a GIDP right before that, or the game would be even more precarious. Lee's also getting his pitch count way up there, 68 through 4 IP. That doesn't bode well, because the Indians' middle relief is terrible.

QUOTE (knightni @ Sep 17, 2008 -> 07:03 PM) This three days rest stuff is too risky, in my opinion. It's too late in the season to suddenly have them overdoing it. They've already all approached 175+ innings this season. Why risk a breakdown on young arms? The Twins are doing the same thing today with Baker. He's pitched really well through three innings, no runs given up. The only risk is with Floyd, as Vazquez and Buerhle are veterans and experienced enough to deal with it and they both know their soreness tolerance.

QUOTE (fathom @ Sep 17, 2008 -> 06:59 PM) No, it's Vazquez/Danks/Buehrle/Floyd/off day/Vazquez/Danks/Buehrle/TBD It would make some sense to use Danks against Mauer/Morneau, but I think they are more concerned about his pitch count and IP than any Sox pitcher, and for good reason. The articles I've read said they wanted to line up Vazquez, Buehrle and Floyd for that series, and they would each be on full rest because of the Monday off day.

QUOTE (Brian @ Sep 17, 2008 -> 06:57 PM) They said on the radio that Buerhle was pitching Friday. I didn't think that sounded right. I figured Danks was Sat. One of us is right. Floyd going Saturday night in KC on three days' rest. That was the latest I read. If it comes down to it, those three would have to go on three days' rest again against CLE and then the DET game on Monday. They could use Danks with full rest or Floyd on three day's for the possible final DET game after the regular season ends. CLIFF LEE...five hits, two walks, yet only one run surrendered in 3 IP.

QUOTE (fathom @ Sep 17, 2008 -> 06:52 PM) You absolutely save Danks for Friday. Danks isn't starting until Sunday. We're going with Vazquez, Buerhle and Floyd on three days' rest consecutively.

Well...this is getting interesting. With CLE trailing the Twins, will Guillen insert Danks into the middle of this game and go for the win? Will the Twins' score affect Ozzie's decision-making process? Or will we get our usual middle relief suspects? The longer we stay tied or if we can get the lead, the possibility of sneaking out of this game with a victory must be tantalizing. Dewayne Wise at .842 OPS. Pretty amazing. He's ahead of Alexei...that's impressive for a bench player in limited action.

What the heck happened to Travis Hafner? That guy was one of the scariest hitters in the AL, now he's worse than Konerko. He's only 31, too...wonder if there's any issues with HGH? Is he the same size? I haven't seen him this season.

Lee gets out of the 2nd but still struggling. 36 pitches through 2 innings.

24 pitches for Baker on three days' rest in the first inning. That bodes well for their bullpen getting into the action (of course, the Indians' pen might be even worse!) I think that's the third or fourth time Richard has made an extremely bad throw to 1B. Somebody needs to work with him on that...he also doesn't have the confidence to throw over there without balking. There have been at least two throws that got away and cost the Sox bigtime.

Well, of course the Twins scored one off Lee! At least he limited the damage and it's only 1-0.

QUOTE (BlackBetsy @ Sep 17, 2008 -> 10:40 AM) On the morning of September 17, 2003, five years ago today, the White Sox were exactly 1.5 games behind the Twins and playing the second game of a three game series in Minnesota that night. I guess that's kind of down to the wire - people forget exactly how close that race was until the final two weeks. http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/CHW/2003_sched.shtml The Sox went 6-6 the rest of the way, while the Twins went 8-3, although that is skewed by the fact that the Sox won the last two games of the season against KC after Minnesota had clinched and Minnesota dropped the last two of the season to Detroit. Effectively, the season was over when the Twins swept the Sox to go up 3.5 games in the standings. Maybe I'm off, but I think we won the first two games of a home series that month, then lost the second two games and were swept at Minnesota. The turning point was that second home game, where we had a huge lead and gradually frittered away the lead as Jose Paniagua (bread and water) ALMOST blew it and the Twins effectively took all the momentum and ran with it. For some reason, that game and losing the third game with Cotts starting instead of Buerhle in the Stadium are the two games that stand out to me. I also remember that Loaiza was really gassed that final month and just wasn't the same pitcher he was in the first half. While it went down, technically, to the final week or so, it was over psychologically after the Twins beat the Sox five times in a row.

This is the first real "close" pennant race i can remember the White Sox being in, within 1-2 games for most of the last couple of months. In 1983, 1993 and 2000, we were well ahead for much of those seasons...of course, 2005 was simply crazy and nerve-wracking at the end. In 2003, it was close in early September but didn't really come down to the wire. 2006, it felt like we were out of it the last 6 weeks, even though we weren't officially eliminated until much later. I was too young for the 1977 season. My favorite season, even though we came up short, was the last season in the old ballpark with Torborg as manager. That was a very exciting and interesting year. Unfortunately, there were some even better Oakland A's teams at that time, and the Twins were in the middle of their glory years, too (1987-91). I guess the myth of the Twins "owning" the White Sox is due to 2003 and 2006 mostly (and our record against the Twins, specifically on the road), but those numbers were skewed by the 2001, 2002 and 2004 teams especially (W-L record head to head versus Minny).

QUOTE (joesaiditstrue @ Sep 17, 2008 -> 03:05 AM) Ozzie throwing clayton back to the bump tomorrow doesn't help our chances for a 3 of 4 from the yankees, unfortunately His decisions sometimes, just laughable Of course, he *could* win, or rather WE could win (He could leave with a lead, or being down, and we could perhaps score more runs ultimately), but the odds of us winning with someone who's as f***ing bad as Clayton Richard, is very slim, and that pisses me off right now There's really very little choice here. As it is, we're possibly going to use our three best starters without four days' rest TWICE before we go into the first round of the playoffs. The only pitcher we're attempting to baby along is Danks, because of his age and his innings pitched over the last 2-3 seasons. I remember some speculating he would be shut down for September, but that just doesn't happen in a pennant race that traditionally comes around once every 4-5 seasons for the modern-day Sox. The Twins are being forced to used Baker on 3 days' rest as well, against Cliff Lee. The reason I'm not 100% worried is that seems like a loss and another day off the calendar. However, with their backs against the wall, I think the Twins might resuscitate themselves and somehow win, although I wouldn't bet anything of significance (say, Merrill, AIG or Lehman stock!!!) on it. Poreda would have been the wild-card to go, but starting in NY against that line-up, I remember what happened with N. Cotts when we did that to him in 2003, when Buehrle wanted to go on short rest and we could have swept them out of Queens. Manuel didn't go for the jugular. Unfortunately, we can't pitch Vazquez on 2 days' rest, right? Or did you want Broadway or Carrasco? Either one of them, as noted, would have been shellacked as well.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Sep 17, 2008 -> 03:19 AM) The only other pitcher I would ultimately use before Richard as the starter tomorrow is Carrasco, but I think he's more for damage control. You are assuredly not going to use Broadway against them as there's no doubt in my mind that the Yankees would absolutely destroy him (and he's been quite a bit worse than Richard has this year, even if it is skewed because of one outing...I think an outing tomorrow would skew that even worse). If you can get what he did against Seattle or Baltimore, the Sox are in a position to win; if you can get what he did against Cleveland, you go to Carrasco and hope he can get to the 7th and that the Sox are leading. If he gets rocked early and the game is essentially out of hand by the 3rd or 4th, you go to Broadway, hope he pitches decently, and that the Sox can get back into the game. If they can't, let Swisher throw an inning or two. I really don't think this matchup is nearly as bad as people anticipate it being. It obviously doesn't favor the Sox, but I'm not about to write them off right now. There are a few reasons for hope... 1) Phil Hughes is far from being an automatic slam dunk for the Yankees (kind of like Homer Bailey of the AL) 2) We have Danks as the first out of the pen on Wednesday for 2-4 innings, as his official start won't be for one week, until next Sunday 3) Yankees are below .500 against LH starters 4) For the moment, "mo" seems to be on the side of the Sox for once this season

I was surprised to see Gardenhire use the phrase "snakebitten" to describe his team after tonight's loss. That's a loser's mentality...meant to explain the 3-13 bullpen, road woes and the sudden loss of confidence that Joe Nathan has demonstrated for the better part of a month. "It's a tough one to swallow," he said. "So many heartbreaking things tonight. You feel for those young men out there [in the clubhouse]. They're battling, they're really trying, and we're just kind of snakebitten. We can't keep the ball in the ballpark and it's not going our way."