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This is exciting. Has the Sox ever gotten the Top 2, if not the best prospect in past drafts? (I know the best prospect doesn't usually turn out to be the best player, but Rodon has a good chance)

Jimmy Fallon needs to get him on his show and do another lip sync battle

QUOTE (ewokpelts @ May 27, 2014 -> 07:53 AM) Pricing was higher than a normal Monday. That's always a factor. I am curious, did other teams not raise their price for Memorial Day as well? It must be a significant price hike if we only drew 17K and average around the majors was 37K according to Caufield.

QUOTE (greg775 @ May 27, 2014 -> 01:14 AM) Team is gonna have to win, win, win for the Sox to draw. You know that, Caufield. .500 is nice but not enough to bring most people out more than once or twice all year (unless they find free tix). I KNOW there are bargains. Nobody wants to sit in the upper tank (even though some of you say they are good seats). People want good seats and they don't want to spend money on a baseball game more than a time or two all year. It's like an outing to Great America. Same deal. That's my line and I'm sticking with it. I haven't following this thread too much, but based on your post, it sounds like Sox fans are either the cheapest, or the most fair weathered fans in baseball, or we just don't have a large fan base anymore (which is not entirely true, given we are still 13th in FB following, and 20th in Twitter following) If you are buying tickets on the day of the game on Stubhub, you can easily sit at the lower level for ~$20, and like others point out, even the UD are not bad at all. Given that, the cost of going to a game for a family (including parking and food) is only marginally higher, not significantly higher, for the Sox than other baseball teams. Take into account income level for the average fans in Chicago compared to other cities, fans can definitely attend games more often, but they are choosing not to because they are spending their money elsewhere, just not Sox games. Which is fine, but it just shows the how much the fans really invest in the team. On a side note, I attended the Yankees game with friends this past Saturday, I knew I can score cheaper tickets on the day of so I waited till Sat morning to go on Stubhub. I end up getting 4 Gold Box seats between the on deck circle Yanks dugout for $50 a seat. It was only 25 rows or so up, but by the 5th inning we moved up to the empty seats on the 4th row and was literally 30 feet from the field. It wasn't hard, great seats can be had for $50 or so, even for one of the hottest games of the year. And you can't compared going to Great America to going to a baseball game. One is mostly a weekend activity that you go with the entire family for the whole day. The other you can go even during week nights, and should take about 4-5 hours or so.

A meme worthy day down in Kanny today. Collected 12 hits and scored 9 runs, but your top 2 prospects went 0 for.

Don't see Pacers repeating this performance after this one. Can't expect them to allow Miami to shoot 50% and win. Heat has been here many times, they will pull it out.

I heard other teams in the International League are already petitioning to outlaw Sale to pitch from his left hand side and force him to throw right handed in his next rehab start. On a side note, I, for one, forgot that Sale only pitched a whopping total of 10 innings, not games, innings in his brief minor league career.

QUOTE (Jake @ May 12, 2014 -> 10:52 PM) Johnson and Danish have extremely high ceilings. Johnson has plus speed, good contact rates, high walk rates, a lot of glove potential, and has pretty nice power production thus far for a non-HR hitter. His ceiling is borderline first-tier 2B. Danish has an ace ceiling. There's a reason they said he has Jake Peavy stuff. Those players just happen to have pretty low floors, too. Do you have any information on Johnson's defense that we do not have? So far I've not heard many good things about his glove. Also, I think the comparison to Peavy for Danish is more about the 3/4 arm slot and the bulldog mentality, stuff wise is a different story.

Keppinger started his minor league assignment a week ago... Either way, if he's putting up pathetic numbers against 21-22 year olds, I don't think he will be brought up.

QUOTE (fathom @ May 7, 2014 -> 09:46 PM) I saw where Nathaniel Stoltz inferred that he thought Hawkins was not very good. The offensive players in the system are slumping it seems. And it's not looking pretty, since the pitching is getting demolished every game. Overall, 3 of the 4 minor league teams are around at below .400 winning percentage.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 7, 2014 -> 09:55 AM) You gave a number of 90%, who else is there? As in more injury prone than most other pitchers. Number is arbitrary. I've already covered the grounds of probability with Balta, we can drop it.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 7, 2014 -> 09:22 AM) Non sequitor. Who else is out there fitting the description who has had injury problems. Denied. It was in the original claim. http://www.soxtalk.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=89048 QUOTE (witesoxfan @ May 7, 2014 -> 09:45 AM) Yes sir. Even Felix has lost a lot of velocity, but he's been able to remain good (or improve) as a pitcher overall, which is incredible to consider. I really do wonder how much of Lincecum falling off has to do with his height and not being able to get downward angle on his fastball. Good read on the downfall of The Freak http://grantland.com/the-triangle/whats-wr...h-tim-lincecum/

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 7, 2014 -> 09:03 AM) The only other funky skinny dude I can think of from today is Lincecum, and he has no real injury history. Pedro was a pretty healthy guy for most his career. Who else is there talk about. I wonder what's causing him to suck so much the past 3 years.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 7, 2014 -> 08:43 AM) And I think based on nearly 20 pitchers in MLB already going out for Tommy John surgery this year alone, if you choose to believe that somehow Chris Sale is a greater risk than any other pitcher, you need to make a much stronger case than "I think his mechanics look weird". Pitchers are going down left and right in this league. Based on the number of pitchers going down for that surgery already this year, an equally plausible answer seems to be "your baseball team should not employ pitchers". Season ending injury is one thing, if they can come back relatively healthy after TJS, then it's fine. Some of the injuries this year appear to be fluke injuries. But chronic injuries is another. and his delivery/frame could very well lead to such. We will revisit this topic in a couple of years.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ May 7, 2014 -> 08:11 AM) Only 17 pitchers threw more innings than him over the past 2 seasons, but yet he's 90% more likely to get injured? I guess he should play the lottery. 1. Are you then suggesting all other pitchers who had lower inning totals couldn't have pitch Chris Sales inning totals based on durability alone, not results? And would they have run into the workload issues Sale did? 2. He's our staff ace, those inning totals are expected, the question is can he sustain those workload year after year. We would need him to shoulder more workload if we were to count on him in the post season. 3. My original argument was Chris Sale's health in the next 3-5 years, talk to me then if Sale is still in the top 50 in innings pitched after the time span.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 7, 2014 -> 08:09 AM) Again, you're still not defining your terms, giving examples, or giving me any reason to believe this. How many pitchers are there with comparable deliveries? You're not even working on anecdotes right now, working on anecdotes would be naming a couple guys with similar deliveries who did get hurt. You're just saying what your gut tells you about his delivery. I never claimed 90% is a scientific number that was derived from researches, it was plain arbitrary to get a point across. And there isn't a way to determine a scientific number or formula on his injury probability, just as there isn't a scientific way to determine a prospect's potential. Most prospects are evaluated based on forms, approach, size, athletic ability, intangibles, and relating back to past prospects to project their potential. Most of it is based on observation with the human eyes. Yet we seem to be very willing to accept the prospect assessments. Given what he delivery and frame suggests and the elbow/arm issues the past 3 years, if we choose to not believe that Chris Sale is more susceptible to injuries than most pitchers in baseball, then I think we are in denial here.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 6, 2014 -> 08:06 PM) How do you come up with that number? Are you sure it's not 75%? 60%? What fraction of the more at-risk pitchers gets injured and on what average timescale? Maybe more, if you look at pitchers who has such a violent delivery and who also have the thin frame he has, while throwing as hard as he does. The 3 elbow issues he had in the past 3 years are not fluke injuries, they most likely are results of him repeating a highly stressful delivery for 100 times every 5 days. Whatever the outcome this latest injury is, we should take it as a warning sign. It would be miraculous if he avoid any serious elbow injuries over the next 3 years. I hope I am wrong, but I am not liking the chances.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ May 6, 2014 -> 01:22 PM) Correct. I need to start qualifying my posts better. Trading Chris Sale for anything short of a player along the lines of Mike Trout or even a Manny Machado is laughably dumb. I apologize for making the assumption that those trades aren't out there. Injuries can happen to ANY pitcher, or any professional athlete for that matter. But the combination of his frame and delivery makes him more susceptible to injury than 90% of the pitchers in baseball. If he is perfectly healthy, no one would dare to bring up any trade ideas, but the fact that he can be out of baseball 3 years from now, you definitely have to weigh in on all options. I was just surprised that most people didn't take this injury prone billing seriously, and would only trade him for the moon when I brought up the topic. If the Cardinals came at me with something like Taveras, Wacha and Wong last year, I would have said yes. We won't be in playoff contention for the next couple of years, and by that time, Sale might not be be the same pitcher as he is now. To also think that we are counting on someone who can only make 30 starts a year, and ran out of gas in the second half of the past 2 seasons, in a playoff series, I think that's scary.

It's a little early, and it's will be devastating news if Sale requires season ending surgery, but we can revisit this http://www.soxtalk.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=89048

Many people go to the Maxwell on 31st and Canal, but I prefer driving up north a bit and head to the Jim's Original in University Village. Lawrence Fisheries on Cermak and Canal has great fried seafood, and opens pretty late. If you want to take the kids to ice cream, Sugar Shack on 26th and Lowe's is an excellent spot. For a good sit down place, Oliver's Cafe on 31st and Canal opened not too long ago, and it's definitely worth a visit.

QUOTE (ewokpelts @ Apr 17, 2014 -> 04:17 PM) Yet you IGNORE that the Sox have never drawn better under any other ownership group. The TOP TWENTY attendance totals are under the current ownership. And with 16 of them in the current facility that apparently no one likes. Numbers don't lie. The 2013 White Sox, the 2nd worst of all time, still outdrew the 1960 team that was coming off a world series appearance. The danger of using raw numbers. Were we dead last in attendance in the 1960's? Time has changed man

It's definitely good news for those with UD tickets, but kind of unfair for those who paid LD prices?

QUOTE (flavum @ Apr 13, 2014 -> 02:18 PM) That's all very fair. Maybe it's the amount scouts and "experts" that bug me. Everyone has an opinion, and I really don't think it means much. I mean, if scouting were an exact science, then no first round pick would be a bust without an injury. That's why I'm not paying much attention to who the Sox are going to take at 3. It's such a crapshoot no matter how good the player looks in his uniform, or how hard he throws. Scouting prior to the draft is mostly about analyzing a guy's physical abilities and tools, and projects the likelihood of the player reaching his potential, assuming that the player can go to a system improve on his techniques. Scouting here at the game is more about what the player is doing right and what he isn't doing right, not much so on projections. I think we can agree that if a player isn't using the right techniques, he wouldn't have success in the long haul, even if he's hitting .350 right now. I would trust this guy's take on what Hawkins's approach over whatever we can extrapolate from the box scores.

It's hard to believe Miguel Gonzalez is still only 23 years old. He's been known for his work behind the plate, hopefully he can put it together this year with the bat. Perhaps Tim Anderson and May are suffering the Courtney Hawkins second year syndrome? Anderson's strikeout rate is extremely alarming.

As of today, after 11 games in, the White Sox leads the majors in run scored! It's might be a slugfest s*** show today, Paulino may get lit up, but it sure is fun to see us score more runs today