cabiness42

http://twitter.com/SouthSideAsylum/status/251491801033236481

Adam Dunn leads the league in walks and somebody complains that pitchers don't pitch around him. I give up.

Dunn isn't the DH because he has to DH. He has played 1B more than adequately this year, and he probably wouldn't be too much worse than Viciedo in LF if he was absolutely needed there. The performance of the DH is about 42nd on the list of problems with this year's team, sandwiched in between some blades of grass in the infield being too long and the 3rd light on the second row of the LF light pole being 10% too dim. I don't think there was that much better plate discipline in April-July. The players still had bad plate discipline but got on hot streaks. For most part, plate discipline is a personnel issue and not a coaching issue. Too much power is not the problem, it's that a lot of the power comes with low OBP. There are plenty of guys with power that can also get key hits/walks when needed, it's just that the Sox don't have any of them.

It's been tough to swallow, but I don't see it as a true choke. It's the offense, especially the 5-9 hitters, reverting to their true selves at the most inopportune time. A lineup with Rios, AJ, Viciedo, Ramirez, and Beckham in the 5-9 slots and it took some very good fortune by the Sox and some very bad play by Detroit to even make it possible. I see this season as providing Sox management some extra incentive to put it all together for 2013 instead of just waiting for the young guys to develop.

If your offense is scoring 4 runs or less for 13 STRAIGHT GAMES your pitchers are going to be put in enough pressure situations that they are inevitably going to fail in several of them. Pitchers don't have 0.00 ERAs. They give up runs. In order to win games, the offense has to build leads so that those runs don't decide the game.

Anyone know about how long it takes them to refund the money? My credit card payment is due on October 18. Is it a pipe dream to think I'll have it by then?

Exactly how many posts do you have in threads started by others??? Contributing to a message board isn't just starting a bunch of threads with polls. It's contributing to discussions started by others.

I don't think there approach was all that much better in June. Free-swinging, low OBP guys get on hot streaks, and a lot of them went on hot streaks. And Dunn isn't the problem. You can't look at his average. He is the most unique .210 hitter ever. Maybe in an ideal world you have enough good hitters in your lineup that you don't have to bat him 3rd, but I don't see the Sox having the resources to make that happen.

I have visited Seattle, and I didn't care for it, and I know plenty of people who would never live in Chicago because they hate snow.

I don't remember Hawaii ever having a 6-6, 7-5 type season. Seems like they're usually 2-10 and then out of nowhere they have a 11-1 season.

Tiger in an ideal pairing this morning--None.

Did people overreact? No. The offense still only scored three runs. Do you think the pitchers can allow 2 or fewer runs for five more games in a row? Unlikely.

Did somebody say, "Not Dead Yet?"

If you have to ask this question, you need to start watching more baseball.

If there is a job you can get based entirely on ability to answer stupid brain teasers, let me know. I'm really good at those. Every job interview I have requires you to be good at stuff like relating to people.

I'm not into having 250+ cloudy/rainy days per year, I'm not into coffee, and Seattle is really far from the rest of the country, so it rates pretty low in my book. The entire state of Florida is too humid for my tastes.

Vlad is the rare exception. Think about all the free-swinging types. Only one of them ended up being as good as Vlad. Vlad also didn't have four other free swingers surrounding him in the order so pitchers had to throw him strikes. Viciedo will never reach his full potential batting between AJ and Alexei.

It wouldn't be a stupid, reactionary move. Yes I get that Viciedo is young, but there's no guarantee that he learns plate discipline and he's not going to be an elite player without it. Like I said earlier, you can make a good, sound, argument for keeping any one of the five, but keeping all five of them or even four is suicide. Some guys have to go.

They must have early plans. They might be out of there after 11-12 holes.

A .208/.338/.481 line is sure to set or at least be close to all kinds of odd records.

Well, you just can't keep all five of them. It simply isn't going to work. You're going to have to detach your emotions and accept that at least two of them need to go, and yes, one of them might be Viciedo. And yes, this is the time to b**** about poor OBP, because this week was the perfect example. The top of the lineup got on base and the bottom of the order couldn't drive them in because they are constantly givng away ABs by swinging at bad pitches.

The Par 3s and Par 5s are both evenly split between odd and even, so there's no obvious strategy there. The only thing I see is that the two shortest Par 4s are both odd so maybe have your weaker driver take the odds since he'll probably use irons on those two.

There's one way to do that--not play him.

Every player has to tee off for half the holes, either odd or even.

Yeah, last night's runs were scored on a GIDP and HBP.