The Ultimate Champion

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jun 8, 2014 -> 10:16 AM) What would you call for Tyler Kolek in that situation? A bus ticket back to Kannapolis, why?

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jun 8, 2014 -> 10:11 AM) I don't know who is next, please list 50 more ex players lol Don't ask for something you don't want to get.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jun 8, 2014 -> 09:54 AM) Who's next, Aaron Rowand? Carl Everett? Jim Thome? Konerko? Thome and Konerko personality-wise would be no different from Ventura, one would imagine. AJ as player/manager like Don Kessinger or Lou Boudreau? Have always thought Omar Vizquel would make a good manager...pretty sure he's currently with the Tigers' coaching staff, working with their infielders. He did a lot of great things with Alexei, and defense is one of our biggest areas we need to show improvement in to be a playoff-caliber team. Of course, Robin Ventura because almost as famous for his defense as for his hitting. FWIW, a lot of people who watch Trout say he struggles the most with sliders and a bit with two-seamers this year. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/forcing-a-r...out-mike-trout/ One other thing about Sale is that he should call off the catcher any time he wants to. And not saying he would have done that there, but that's what the great pitchers do and he's a great pitcher himself. Buehrle is really one of the exceptions, but if you've got a Sale out there and he knows the game and he knows how to pitch then you let him be the man out there, and if he puts it on his own shoulders & gets hurt by it, so be it. He can take it.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jun 8, 2014 -> 09:28 AM) All I can say is leaving Sale in there to pitch to Trout was dangerous...it's too soon off his injury to have him trying to get Trout there having thrown that many pitches. If this is a developmental season, and not a competitive one, you don't risk Sale exerting too much effort there just to try and save the game. Robin wasn't trying to save the game, he was putting his confidence in Sale. Saving the game would have been getting a reliever up very early in the inning, at least one manager visit while the guy warms up, then he sends Flowers out there, etc. Protocol. Robin was letting Sale pitch through the adversity. No problem with that IMO. The injury stuff, what you're looking for is mechanical changes that are compensating for something. That's almost certainly 90% or more of what Don Cooper is looking at and monitoring during every single one of Sale's starts. Doesn't matter if the bags are empty or loaded, or if it's the 1st inning or the 9th, if Coop sees something he's going to run out there immediately and the bullpen will be up and going. Weaver the night before, that's the kind of stuff Sale needs to learn how to do, and he's been becoming much more of a pitcher. He gets his groundballs when he needs them, his Ks when he needs him, and the Trout situation last night was the toughest situation any pitcher ever gets himself in during the course of a regular season game. Only way that situation can get any tougher is if you magnify it by the playoffs. But sometimes you get a situation like that where the hitter has seen everything you've got, he's on the change, almost on the fastball, you haven't thrown him a good slider yet during the game but he's seen it against the rest of the lineup and you certainly can't hang him one, etc. There's a point where as great as the stuff is it is not enough, you need to pitch/think your way through it, and that's where we are with Sale. Remove all the health/injury stuff and look at Sale just in terms of his young age, experience level, and level of dominance and the path he's on is the kind of path that takes you to the Hall if you can pitch long enough to get there. So obviously he is going to want to model himself after all those types of pitchers, and he's just learning how to do that. But yeah, Coop is all over the mechanics. There is zero chance they f*** around with Sale at all if they see something concerning. And there's no reason to confuse the discomforting feeling of tight situational baseball pressure with "oh my god his elbow is going to snap." That's not fair to him at all nor is it even logical.

That was a hard loss to watch but it doesn't really bother me at all. Part of me actually likes (if not loves) the decision to leave Sale in through all that. Yes, he was gassed, yes his defense let him down once again, yes he was facing Trout who hit the ball hard off him before & who had seen everything Sale had to offer, BUT if he gets through that inning what does that do for his confidence level? The bomb to Delmon Young in DET isn't something he has forgotten, and this situation, getting through that is kind of like getting even there. I think lost in all this stuff is that we're developing Sale too here. This is not a contending season nor should we treat it as one. Sale is already an ace, but he's also going to be our horse in the playoffs, and facing that kind of extreme pressure in a non-contending regular season game could be a good thing in the long run. Did Robin manage himself to a loss? Of course, and he's a pretty poor game manager anyway and we've known this for a while. I don't care so much about that. I do like him trusting Sale to that degree though, even though I completely disagree with putting a similar level of trust in any other pitcher on our team, especially a closer. But overall I'm not sure Robin is going to be the guy when we're a great team again, in fact, I'm not sure that was ever the idea on the Sox FO part anyway. I think Robin was a purely developmental type of guy who had upside to be more than that. Anyway it just doesn't really bother me. Sale is our guy. That loss hurts our ego, it certainly hurts mine, but again this is going to be our horse in the playoffs, this is the guy we're going to ride deep on, and as long as you keep the guy healthy & you're making sure he's not so gassed that his mechanics are off & he is endangering himself, then I say take the kid gloves off and let him develop as the bulldog he wants to be. And lastly I have to say I am certainly not in love with Tyler Flowers game calling at all. I can't remember the hitter, think it was Hamilton, but he had Hamilton set up to be put away with the fastball on the outside/off the plate, or at least it would have been tough for him to make contract out there, yet Flowers calls slow again in and it's ripped for a hit. Also vs. Trout in the slam sequence which you could see coming well into Kendrick's AB, Trout was really close to timing the fastball but you could tell he was looking offspeed. I get why you don't want to give him a fastball 3-2 with the bases loaded but why the f*** don't you throw the slider? He's looking for less velocity anyway and he's close enough to the fastball to get the bat out there and hit it hard, so give him some break. A 3-2 slider to the best offensive weapon in baseball, bases jacked, game on the line etc. that's balls right there and the correct call. No way should Flowers have called a change right there IMO, either another fastball which he was behind on but close to or you give him the wipeout pitch. I just don't like the way Flowers calls things sometimes and I don't think it's coming from the bench because I don't think Robin really cares about that part of the game.

1. Rodon 2. Mi Johnson 3. Danish 4. Montas 5. Sanchez 6. Adams 7. Beck 8. Anderson Are the guys that intrigue/excite me ATM and in that order. As far as rankings, who cares.

QUOTE (maggsmaggs @ Jun 7, 2014 -> 03:15 PM) The big problem I have with rating Beck high is that he has been declining in performance ever since his sophomore year. He is simply trending the wrong direction. I hope the working-on-a-pitch theory is the reason, but I am having a hard time buying it. It might be stamina and conditioning more than a pitch thing. Need him to throw the fastball as a means of working him deeper and building strength. I think the thing on Beck was always the re-training of the body after taking the wrong workout routine, well maybe it's about loosening him up and making him work the right way.

I like the Padres logo & uniforms.

Ok so if your name is Kiley why don't you just call yourself kYylE? Seriously that's a major issue for me.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Jun 7, 2014 -> 12:27 PM) Yeah was gonna post that. Sounds like he flat out sucks. Filler. He's a silver star player, according to our scouting department. Silver star = TWTW.

QUOTE (DirtySox @ Jun 7, 2014 -> 10:46 AM) Today should be somewhat interesting in how the teams draft. Past round 10 each pick is slotted at $100,000. But you can offer a player as much as you want, it just counts against your entire allotment. Thus if you saved money in rounds 1 through 10, you can draft some tougher signs and offer them whatever the hell want as long as you have the money available. Also unlike the first ten rounds, not signing a player now doesn't remove the recommended allotment ($100,000) from your pool. So we can expect some teams (Cubs?) to take a shot at the highly ranked super tough signs today. IE: Bakauskas, Mac Marshall, Weisenberg, Montes De Orca, JJ Schwarz, McKinney etc. Perhaps we will see the Sox grab a tougher prep sign or two today. Once again though, it really depends on how expensive they think Rodon will be and how much they expect to have saved in the first ten rounds. All those guys will be taken anyway, not really for the signing, just for the meet and greet stuff. IE this is our team, come out to dinner with us, blah blah blah, we'll be looking at you next time you're eligible.

Our 3rd round pick:

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Jun 7, 2014 -> 10:11 AM) Need more subtlety, like Quintanya What's more subtle than a giant lizard covered with feathers? Especially an all-knowing one that flies. Doesn't get more subtle than that, ultimate subtlety. Should have just said "Jose Lizardguy"

Laumann said they have a silver star rating thing where they ask their scouts to put a silver star on a player that they just have a "gut feeling" about, meaning more of a character/make up thing, and they take those guys at this stage Also the Sox send their scouts out to watch players who are 2-sport guys play other sports, and they don't just look at in-game stuff, they try to get to know the kids and find out a lot about their character, background, and so on. So obviously the Sox were quite impressed by Adams as a basketball player and I'm sure they saw things on the court there that they think are excellent signs re: his makeup on the mound. They like Adams a lot.

QUOTE (Feeky Magee @ Jun 7, 2014 -> 10:05 AM) Fry Asse

Also Laumann said that their approach to this day is, ex. take a look at the 20 lefties left on the board, try to figure out the best 4-5 of them and get one, etc. with the same approach applying to other positions like C. Laumann sounds very not Buddy Bellish, that's a good thing, I'd like to hear more of him.

And Laumann doesn't sound as if there's any concerns with Adams at all. Likes Frye, thinks he'll be on the fast track.

Also Laumann said he'd make a pick for Bruuuuuuuuuce and let him know who he is later, that pick being a baseball player, probably not anyone that has tools that make you go "wow" just someone who is not a total dumbf*** on the bases and in playing the field

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 7, 2014 -> 09:38 AM) HIghlights? 11-40 is a crapshoot, going to be some organizational guys taken especially MIFers, but about 11-20 or 25 are guys that maybe one day have a shot. Laumann is hoping there's at least one guy beyond 11 that can make it to the bigs hopefully more. Also Laumann will let Rodon determine where he is. Expects Rodon pitching in 3-4 weeks, lowest he'd start A+, maybe Birmingham

QUOTE (Feeky Magee @ Jun 6, 2014 -> 10:33 PM) Defensive metrics aren't great in small sample-sizes but for what it's worth, he ranks 7th of 29 qualified first basemen in defensive runs saved. He also has a .793 God Damnit Percentage and a 2.1 GDP/9 which means we're averaging just over 2 "God damnit Alejandro"s per game and unfortunately every time the numbers go down a little they pop right back up again. The great thing about GDP is it includes baserunning, defense, and offense and it's a wonderful reason to can the guy. Dunn's back to being crap again but at least he can catch the ball some in LF. I mean how the f*** do you let Adam Dunn outplay you in the OF. God damn it DeAza what the hell is wrong with you?

QUOTE (bmags @ Jun 6, 2014 -> 04:10 PM) Probably the next Mike Trout. Or Mike Hock

Aww the Braves took the Diaz kid I wanted And Skyler Ewing is gone too.

QUOTE (chitownsportsfan @ Jun 6, 2014 -> 03:34 PM) Yea I was gonna say the last thing you want to do is over extend yourself with the bonus money and have to let Adams go. Gotta be careful with these picks and make sure there is money there for Adams and Rodon. Yeah I think that's all that is happening. I'd like at least ONE more exiciting player though if at all possible. Or at least a nice looking RP prospect that on the surface doesn't need 2-3 years in the minors.

Well if you put him on the mound & he's bad the manager will get to pull his Peter hahaha okay so the excitment here is all gone

QUOTE (flavum @ Jun 6, 2014 -> 02:41 PM) Rodon and Adams sign 6 weeks from today or sooner? What say you? Rodon sooner, Adams later. That MLB bullpen stint and potential crunch time gig is going to be too much for Rodon to pass up. Sox IMO will give him more than slot, negotiate friendly, not Marlins style, try to load him up with perks and get the deal done. Sooner he's with the Sox the better. We want to make a good impression on the kid so that he, like John Danks before him, can dump that piece of s*** before arbitration time gets close. First round pick discussions are childs play in comparison to talking with Borass about a high quality arb-eligible MLB LHSP.