It's funny. But Greg has a point. I've never been less impressed with a 3-game sweep by the Sox in almost 20 years (yes, I know I can't recall every sweep of the last 20 years). But you get the point. I just don't feel like we're playing any better now than we were before Friday. BUT I'll take the wins anyway we can get them.

 

The thing is, our offense is still playing about as badly as possible. We could easily be 4-15 right now, etc. I'll take 3 games under .500 considering how much has gone wrong. I'm thrilled with the weekend sweep, and it's nice to have some excitement and energy with the team.

I hate winning.

 

I was looking forward to the 2011 Draft.

The thing is, our offense is still playing about as badly as possible. We could easily be 4-15 right now, etc. I'll take 3 games under .500 considering how much has gone wrong. I'm thrilled with the weekend sweep, and it's nice to have some excitement and energy with the team.

 

And we could easily be 15-4 if our hitters had been even near their career norms.

 

God people, enjoy yourselves when times are good.

I hate winning.

 

Absolutely.

 

And I hate come from behind victories... and walk-off wins even worse.

 

 

And if we had been on the Seattle end of it people would be screaming about not accepting moral victories.

 

Like I said, I'll take the wins. Not complaining a bit about that. I just thought there was some validity in what Greg said. We blew a 5-2 lead Friday. Blew another late lead (albeit only 1 run) yesterday and scored a measly 3 runs on a passed ball, a GO and the PK HR today. We're obviously not going to consistently win games with 8th and 9th inning HRs. They're going to have to play A LOT better.

 

The thing is, our offense is still playing about as badly as possible. We could easily be 4-15 right now, etc. I'll take 3 games under .500 considering how much has gone wrong. I'm thrilled with the weekend sweep, and it's nice to have some excitement and energy with the team.

 

Let's just say we were fortunate to avoid Felix and Lee (the latter is set to return April 30). And 8-11 is worlds better than 5-14. I'll never complain about wins. But it's easy to see they didn't play good baseball. Rangers/Yankees coming up next. If they play those two teams like they did this last series, will look up and be 8-17.

 

Holy s***! Your avatar's trying to poke my eyes out.

Mother always said "You'll go blind if you keep that up"

So long as Jenks kept the fastball up, Griffey didn't stand a chance. Griffey's bat speed is waaaay to slow anymore to catch up with mid to high 90s heat period, and getting it up leaves him hopeless. Leaving Jenks in for that really isn't that questionable of a move.

 

How can anybody question leaving Jenks in? He's the closer. I mean let's discuss reasonable matters, not make up things to question Ozzie on. That is a no brainer. Jenks is the closer. Why would he bring Thornton in. The only way you do that is if Thornton is the closer. He's not.

Like somebody said ... no manager in baseball pulls Jenks there.

 

Great sweep, but five total hits? That just plain sucks.

Very very glad we didn't waste a great pitching perfomance though. You give up just a couple runs YOU NEED TO WIN.

Nice sweep, keep it going, white Sox. Follow the lead of Paulie who has been a f***ing stud.

 

And here's Oz's quote in the Trib story:

“Bobby, I was a little bit uncomfortable with him. I just wanted to make sure he was fine. And he was. Bobby’s my closer until we think he can’t do it anymore. I showed him my vote of confidence there.

“If I don’t make those decisions, I lose confidence from my players because they don’t think I’m going to believe in them.”

Edited April 26, 201015 yr by greg775

Congrats Ozzie, you needed that...to prove your decision-making process (by gut, not by the book) to stay with Danks against Gutierrez and not to pull Jenks for Thornton against Ken Griffey, Jr. both worked out.

 

Of course, you were really DUMB not to have Thornton warmed and ready for a LH PH.

 

Then again, it's going to kill Matty if we have him warming up or pitching in 120 games. No matter how easy/repeatable his delivery, he can't take that kind of stress/duress all season long. It's only April 25th, after all.

 

Konerko: April Player of the Month

A. Jones/Alex Rios: April Comeback Player of the Month

AJ/Ramirez/Pierre/Becks=FAIL...FAIL...FAIL

i dont know, maybe they didnt show it on tv, but i was there and when jenks came into the game thornton was indeed up and throwing in the pen. great game

Again, I'll take the wins.

 

I can see positives - I'm psyched about Danks and particularly Garcia.

 

This team is in big, big trouble offensively, especially when they go on the road to a bigger ballpark.

 

i dont know, maybe they didnt show it on tv, but i was there and when jenks came into the game thornton was indeed up and throwing in the pen. great game

Oh he was definitely up, and he was ready. Was just sitting there flipping the ball and waiting for the call when Bobby got into trouble...

I'm thrilled that we got the sweep, even if we won each game by only one run.

 

In tying to stay positive and look at the bright side of things, wasn't one of the things that was said about the 2005 team was that they won a lot of one run games which helped them to be confident later on that they could win these type of games when it really mattered?

 

Hopefully we are building confidence for our playoff run!

And we could easily be 15-4 if our hitters had been even near their career norms.

 

God people, enjoy yourselves when times are good.

 

And we could be 4-15 or 8-11 or 11-8 or 15-4 if our hitters were hitting the cover off the ball and our pitching staff was pitching about as bad as imaginable. Literally any alternate universe could yield any result. So what?

 

I'm glad we got the wins. If it's the powder keg that lights off a season full of memories, I will gladly eat crow.

 

I think the point stands that we won despite a continued s***ty approach to offense that has been generally proven to be utterly unsustainable in terms of long term success. It's unimaginable, but our dependence on the home run in terms of winning is seemingly worse than ever.

 

For those who think I'm being too pessimistic, if we had lost two of three close well-played games featuring a more varied offensive approach I probably would have felt better about turning this thing around over the course of the season. I'm trying not to be results-oriented because in the short term, results are all over the map.

 

In the long run, our offense, if the overall approach is left unchanged, will not succeed.

 

 

 

Southpaw was giving the the Mariners' on-field reporter the business with a broom during the post-game show today. Funny stuff.

 

And we could be 4-15 or 8-11 or 11-8 or 15-4 if our hitters were hitting the cover off the ball and our pitching staff was pitching about as bad as imaginable. Literally any alternate universe could yield any result. So what?

 

I'm glad we got the wins. If it's the powder keg that lights off a season full of memories, I will gladly eat crow.

 

I think the point stands that we won despite a continued s***ty approach to offense that has been generally proven to be utterly unsustainable in terms of long term success. It's unimaginable, but our dependence on the home run in terms of winning is seemingly worse than ever.

 

For those who think I'm being too pessimistic, if we had lost two of three close well-played games featuring a more varied offensive approach I probably would have felt better about turning this thing around over the course of the season. I'm trying not to be results-oriented because in the short term, results are all over the map.

 

In the long run, our offense, if the overall approach is left unchanged, will not succeed.

 

What is this approach you speak of? Are you implying that the "approach" of the offense is for more than half the lineup to be hitting at or around .200? Its not an alternate universe, its simple logic. If even the majority of our lineup was even sniffing their career averages, we are easily above .500. That is not reaching, that's just truth.

a few of our power hitters (oh my god i said OUR implying i'm on the team!) are hitting home runs. This is a good thing. Our contact hitters are not getting on base at all. This isn't an approach. Hitting home runs is a good thing. But hitting home runs on a team with a good OBP is a great thing.

I'm already sensing I'm gonna get roasted for this entire seires of posts, but I guess I am being pretty nebulous about "approach"

 

It would seem as if based on their stats, Quentin and Konerko are the types of guys who go real well as long as they are hitting a lot of homers, and who really don't if they aren't. Relying on that as a significant part of a 2010 team approach to our offense seems dubious at best. Jones seems to be this way too, especially at this point in his career - 2005-2007 (which were decent-good years for him - including that 51 homer season) his BABIP was in the .240-.264 range. I shudder to think what his results will be when he can't hit 10 homers a month.

 

Additionally, it would seem as though a couple of our contact hitters are lost up there, i.e. their head is just nowhere near where it needs to be. I guess that's more of an individual approach. This is more frightening to me, because so many of them seem to have the exact same illness that no one can effectively diagnose other than "they'll come out of it based on career numbers". How do you explain a 2003 Konerko with this sentiment in mind?

 

So if 1/3rd of our lineup is great as long as its hitting homers (jones, quentin, konerko)

if 1/3rd of our lineup is great as long as they are making contact (pierre, beckham, rios)

and 1/3rd of our lineup is filled with question marks nobody seems to have good answers to (ramirez and pierzynski are going inexplicably really bad, teahen going well but is a huge question mark longterm)

 

I'm trying to figure out over a baseball season exactly how this lineup, seemingly hanging on by a thread, clicks over an extended period of time. Maybe I just have unrealistic expectations.

 

I was extremely afraid that as constructed, the team was offensively thin and one-dimensional. It seems even more that way looking at the stats.

 

It's sad, because I think this team is exactly one impact bat away from being a true contender.

Edited April 26, 201015 yr by Greg Hibbard

Paulie is a god; there I said it.

Couple of things. Because of the off day, many RP were throwing in the pen to get work in. Thorton was one of them. He was throwing in the 9th and ready to go.

 

The thing about Jenks, Byrnes was not swinging until he had two strikes. The pitch to Kotchman had great movement unfortunatly he did not get it inside enough and it broke out over the plate.

 

Rios needed to catch the ball in center he seems to be aware of he wall.

 

Danks is the White Sox best pitcher.

 

Will Greg Walker get any credit for the work he did with Rios if he has a year to match his salary?

 

 

 

 

Hate to think where the White Sox would be right now without John Danks.

 

KW's been criticized a lot for some moves that he's made, I think you can argue that selling high on B-Mac and getting back Danks could be his best ever move as a GM.

Will Greg Walker get any credit for the work he did with Rios if he has a year to match his salary?

 

 

Are you kidding? Coaches are only recognized for their work when things go wrong.

 

The smartest thing would be to fire Walker now before he has a chance to screw him up again.

 

 

 

Paulie is a god; there I said it.

 

You will deify any player if they have a big moment. there, i said it.

Hate to think where the White Sox would be right now without John Danks.

 

KW's been criticized a lot for some moves that he's made, I think you can argue that selling high on B-Mac and getting back Danks could be his best ever move as a GM.

 

Probably 6-13 without Danksy.

 

The B-Mac for Danks/Masset deal was absolute gem by KW. And I remember being so pissed off when it happened, thinking that B-Mac was gonna be awesome.

I'm already sensing I'm gonna get roasted for this entire seires of posts, but I guess I am being pretty nebulous about "approach"

 

It would seem as if based on their stats, Quentin and Konerko are the types of guys who go real well as long as they are hitting a lot of homers, and who really don't if they aren't. Relying on that as a significant part of a 2010 team approach to our offense seems dubious at best. Jones seems to be this way too, especially at this point in his career - 2005-2007 (which were decent-good years for him - including that 51 homer season) his BABIP was in the .240-.264 range. I shudder to think what his results will be when he can't hit 10 homers a month.

 

Additionally, it would seem as though a couple of our contact hitters are lost up there, i.e. their head is just nowhere near where it needs to be. I guess that's more of an individual approach. This is more frightening to me, because so many of them seem to have the exact same illness that no one can effectively diagnose other than "they'll come out of it based on career numbers". How do you explain a 2003 Konerko with this sentiment in mind?

 

So if 1/3rd of our lineup is great as long as its hitting homers (jones, quentin, konerko)

if 1/3rd of our lineup is great as long as they are making contact (pierre, beckham, rios)

and 1/3rd of our lineup is filled with question marks nobody seems to have good answers to (ramirez and pierzynski are going inexplicably really bad, teahen going well but is a huge question mark longterm)

 

I'm trying to figure out over a baseball season exactly how this lineup, seemingly hanging on by a thread, clicks over an extended period of time. Maybe I just have unrealistic expectations.

 

I was extremely afraid that as constructed, the team was offensively thin and one-dimensional. It seems even more that way looking at the stats.

 

It's sad, because I think this team is exactly one impact bat away from being a true contender.

 

But that argument is still sketchy. Of course PK/TCQ hit well when they are hitting HR's. Hitting HR's is usually an indicator of doing at least something right in the box, I wouldn't expect a .150 hitting TCQ to be hitting bombs left and right.

 

It all comes down to this really: if you honestly believe Alexei, AJ, Pierre, TCQ, and Beckham are going to hit ~.200 for the season, then theres nothing to convince you otherwise. But if you realize that these guys are all healthy, not coming off the juice, and are not old (save for AJ) yet...they will eventually get around their career numbers in which case you just hope the 4 guys actually hitting remain hot.

Couple of things. Because of the off day, many RP were throwing in the pen to get work in. Thorton was one of them. He was throwing in the 9th and ready to go.

 

The thing about Jenks, Byrnes was not swinging until he had two strikes. The pitch to Kotchman had great movement unfortunatly he did not get it inside enough and it broke out over the plate.

 

Rios needed to catch the ball in center he seems to be aware of he wall.

 

Danks is the White Sox best pitcher.

 

Will Greg Walker get any credit for the work he did with Rios if he has a year to match his salary?

 

Actually it was the opposite in his case. Ozzie said after Matt went 2.1 on Friday that he wasn't pitching Saturday, and didn't want him to pitch on Sunday either if he could help it.

Actually it was the opposite in his case. Ozzie said after Matt went 2.1 on Friday that he wasn't pitching Saturday, and didn't want him to pitch on Sunday either if he could help it.

 

I know but Thorton was warming in the pen and it was not soft toss. I am not sure why he was throwing but Linebrink and Pena were up in 6th and 7th to get their work in.