Every time the Sox get a man on he is immediately sent running into a certain out on an unsuccessful steal attempt.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

As soon as Rios was out I thought of you.

_________________

Gotta make something happen. Especially in the AL

That's why Mike Scossia is a genius

I don't think DeAza was sent. I think he has a green light pretty much whenever he wants. Rios is probably 50-50 in that regard.


I'd DB Ventura and/or the coaching staff more for letting Tyler Flowers continue to backhand balls in the dirt allowing opposing baserunners to advance and score.

_________________

The current White Sox team is a lot like the team in 1967.

Chris Sale = Gary Peters
Jake Peavy = Joel Horlen
Jose Quintana = Tommy John
Gavin Floyd = Bruce Howard

If only Konerko and Dunn could discover the same will to win that Tommie Agee and Pete Ward had, this team might really be able to do something.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Then Ventura should change the light to red. DeAza is bad at stealing bases.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Isn't that even worse for Ventura?

_________________

Robin seems like an intelligent dude so you would think that at some point this would click for him that maybe this is not the best strategy. Yet it never does.

_________________
"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

There's an entire White Sox culture that fetishizes the running game. Traditionally, the Sox had to squeeze out runs because it was nearly impossible to hit in the old ballpark. I swear there are games now where I see more homers hit than I saw in entire seasons when I was a little kid. Thus, the old time Sox fan has a strange disdain for the homerun.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

23 for 33
70%

Wonder how many of those ten would have scored?

It's hard to say. But it's not just that. It's that an inning suddenly got shorter for the pitcher.

If I were running a team my mantra would be that we do not make outs on the bases. I see outs on the bases as offensive errors.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Honest question....who would you say the present day Zolio Versalles is?

_________________

Elmhurst Steve

_________________

That might have some legs. Zolio wasn't paying for drinks at bars either. He would just walk in and be like hey there I am Zolio you may have heard me on the radio. He was kind of a big deal.

_________________

Conor Gillaspie

_________________

Starlin Castro

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

So Starlin is going to win 2 gold gloves and a MVP? I'll take it!

_________________

This thread does not even address his most glaring weakness: his poor handling of when to keep a pitcher in and when to remove him.

Boilermaker Rick has been exposed. Robin is an average to slightly below average manager and that hire puts another black mark on the KW legacy

_________________
O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

You admitted you'd hate the hire no matter what.

Last year, the hire looked good. This year, using your words, it looks "average". Yup, you got me.

_________________
You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

its a ruse to divert your attention from the fact that the players aren't any good.

_________________
Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

I've been saving these since last year.



I guess we can only attribute things to a manager when it goes badly.

_________________
You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Well, I think a manager can do more to fuck shit up than he can to help a team win. Truthfully, way too much is made of managers.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I agree. I've been disappointed with Robin in that I expected him to learn better from his mistakes.

You just can't discount his success last year because the players did well and then not also discount the fact that much of the team has played poorly.

_________________
You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

You are looking at it wrong.

As I've said, the overwhelming majority of baseball managers have little impact on the outcome of a season. It was pretty obvious Ventura was going to be in that group. He didn't want the job. He wasn't looking for the job. He had made no preparations in his life to hold the job.

The failure of the hire isn't in Ventura being a member of the committee of the average. The failure is that you (meaning KW) didn't really attempt to be great.

I think I have been consistent in this criticism.

_________________
O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Praise the players when good, blame the manager when bad has been your consistent stance.

You also called it a bad hire. It certainly hasn't been a bad hire. Average hire would be the worst you could call it at least through two seasons.

_________________
You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Hiring an average person when you had the ability to look for great makes it a bad hire.

I don't blame or praise Ventura for the production of the players. It seems pretty obvious to me that he isn't impacting their production on a macro level. I do blame him for a managerial style that takes the ability for them to produce or fail out of their hands. That IS something directly attributable to him. Joe has pointed out running out of innings. I'd add asking players who cannot bunt, to bunt.

Then there is the bullpen issue. An example of his style occurred on Monday which I had the fortune to focus on because I was at the game. Axelrod was pitching well, having not given up anything for five innings. He was on a low pitch count and going into the 7th. The Sox had a four run lead. Poppi is up first. Great LH but one who did not look good in his previous at bats and obviously was going to be up with the bases empty. It seems like a perfect time to let your young pitcher pitch. Instead, up comes Thornton.

Now, the production is on Thornton. Waking the guy you were specifically brought in to pitch to is not the manager's fault. However, the thinking behind it is all Ventura. Sure Thornton hadn't pitched in five days and this was a LH at the top of an inning but that is robotic managing. The game situation didn't dictate a change. In addition to the immediate impact, that decision had unanticipated consequences as Matt failed, sending the whole bullpen into a round of unnecessary work

Someone who had been through that situation in the past as a coach or manager at any level might have seen that situation differently but Ventura is learning on the job. Except, he is not really learining on the job because he seems to already be looking to get out the managing business.

_________________
O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

This doesn't even touch on the issue that KW hired a guy that by all accounts he had to drag into the position and now, within a year of the hire there are already indications that he wants out.

_________________
O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

We have different definitions of "bad hire". Your stance seems to be that this was a bad hire from the start because it wasn't a great hire and that will never change. Even if Robin delivers us yet another World Series title, you would still have to treat it as a bad hire. I just can't go with that.

I'll fully admit that Robin has not improved as much as I would hope. He's got a long way to go for me ever to call him a "bad hire". If anything, I see his time ending with the White Sox considering him an average member during a time of average White Sox baseball.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Guillen did the same shit. Most managers do. Doesn't make it right, but still its pretty commonplace. Thats why the 2005 ALCS is even more impressive when you dig deeper. Games 1, 2, 3, and 5 were all pretty close and Guillen let the starters go.

_________________

The day Ventura was hired I said the White Sox just got a great manager.....in 3 years. I see no reason to change that opinion.