Says he wants change. If Kenny won't do it he'll make drastic changes in the line up for Tuesdays game. Once again, Ozzie dared Kenny to fire him. This time he dared Kenny to fire Greg Walker. I'm sure Walker appreciated that.

Here is Ozzie's comments
http://blogs.chicagosports.chicagotribune.com/sports_hardball/2008/06/guillen-has-eno.html

Kenny responded by saying something like this.

"It's interesting that the manager is calling out me since I've done nothing but support him. It should be fun to see what the line up is on Tuesday cuz I can't do anything in this market right now."

Ohhhhh. Awwwwww.

You know what's gonna happen from this?

Nothing. Ozzie will still be managing and the line up will be the same on Tuesday. With one exception. I'll bet Ozzie starts playing Brian Anderson for Swisher on a regular basis. I can see that happening.

Now everybody on talk radio and at the papers will go nuts with this for 2 days. That's all that will happen.

Ozzie will say "I was just frustrated" before Tuesday's game.

Swisher is another fucker that got rich cuz of steroids. Unlike Prior he reached free agency while on the juice. He got his money. Now it's illegal and he sucks.

I think the guy will be out of baseball after next year.

Swisher was in that A's system. Tejada and Giambi probably showed him how to use the needle.

Ozzie should not give the guys the day off tommorow. Or at least not the hitters. Every fucking position player on that team sans Quentin should be taking 200 swings tommorow.

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I would release Swisher, and make BA the starter in center. If he sucks, bring Owens up.

What?

Let me be more clear. Swisher was on steroids while with the A's. A franchise that had plenty of players, through the years, on roids. Swisher had a couple of decent years. The A's gave him a decent contract. Now roids are tested for and Swisher sucks.

With Zito's numbers then and now, you have to think he might have been on something too.

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Right. Good call on Zito.

Swisher is 27 years old. This should be his prime. A slump is one thing. This is a .200 average through 2 months. That's more than a slump. Hell, he was only a .250 average when he was good anyway.

Plus, the fucker has no power. His few hits are all weak singles. And if I see that son of a bitch take one more called third strike with a runner in scoring position I'm gonna break my TV.

Then he he gives that stupid look to the ump. It was right there Swisher!!! Swing the bat with 2 strikes and a guy on.

Im glad Ozzie did this. I dont really blame Kenny though, I blame the players. So far the Swisher trade isnt working out but Im not gonna blame Kenny for that. Alexai Ramirez really seems to be coming around. He could end up being a great offseason pickup for the price. The staff is awesome, and Kenny seems to have fixed the bullpen. The players need to be held accountable. Send Paulie down to the minors for a couple weeks for Fields or something like that to send a message. Ozzie's right, something needs to be done. If this pitching holds up it will be good enough to automatically make them a contender for the WS, but they are gonna need a decent offense to go with it.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

That's just it. I still thing they can win this division.

Christ, they're in first place.

Getting back to Ozzie's tirade.

I know it sounds like he was calling out Kenny but I don't think that's what he was doing. I've learned to speak "Ozzie" through the years.

He was just calling out the players.

Kenny took it the wrong way. Ozzie said "Kenny needs to make a move" so it sounds bad.

Ozzie knows Kenny can't do anything. He was just trying to light up the players. Nothing more than that.

Is Josh Fields healthy in the minors now ? If so, why not bring him up, and either DH him or throw him at 1B some ? Yes, I know he's not a 1B and he may suck defensively, but we have to find a way to kickstart this offense and I'm willing to at least try it.

I would put Paul Konerko on the DL for at least 15 days, and maybe through the all star break if that's what it takes for his bone bruise to heal. He is playing horrible.

Yes. I've been saying bring up Fields in the other threads here.

That's the obvious move. It's the only thing you can do right now.

They should do it then. Put him in, and if he hits, he stays in the lineup at the expense of either Konerko or Thome, if they can't get it going.

As bad as Thome and Konerko have been, Swisher pisses me off more.

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Me too. I can't stand him.

Thome is old and Konerko has been bothered by the bone bruise in this thumb.

Swisher has been as bad, maybe worse than these other guys. If we can put Konerko on the DL for a few weeks to get healthy, I'm also in favor of benching Swisher for about a week or so to clear his head. Let Brian Anderson get some at bats out there, and see if that either gets Anderson going or sends a message to Swisher. Again, like in Fields' case, if Anderson hits, he stays in the lineup.

Well we'll see real soon. From now until the week after the All Star break, for the most part, they have an extremely favorable schedule. Only 3 road series all of June, and one of those is at Wrigley. Colorado, Pittsburgh, Dodgers, Texas x2, Royals x3 all before the last week of July. If they are still a couple games up on the division by that point, they're in this til the end.

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One other point.

I know the Sox offense sucks. If you look around the AL, a lot of offenses are bad. This isn't the old AL of the last few years.

Pitching is better and offenses are down. It's the steroid era coming to an end.

Still, the Sox have to be better. We've failed in clutch spots. But because other offenses suck around the league I think our pitchers will carry us. We'll be in this into September. No doubt in my mind.

I'm not expecting the team average to be .285. What I am expecting is that when there is a runner on 3rd base with no outs, the Sox get him in to score.

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I know. If we would have just hit a few more sac flys when the situation called for it we'd have 5 or 6 more wins. It's pathetic.

You think after these last few threads people here will still call us "ass kissing, every thing is great" White Sox fans Frank?

i know this is a message board and all, but a lot of the talk on here re: steroids is totally irresponsible, especially as it relates to nick swisher and barry zito.

zito's going through the same thing buehrle is - he's a young(er, relatively) guy with old-man skills. lacking speed, both pitchers need to have their entire arsenal working - "control/command" and shape/speed (velocity) - otherwise, they live on the edge and get shelled. blaming zito's problems on steroids is ludicrous. his problem is that no curveball is worth that salary.

swisher is a somewhat unique position player in large part due to his similarity to the above pitchers. he has old-man skills (patience, slugging) in a bad body at a young age. he's not an athlete, and he's not a terribly great hitter in traditional terms. while his batting average will sit around .250 for his career, he may slug .500+ due to xbh and homeruns, the result of a patient approach. however, he's also living on the edge. seeing 4.5 p/pa means you're going to see a lot of strikes, and just like snowflakes, not every strike is the same. i still think he'll finish up the year with his normal line, but while i agree that his current production is infuriating, i wouldn't be so quick to point to steroids. not only was he never (possibly for a short time, i'm not looking it up) in the same clubhouse as tejada (or mcgwire and canseco for that matter) his is not a name that's ever been associated with that talk. the a's system he came up in was - for lack of a better word - clean.

I think Swisher was in their system when Tajada and Giambi were there.

I won't blame the players.

I think it was encouraged by the A's training staff. I think it was the A's way of doing things.

Too many guys there have done it. They probably gave the players the hook ups. Not to say other teams didn't do it. But the A's were the leaders. Too much evidence not to think so.

Don't compare Zito to Buehrle. Zito has been horrible for over a year. Buehrle still has good games every other start.

Thats just speculation, unless you were in that system with all of them. Nobody really knows who was clean and who wasnt.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Tejada

You said it Suckers.

Swisher really isn't an athlete. Yet he was able to have some mild success. His power is way down. It came down last year too.

If he can't hit the ball out he can't be in MLB. You accept a .250 hitting outfielder with 30 HRs. You can't have a .250 singles hitter, with no speed, for a corner outfielder. He's not even .250 for christ sake. Swisher won't be in MLB too much longer.

Sox are just gonna have to eat that contract. Maybe they can trade him if they eat some of that money. But you have to trade him in the off season before he sucks for 2 years in a row. Nobody will want him then. You still can find a sucker if you trade him after one bad year.

That's the whole point. 26-30 is your prime. He's 27. He is an experienced MLB player. No way this should be happening unless he was a juicer.

steroids =/= home runs, guys. kevin youkilis isn't a great athlete by any stretch, but his approach allows him to knock out a bunch of xbh each year. the problem is that the approach isn't everything, and when the approach fails - as it is for swisher, currently - it looks awful. just suck it up and wait this team out a few weeks. nobody's expectations were that high going in, so let's see what they're all about before we start accusing players of using steroids.