Sox, Tribe, and Twins in the AL. Cards and Crew in the NL. All within a couple games of each other.

Hopefully the Cubs go on a couple nice long losing streaks to get a higher draft pick.

Going to be a fun last stretch of the season.

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

The Sox should bow out of the race, as they have failed to meet "expectations"

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I must say your sudden interest in baseball season has been a fun addition as well.

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

I'm actually a lifelong Sox fan Ralph. I avoided that section for years mostly because the "loudest voices in the room" seemed to be rather miserable and negative all of the time. I have always followed the team however.

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You don't seem like a guy that would avoid stuff because of negative nellys, but whatever the case glad to see you contributing to the baseball sections.

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

The negativity is ingrained. Since 1919. It's been my experience that if a white sox fan ain't bitchin', he ain't invested. Hell, when Frank Thomas was at his peak, Sox fans were 50/50 on him.

Nah I have been a Sox Fan a helluva lot longer than that idiot Frank and it isn't endemic for Sox fans to whine all of the time. Not about the team anyway. Ownership yes. Media coverage yes. Ballpark yes. During the early Thomas years you didn't hear much complaining about the team either, as they tended to be World Series caliber good.

And people were pissed (25 years ago this year) when they made the "White Flag Trade", something MANY so called fans seem to have called for this year for some odd reason

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Frank Thomas should have had 800 HRs. Hriniak wrecked that. With an ass like Frank's, you dig in that back foot and squish the shit out of the bug.

Am I an outlier?

Ugh...the White Flag Trade...hindsight being what it was, they weren't touching Cleveland that year. They weren't winning the division on the backs of Danny Darwin and Wilson Alvarez. Oddly enough, looking back, Keith Foulke had the best career out of all the pieces in that trade.

The San Francisco Giants received:
Wilson Álvarez, left-handed starting pitcher
Danny Darwin, right-handed starting pitcher
Roberto Hernández, right-handed relief pitcher

The Chicago White Sox received:
Keith Foulke, right-handed pitcher
Bob Howry, right-handed pitcher
Lorenzo Barceló, right-handed pitcher
Ken Vining, left-handed pitcher
Mike Caruso, shortstop
Brian Manning, outfielder

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The lineup was never good enough around Frank to allow for 800 homers. Too many stretches of easy outs around him, so teams just walked him to get to Dan Pasqua to hit into a double play. That same strategy didn't work against Bonds when teams tried it because the Giants had a solid lineup at the time, and you could almost bet on Jeff Kent doing something if they walked Bonds to get to him.

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But being 3 games out and tapping out pissed MANY fans off because even if you couldn't catch Cleveland you still had to make a go of it.

Yes Foulke did but at the time Barcelo was projected to be the best player of the trade. Injuries derailed his career however.

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I don't remember much about Barcelo....I remember Howry was a decent bullpen arm and Caruso wound up replacing Ozzie at short briefly

I completely agree that tapping out when only 3 games out was terrible.

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This "I'm a legit and loyal White Sox fan" bit LTG is playing is awful. Give it up already.

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Jesus christ...can we just not do this here?

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Barcelo barely made it out the minors because of injuries but he was regarded as having the best stuff of the group. Threw about 97-98 MPH with an absolute yakker of a curveball. He was the "centerpiece" of the trade at the time but arm troubles in the minors killed whatever career he was supposed to have had. He was about 19 at the time they traded for him (I believe) and his stuff was nasty.

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To be truthful, it's the ONLY thing that idiot knows of to do. That's why MANY have vacated that section actually. Whenever he enters ANY discussion, it's bound to be a natural regression shortly thereafter. But I digress.

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My posting habits with regard to the Sox and MLB have not changed. Can't say the same for someone else. He's only here to try and troll me and ruin the Sox section. Hopefully he gets tired soon, but I doubt it.

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Another victim of the late 90's laser arms that got destroyed. Probably because of the curveball too...I don't remember who the pitching coach was, but someone was talking about guys in that era destroying their elbows because they learned to throw curve balls the wrong way.


As an aside, as I was typing this response, and speaking of arm troubles, Chris Sale is done for the year again...got a popup on my phone lol.

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This gets tiring day after day.

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I agree, which is why I haven't quoted ltg in the baseball threads hardly at all over the last several days.

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Whatever. This is why I don't post here very often anymore. Sick of this shit.

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I think the Pitching coach at the time was likely CFMB's own Nardi Contreras

Yeah guys were blowing their arms out seemingly left and right. I don't know if the pitch count thing had taken shape yet but I think it had as a result.

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Most likely

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Worst pitching coach I ever saw. Hence the name.

I figured there was some sort of connection there

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Don't get me started.

I didn't mind the White Flag Trade. I never thought that team had a chance. I feel similarly about this team and wouldn't have been too upset with them being deadline sellers. Of course all the heat they took from the White Flag Trade made doing that difficult plus Reinsdorf is at a different point in his life.

The main difference is I think this team can win the division and is probably more likely to do so than its opponents. What then though? You have to get through not just one, but two historically great teams. Still, it's a funny game. If the Sox starters are sharp at playoff time, they have a fighting chance.

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Ecclesiastes 5:8

It really is amazing how weird things can get when the playoffs start.

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At full strength the Sox probably have no worse than the 3rd most talented team in the American League. And they have easily the most talented team in the division. Couple this with the fact that the team's core (Excluding Abreu) is young. With all of this being the case they can't be sellers. They have to ride this out for about 2 more seasons before they can even think of unloading players. I think LaRussa was only ever going to be a 2 year max manager so he is likely gone no matter what following the season. But in no way should they break this team up and start a rebuild. I still believe the biggest issue has been injuries. Particularly to key players. Only time will tell of course.

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And dominant starting pitching is the best kind of weird.

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