Honestly there’s nothing left to say other than I’m enjoying the Tribe’s death spiral more than I probably should. Enjoy your weekend, I’ll see you all on the flip side of the regular season.
Well it’s not a sweep (which against a team as miserable as the Tigers should always be the goal) but any series win at this point has to be viewed through a positive lens. Honestly if I’m being picky there were a few things that were this the middle of the season I might bitch more about, but at this point of the season all I can do is shrug and gaze longingly at the postseason (and Tim Anderson’s current batting average). The things that needed to be good this series were good (except for Reynaldo Lopez), and the things that didn’t matter were kind of good as well, but still didn’t matter. Playing the Tigers is good for reminding a fan base that despite all the things that have gone wrong for a team during a season, and this season there have been plenty, it can always be much much worse.
To The Bullets……OF THE FUTURE™
-The Sox hammered out 47 hits this weekend. 47!!! That’s…a lot. I would’ve wanted some more runs to go with those 47 hits but…POSITIVITY!!!
-TIM ANDERSON WATCH, GAME 155: Timmy did all right this weekend, getting 4 hits and keeping his average at .334, but LeMahieu creeped in a little closer at .329. It will be interesting to see if Renteria gives Anderson an extra day off this week or keeps him out there. I’m sure if it was up to Anderson he’d be out there every day.
-Eloy is on fire right now, going 6 for 14 in the series with two home runs (one of which was of the grand slam variety) and a triple. He came a double short of the cycle Friday night, and is looking like the demigod that was promised us. Oh, his second home run of the series? It was his 30th, good for 2nd in the league for all rookies. He’s gonna lose the rookie of the year honors to Yordan Alvarez of the Astros, but whatever. Alvarez gets to hit in the middle of the MLB lineup equivalent of a fleet of Star Destroyers, so what can you do?
-Speaking of those that deliver, Yoan Moncada is on another plane of existence right now. 6 for 12 on the series with 2 more home runs and some spiffy defense in the field. In his last 15 games, Moncada is hitting .477/.493/.754. I don’t miss Chris Sale that much, do you?
-Credit where credit is due, Adam Engel is quietly having himself a quality back half to the season. In his last 15 games he’s slashing .286/.314/.571 and has 4 home runs for himself. That’s not too bad for your 4th outfielder next year, especially with the defense we all know that he can play. Good for him, good for us.
-All was not roses this weekend, however. Reynaldo Lopez is back to being extremely hittable again, and on top of that it seems like he might be getting frustrated on the mound. He and Renteria had an animated conversation in the dugout after he gave up his second dinger of the day to Gordon “I’m Still Here?” Beckham. Whatever was said didn’t work, as he went back out there and gave up the trifecta to Victor Reyes. Lopez will have one more start on the year, and here’s hoping he ends it on a positive note, as I still feel he’s a solid 5th starter for this club going forward.\
-Next up is the Cleveland Indians, and a chance to play spoiler as the Tribe attempt to sneak into the wild card as they currently sit a half game behind Tampa Bay after the weekend series. Ohhh how glorious it would be to fuck the Tribe out of a postseason appearance, let’s make that a thing.
VS 
Series Spotlight: The Tigers Pipeline
I don’t hate the Tigers anymore. I really used to, back in the early part of this decade. Much like my hatred for the Vancouver Canucks and Red Wings in hockey it’s just sort of fizzled out, leaving behind a feeling of indifference bordering on pity.
The Tigers are a bad team, perhaps even historically so. With their current .420 winning percentage (heh) the Tigers fall 3rd on the list of worst teams ever since the league went to 162 games in 1961. The other two teams? Last year’s Orioles and the Tigers again in 2003. Not exactly wonderful company to be in. They’ve already past the 2003 version of themselves by 2 games, and need 2 more to tie Baltimore which seems likely but by no means a guarantee.
Detroit already set a team record this past week by losing 17 consecutive games to Cleveland this season. They won the second meeting between the two teams back on April 10th 4-1, then lost 17 in a row to them to finish the season 1-18 setting the mark in the modern era for record against a divisional opponent.
The Tigers got this bad by basically fielding a team full of less than 1 WAR players and Nick Castellanos, who they then flipped to the Cubs at the deadline as he proceeded to go on a tear the likes of never seen in Detroit. They’re dead last in the league in hitting, and the only team that has had a negative WAR production from their offense. The second worst team is the Marlins, and even they have gotten 2.3 WAR out of their hitters, compared to the -1.5 for the Tigers. If you look up the top hitters by WAR on the Tigers, only 2 players are worth more than 1, and that’s Niko Goodrum (who is out with a groin strain) and Victor Reyes. So thankfully Dylan Covey isn’t scheduled to go during the series, as you don’t wanna let an opponent up off the mat when they’re down.
The pitching staff has actually not been as awful as the hitters, currently 10th in the AL out of 15 teams, so that’s an improvement. They’ve also produced 1100% more WAR than the offense, currently sitting at 10.1 for the season. Matthew Boyd has had a solid season thus far, posting an 8-11 record with a 4.34 ERA and a 1.20 WHIP. He features a solid 4 seam fastball and a plus slider which he uses as his punchout pitch. Boyd gets a lot of swinging strikes with it, almost 36% of the time.
After Boyd it’s Spencer Turnbull (who the Sox will miss), then rookie Tyler Alexander who was called up back in June and had his first start against the Sox, in which he went 5 innings and gave up 2 with 4 Ks in a no-decision. The kid has pitched fairly well since then, going 1-3 with a 4.68 ERA and striking out 27 in 6 starts. He was relegated to long relief for a time during August but is now back starting and will go head to head with Nova Saturday.
As for the Sox, the story continues to be the production of The Future™ in the top half of the lineup. Tim Anderson continues his quest for the AL batting title and sits .006 in front of DJ LeMahieu. Right behind LeMahieu is the outfielder the Sox didn’t want in the off-season, Michael Brantley. Hard charging a few behind him is last year’s favorite bust declaration by Sox Twitter Yoan Moncada, who is tearing the shit out of the ball in September to the tune of a .460/.500/.667 slash line.
Taking the mound for the Pale Hose will be Dylan Cease, Ivan Nova and Reynaldo Lopez who basically comprise the only starts worth watching for the rest of the season. Cease should find the waters a bit calmer against the moribund Tigers offense, and maybe help build some confidence in his fastball location.
On paper this should be an easy series for the Sox, but nothing on paper has ever worked out that way for Rick Hahn and company. I just want a batting title for Timmy, and this pitching staff should help with that goal.
Let’s Go Sox.
The Detroit Tigers are a bad baseball team. There aren’t many people out there who would argue otherwise with you, and if they did odds are they’re huffing paint outside the wreckage of Tigers stadium. Even the Tigers themselves know this, and are OK with it. For a long time, the team was very similar to the White Sox of the late 2000-2013 era. The farm system was treated like a debit card, to be swiped whenever a piece needed to be added to the roster at the deadline for a playoff run.
Much like most debit cards, there was a limit. The Tigers bottomed out of that limit at the end of the 2014 season, their last appearance in the playoffs where they were broomed right out by the Baltimore Orioles (another team that sits at rock bottom right now). This last push by the Tigers was the result of Mike Ilitch desperately wanting to win a World Series before passing away (which he eventually did in February of 2017). For the next few years the Tigers were in the sort of limbo that kills the future of baseball franchises; not bad enough to get the high ranked young talent in the draft, but not good enough to go anywhere in the playoffs.
Finally in 2017 with Ilitch dead and gone, the Tigers bit the bullet and decided for a full rebuild. The problem at that point was that all of their best talent was either on the last year of their deals (Justin Upton), in the middle of the worst stretch of their careers (Justin Verlander), or just too damn expensive and old (Miguel Cabrera and Victor Martinez). So the return for all these guys was not going to be the type that can jump start a rebuild and shorten it by a few years like (hopefully) the White Sox got for trading Sale, Q, and Eaton (remember forever that the Sox got Giolito and Lopez for Adam fucking Eaton).
This left the Tigers with one option, that being the “suck so bad you build through the draft” one, which is exactly what they’ve done. It’s been an ugly few years on the west side of Detroit Rock City, but it’s yielded results in terms of farm system rankings. To start the year, most analysts had the Tigers somewhere around the 10-11th best system in the league. After re-ranking the teams after the trade deadline and adjusting for some callups around MLB the Tigers now are just outside of the top 5, usually around the 6-7 position. Jim Callis of MLB.COM has the Tigers at 6th best in the league after all the deadline shakeups.
Sitting in the 1 and 2 spots for Detroit in the farm system rankings are former #1 pick Casey Mize (and #2 overall in prospect rankings) and Matt Manning, both of whom are right handed pitchers. Mize had some shoulder issues this year, but when healthy dominated the hitters of high A level and AA. He will begin next season (shoulder permitting) at AAA and much like Dylan Cease end up on the big league roster at some point after June. Manning has progressed on a very similar path, laying waste to the AA level this season and earning a few honors along the way, including Eastern League Pitcher Of The Year and Baseball America’s pick for best Tigers minor league player.
Six of the top ten spots in the Tigers minor league rankings are reserved for pitchers. Beau Burrows, Alex Faedo and Franklin Perez will all be throwing at the AA level or higher next season and Burrows may even break camp with the squad next March. Which is good for the Tigers, as they currently sit in the bottom 3rd of the AL in pitching, and without the breakout year from Matthew Boyd they might be sniffing Orioles territory.
For position players, the crop is lead by outfielder Riley Greene who’s the only Tigers position player currently in the top 100 ranked prospects in MiLB. Green is a solid contact hitter with solid power that projects out to 25+ dingers a year. His athletic tools grade out positively as well, but the kid is only 18 and probably can’t be counted on before 2021 at the earliest.
The next two callups for the Tigers offensively seem to be catcher Jake Rogers and SS Isaac Paredes, both of whom would be upgrades for the major league team as it stands. The rest are works in progress, pushing the Tigers window for contention back past 2022 which works well for the White Sox as it stands. Bless You Boys has a good rundown of the rest of the position player prospects for the Tigers here if you want to check it out.
The risk for Detroit having such a pitching-heavy top half of their system was apparent back in June when Mize was pulled from a game with shoulder pain that caused a collective gasp among the Tigers faithful. Fearing the worst, he was sent to Dr. James Death-Andrews and was given a diagnosis of shoulder inflammation. He pitched for another month and a half and then was shut down for the team for precautionary measures. Manning has so far avoided the injury bug that seems to plague young arms in the lower levels but there are no guarantees. If all breaks well for the Tigers they could have an amazing rotation in a few years. If they end up with the kind of luck the White Sox have had over the past 12 months, the window for them could be pushed even further back. With a team like the Tigers hard to watch enough as it is, it could spell doom for their attendance, which was already down almost 21% from 2017 to 2018.
The Tigers have charted a path through risky waters, but really no rebuild is guaranteed success. Their ultimate timeline will probably be more clear next June when they pick once again in the top 5 of the entry draft. If they take a polished college player like the Sox did with Andrew Vaughn it signals they expect to be competitive sooner rather than later. If they go a different route, it may signal another few long winters for the Tigers faithful. That would be quite all right with me.
Honestly, this is the kind of stuff I want to see these last 11 games of the season. The wins and losses at this point are immaterial to the final product going in to the off-season, as individual performance carries much more weight in my opinion. Which in and of itself is odd since baseball is a team sport and all, but for a club like the Sox that has another losing season in a long string of them you have to find the light at the end of the tunnel. Finally, it’s starting to shine a bit brighter.
The second game of the series is the epitome of what I’m talking about. Yes, the bullpen exploded pretty spectacularly in extra innings, but the way the Sox GOT to extra innings, then went ahead two separate times is the kind of stuff I want to see. 13 hits banged out by the middle of the order (all members of The Future™) capped off by a beautiful bomb by Tim Anderson in the top of the 10th inning. Evan Marshall, Aaron Bummer and Kelvin Herrera all holding down the fort in the middle innings to keep the team in the game. These are all GOOD THINGS, people! GOOD ASS THINGS!
TO THE BULLETS OF THE FUTURE!
–Tim F’n Anderson. Bangs out five more hits to bring his average up to .335, sitting .006 in front of Boomhauer lookalike DJ LeMahieu. A beautiful moonshot in extra innings, sprinkled with some quality defense in this series including a great snag deep in the hole off of the bat of Miguel Sano that was an absolute missile. He’s fun, and if you don’t enjoy that then you shouldn’t be watching baseball.
-Despite the meltdown in extra innings on Tuesday night, the Sox bullpen actually deserves some props for keeping the team in it after the starting rotation blew up even more with Lucas Giolito being shut down due to a lat strain. They picked up the ball and ran with it after Reynaldo Lopez and Boss Detwiler each gave up five runs in 5+ innings. Bummer, Marshall, Fry, Herrera…hell, even Carson Fulmer pitched multiple innings and gave the Twins nothing to work with. A solid bullpen is going to be necessary next year with multiple starters returning from Tommy John surgeries who will need innings monitored closely. This is a good start.
–Eloy’s batting average continues to climb like the temperature. He’s now up to a .264/.314/.811 slash line. If he ends anywhere near a .270/.330/.875 line I don’t see how you could consider his first year anything other than a success. With seven games left on the docket against the Tigers, I like those odds.
–Reynaldo Lopez had another one of his down starts following a good one. Consistency is never going to be a hallmark of his, but if he’s your 5th starter I think your rotation is gonna be pretty damn solid. He’s definitely earned a spot going into spring training.
-Psssst…Yoan Moncada is batting .312 and is just as awesome as Timmy.
–Zack Collins hit home runs in back to back games, and is looking a little more comfortable up at the plate. His defense behind it, however, is not.
-I was at an air traffic control conference this week (shock) in Las Vegas (more shock), and the theme of the conference was “Make Every Day A Training Day.” One of the guest speakers was White Sox alum Ron Kittle, who spoke about the training and preparation levels that the professional baseball players of today need to have. He happened to notice me after the panel with my Sox hat on and chatted with me for a bit. The biggest nugget he mentioned was the fact that Luis Robert might be the best of them all. Kittle said he reminded him of a young Roberto Clemente, but with more power. Wow.
-6:30 night games for the 3rd game in a series when you have to work at 6am the next morning sucks. Do better, MLB.
-Next up for the Sox are the Tigers, who are in danger of being relegated to the California Penal League. Lets hope the remainder of the Sox starting pitching staff are able to keep their elbows attached to their bodies for the remainder of the season. The end is nigh.
VS 
It’s always fun at the end of a season to have two rebuilding teams throwing whatever they can at each other. This matchup between the Sox and the Mariners promises to be no different, as they’re both basically in the same spot as each other in their rebuild. The both made big splashy moves in their off-seasons for the past few years, and now they’re both just sitting in front of the stove, waiting for the water to boil.
While the White Sox water may be bubbling more than the Mariners right now, it’s not by much. The M’s have a pretty interesting group of position players ready to take the next step in their major league careers, mixed in with some aging veterans who have been providing decent pop for the team. The Mariners as a whole are a better hitting team than the White Sox so far in the season, with their big bats being lead by Kyle “Not Cory” Seager and Dan “West Coast Palka” Vogelbach.
Seager missed the first 3 months of the season with a pretty nasty ligament tear in his hand. Before that he scuffled through the 2018 season, enduring his worst stretch of his career that saw him slash .221/.273/.400 and post an 83 WRC+, down almost 50 points from 2016-2017 seasons. He’s back at it this year however, as he has a .248/.331/.503 line thus far in 90 games, with 22 home runs. He’s been on a tear since the all star break, having hit 14 of those 22 home runs in the months of August and September. His .256 BABIP suggests that it’s pretty real, and actually he’s getting some bad batted ball luck in there as well.
The issue for the Mariners is not on the offensive side, as it’s their pitching that has let them down thus far in the season. They’re second worst in the AL, and third from the bottom of the league behind the BP machines that are the Marlins and the Orioles. Japanese import Yusei Kikuchi has not had the effect the Mariners were hoping for, as he’s gotten routinely shelled with a 5.24 ERA and 1.48 WHIP so far on the season.
Softball pitcher Mike Leake is gone, as he got shipped to ‘Zona at the deadline. The ghost of King Felix is here, who just returned from his 33rd trip to the IL since 2017 related to his shoulder which is “fine” and “structurally sound” and not at all “made from paper mache and balsa wood.” I joke here, but I actually love King Felix and were he on any other team than the Mariners would’ve had a pretty decent shot at being a Hall of Fame pitcher. Sam had a pretty great take a few weeks ago when they played the Cubs, check it out here. He’s also responsible for one of my favorite GIFs of all time, which is from last season when he struck out Adrian Beltre (who is also a national treasure) with a nasty change that resulted in a hideous swing, which Felix saw and prompted this reaction:
The only highlight for the M’s pitching staff is ace Marco Gonzalez, who came over from the Cardinals and almost immediately became the pitcher St. Louis had drafted him to be. Thankfully the Sox will miss him this time through the rotation. They will see Justus Sheffield (son of Gary) on Sunday, the prized rookie that came over from the Yankees in the Edwin Encarnacion trade. Sheffield was up earlier in the year and got knocked around pretty good. He got called back up a few weeks ago and has fared a bit better since then but still has a 4.43 ERA.
For the Pale Hose, the story remains the same. The Bullpen needs to be ready tonight, as they trot Dylan Covey out again to get decimated. Perhaps this time he makes it out of the 3rd inning, but I’m not going to hold my breath. Dylan Cease gets a chance to work on his fastball location again, and perhaps keep the walks down under 3. Nova goes again on Sunday. If the Sox pitching can keep the M’s off the board, the bats should have a good chance at feasting on sub-par Mariner’s pitching.
Let’s Go Sox
Some players are born to just do one thing. It’s like they’re cut directly out of the molds that used to make the little plastic army men some of us played with as kids. Daniel Palka and Dan Vogelbach are two guys who look like they were made from the EXACT same mold. Literally. Like they had the same form and everything, then at the last second they put a different head on Palka just to make sure people could tell the difference.
Positionally they’re almost identical as well, as they are both generously listed as first basemen/outfielders but are both horrible in the field and better suited to being designated hitters. They’re both pretty identical there as well, being that they’re both plus-sized left handed uppercut swingers. Both guys are the prototypical “Three True Outcomes” hitters in this launch angle era of baseball that they both hit in.
They were both considered career AAA hitters as well, until last season when Palka had a fairly decent run at the big league level with the White Sox. He turned in a .240/.294/.778 slash line in 417 at bats. He also socked 27 dingers and added 67 RBI to the equation. Vogelbach meanwhile had a brutal run at the major league level last season with the Mariners. He was called up twice and played in a total of 37 games with just under 90 at bats. In that time he slashed a miserable .207/.324/.691 with 4 home runs and 13 RBI. Vogelbach’s splits were exactly what you would expect from a left handed power hitter, having a .050 average and one extra base hit against same handed pitching in 2018, while he hit .250 against right handers and hit all of his home runs.
Flip to this year, and the two have practically swapped spots. Palka had a brutal start to the season, hitting .059 in 50+ at bats, with no extra base hits and an almost 50% strikeout rate. He was sent down to Charlotte in May. Vogelbach won the 1B/DH job out of spring training and came out of the gate smoking hot, hitting 8 home runs and ringing in 14 RBIs in the month of April. His job security increased even more at the beginning of June when the Mariners sent Edwin Encarnacion to the Yankees in the trade that netted them pitching prospect Juan Then. Vogelbach currently has a .212/.344/.800 line with 24 home runs. Palka was called back up this month as part of the September roster expansion and picked right back up where he left off, with a .135/.141/.176 line. Yeah, you read that right. Daniel Palka is currently slugging at a .035 clip in the 2019 season.
So what’s the difference? What changed? Why has Palka gone from a 0.7 WAR player to a -1.5 one in a single offseason? For once, there isn’t much in the advanced stats that can give us a clue as to why Palka’s swing has fallen off a cliff. Last season his BABIP was a little high (.308) but certainly not a number that screamed drastic regression. His 38% K rate is way above the league average, but that doesn’t speak much to his lack of hits. His hard hit rate is the only number that’s followed his performance off the cliff, going from 36.4% last year to 8.8% this season, but Palka himself admits he hasn’t really tinkered with his swing at all.
What is the cause of the turnaround in Vogelbach’s game that has him now a valuable major league contributor (granted for a rebuilding team) instead of a career AAAA player? This is pretty much the guy the Cubs envisioned when they took him in the 2nd round of the 2011 draft. Kind of like a pre-Schwarber Schwarber. A look at Vogelbach’s advanced stats show that most of them are pretty much in line with what he’s produced his entire career. His hard hit rate is 52.5%, up 4.8% from the previous year, which is what you’d expect with an uptick in power. His BABIP this season is at .230, which is actually lower than what he produced last season and indicates he’s not getting very good batted ball luck. His wOBA is only .010 higher than last season. What gives?
Ultimately we come to the point in baseball where there are some things that just can’t be explained away by advanced stats. Sometimes good (or bad) luck just takes over and produces career best and worst years. For the Mariners, they’re currently reaping those rewards being produced by the good stuff coming off Vogelbach’s bat. For the Sox, what was shiny last year has been polished right into a turd. Palka should be given the rest of the month to try and hit his way out of this epic slump that he’s in the middle of. The Sox should know if what he did last year was a mirage, or if this season is just some ungodly bad luck vortex that Palka is swirling amidst. Both guys have value to their teams, but only if the cards are cut juuuuuust right.
Man, the Sox sure are going to make it tough on me to keep up my sunny outlook on the rest of the season. After starting this series out on such a positive note, the Sox forgot the one axiom every team should have when playing the 2019 Kansas City Royals: Don’t Leave Shit Over The Plate For Soler To Nuke Into Orbit. You’d think by now most teams would’ve figured it out, but as Soler creeps ever closer to 50 dongs on the season I guess everybody is just gonna keep pressing their luck. Good lord when he connects with the ball it goes a long way.
It was actually pretty fun watching Eloy and Soler go back and forth this series. Between the two of them, they accounted for 14 of the 23 runs knocked in this series. 60% of the runs! That’s pretty nuts. For the foreseeable future, that’s pretty much how the Royals are going to need to win games, and it worked out swimmingly for them this series. All told, the White Sox winning one was enough to wrap up the season series in their favor, but not nearly as satisfying an ending as I was hoping for.
To The Bullets
-As mentioned above, Eloy had himself a series. His first career grand slam on Tuesday night, a 3 run shot on Wednesday night and another few RBIs thrown in for good measure. That brings him up to 26 on the season, with 68 RBI to go along with it. For comparison, Yoan Moncada at this point last season had 17 HR and 56 RBI. Right now he’s slashing .299/.357.508 with 23 HR and 69 RBI (NICE). Do I think Eloy will have the same progression as Yoan? Probably not, but it’s not out of the question. If he happens along the same climb statistically speaking the middle of the Sox order is gonna be something to behold.
-Lucas Giolito struck out 8 Royals in a row today, setting a new record for White Sox pitching on his way to 12 total Ks today. He made some mistakes as well, and this was one of those days where mistakes got pummeled, but overall it’s just a blip on his radar.
-Tim Anderson didn’t have a great series, but he managed 2 hits and kept his lead atop the AL batting list, thanks to DJ Lemahieu going 0 for 6 today. It’s gonna be a race to the finish, and hopefully Timmy can keep focused on opposing pitching and not get distracted.
-The Sox bullpen fared pretty well against KC this week, only giving up 2 earned runs (both charged to Carson Fulmer) in 9.2 innings pitched. This is a nice turnaround from last week where the Angels feasted on them. More please.
-Ivan Nova started out pretty shakily but settled down and came 1 out away from another quality start. Much like the other two starters in this series, the Royals were able to knock dingers off him, but they were of the solo variety so no real harm done.
-Next up is a trip to the Pacific Northwest for a battle with another team in the middle of a rebuild. It will be interesting to see who the Sox throw out there as a 5th starter. Fingers crossed it’s not Covey…I’m trying to stay positive.
VS
SERIES PREVIEW POSTS
Depth Charts & Pitching Staffs
Talk about your must see TV. A mid September battle between two of the AL’s worst should pull in the viewers, right? Coming into this series, the Royals are on somewhat of a roll, having won their last 3 series in a row. Granted those 3 series were against the Orioles, Tigers, and Marlins, so it’s not like they’ve exactly been slaying the dragons. The Sox actually present their stiffest challenge since losing 3 of 4 to the A’s at the end of last month. One of those losses to Oakland involved the Royals giving up 19 runs, which leads into their biggest issue right now, which is run prevention.
The Royals have languished at the bottom third of the league in pitching since the All-Star break giving up an average of 5.2 runs per game. In comparison, the Sox have rocketed to the top third on the wings of Lucas Giolito and a revitalized Reynaldo Lopez, averaging 4.8 runs a game. The only decent starters in the back half of the season for the Royals have been Jake Junis and Brad Keller, each worth 1 WAR a piece. Unfortunately for Royals fans, the team has shut Keller down as he’s reached his career high in innings pitched with 165, which is 20 innings more than he pitched in 2018. The Sox will see Junis, Jorge Lopez, and moon-faced yahoo Glenn Sparkman, who as you’ll recall plunked Tim Anderson in the dome last time the two teams met and was summarily ejected.
Offensively the Royals are 25th in the league in hitting, a whopping 1 position higher than the White Sox. Jorge Soler quite possibly may have finally reached the potential he always flashed in his time with the Cubs. He’s sitting on 41 home runs thus far, with 102 RBIs which is extra impressive considering he’s only had Hunter Dozier and Whit Merrifield to knock in, as everyone else is lost in the dugout tunnel. Merrifield in particular is having another standard year for himself, getting on base at his usual prodigious clip (.364). Hunter Dozier is also having a breakout year, worth 3.4 WAR so far.
For the White Sox, they’ll send out the best of their starters with Nova, Lopez and Giolito scheduled to take the bump. Hopefully all three will get the offensive support that the Sox flashed in their weekend series against the Angels. Tim Anderson continues his quest for the AL batting title, and this is the perfect pitching staff for him to do that with. Ricky Renteria has talked about putting Moncada back in the leadoff spot, which, whatever. He can definitely get on base, but I’d rather have someone else there as Yoan is more valuable knocking in the runs. I’m curious as to which Eloy Jimenez we’ll get this season, as the one that showed against the Angels was not optimal, but the one against the Indians was cash money.
This is the final meeting of the season between these two teams, and with the Sox holding a 2 game edge all they have to do is win one for the season series. While winning the bare minimum has been the Sox modus operandi thus far I say fuck that, take all 3 and drive home the point that having fun in baseball is not a bad thing and Tim Anderson has more personality then your whole fucking city. Except for maybe Patrick Mahomes. He’s cool.
Word broke a few weeks ago that longtime Royals owner David Glass would be selling the team to an ownership group lead by Kansas City businessman (and Cleveland Indians vice chairman) John Sherman. What was particularly staggering about this news was the fact that Glass would be selling the team for a tidy $900 million dollar profit. Glass originally bought the team just before the start of the 2000 season for $96 million dollars. The sale (if finalized and approved by MLB ownership) would be for over a billion dollars. That number in and of itself is pretty ginormous, but when you factor in how the Royals consistently pleaded poor during most off-season free agent periods it becomes even more obnoxious. A brief glance at where the Royals fall in reference to the rest of the league in payroll since Glass took over the team in 2000 shows that in those 20 years the team has averaged 21.5th in the league in payroll. They’ve never been higher than 15th in the league, and in the bottom 1/3rd 15 out of the 20 years. Yet in that time, the biggest contract they’ve handed out was to Alex Gordon this year, a whopping 20 million dollars. In comparison, the Red Sox are paying one of the Royals former players (David Price) 31 million. The now suddenly financially conscious New York Yankees still have 4 players on their team making more than Gordon, and the usually spendthrift Cardinals have two (and Dexter Fowler making 17 million).
All of this adds up to yet another MLB owner who has purchased a team not because he loves the game of baseball, but because it’s a profitable investment for him. Glass has made plenty of money in his career as a CEO of Walmart way before he bought the Royals for a song. Now he’s flipping the team like a shitty house in Skokie because he’s made 10X the profit on a less than $100 million dollar investment. You don’t have to look very far to see how actual Royals fans (and there are only about 34 of them left) feel about the deal. BeyondTheBoxScore did a pretty in-depth review of what Glass actually provided the team in his almost 20 years of ownership. Other than a one time luck out of a World Series win, it’s not a whole lot. In fact, Glass’ ownership of the team (other than the WS win) is a pretty impressive display of how an owner can come in and treat an MLB team like an asset, then flip it like Two Face’s coin in Batman and sell it to someone that gives a shit about the sport.
Patrick Brennan said it best as a guest writer for Beyond The Box Score in the article about the sale of the team:
“As a Royals fan, I took this news as nothing short of fantastic. I can’t sit here and tell you all the things I know about John Sherman, because I know very little. If he ends up buying the Royals, I don’t know how much he’ll spend, I don’t know what changes he’ll make, and I don’t know how he’ll run the organization. But he’s succeeding an owner that a) was very scarcely involved with the Royals and Kansas City, b) slashed payroll constantly, c) spent very little, even though he’s likely to turn a $96 million investment into over a billion dollars, and d) ran a terrible organization for 95 percent of his tenure.”
Here’s where it becomes more important to Sox fans. Does that sound like anyone you know? Does that blueprint seem pretty familiar to you? Granted, I’d never trade 2005 for any pile of magic beans, but it’s a pretty common refrain throughout the league. You have your top 10 teams who spend the money that’s required to make you team competitive, then you have the bottom 2/3 of the league that is more concerned about wringing as much value out of underpaid young talent as you possibly can before you let them hit the bricks in free agency.
Basically the entire AL Central falls into this category. When was the last time you saw any of the 5 teams in this division spend big money on a free agent? The Tigers and Miguel Cabrera are the only ones that come to mind. Even the Sox with Jose Abreu didn’t break the bank, as they spent 68 million on the man as the most highly paid player in team history. Other than Cabrera and maybe Alex Gordon the AL Central isn’t exactly breaking the bank. Yet we are expected to sit here and listen to the owners cry poor after getting loads of money off the newest TV deal. Combine that with the 900X investment David Glass made off his purchase of the Royals and I start rooting more and more for the inevitable lockout 18 months from now. Do I think this is important? Absolutely, as the White Sox enter the most critical phase of their rebuild after shitting the bed on potential game changing free agents like Bryce Harper and Manny Machado. Now the rumor mill churns about JD Martinez opting out of the deal he has in Boston. As much as I’d like to see the Sox sign him to a deal and piss off both the Boston AND Detroit fanbases (The legendary Double Play), I find it super hard to believe that Sox ownership cares about anything more about the bottom line of the organization’s value on the open market.
But hey, at least the Rick Hahn brought up Dylan Covey to entertain us for the rest of the season…
ITS SUCH GOOD SHIT.
