Baseball

Series Recap – Sox Lose 2 of 3 To Twins: Better Than The Box

By Andy Jonathan 1432 0

BOX SCORES

Game 1: Sox 3 – Twins 5

Game 2: Sox 8 – Twins 9

Game 3: Sox 3 – Twins 1

 

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!

 

IT’S SUCH GOOD SHIT

–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.

Baseball

Q Might Be The Only Salvageable One, And The Cubs Might Have To

By Sam Fels 1473 0

When you score 55 runs over four games, your other foibles tend to be overlooked. That’s an old baseball cliche, y’know. So this morning, everyone’s a little less concerned about the Cubs being without half of their “core four” for the rest of the regular season because of all the runs pouring like an avalanche comin’ down the mountain. On the other side, the Cubs will soon stop seeing the confused and despondent cooking-school rejects that have taken the mound for the Pirates and Reds the last four games. It actually starts tonight with Sonny Gray, and the Cardinals will sport real live pitchers for those seven games to decide the fate of us all.

So the worry is that when the Cubs need to fight fire with fire, pitching-wise (which is probably ice with ice given that offense is always considered the hot weapon and defense the cool one so “fight Sub-Zero with Sub-Zero?”), they only have two of five guys who can do it right now. If it wasn’t for Kyle Hendricks and Yu Darvish, this season may have already been taken out to the curb. The three lefties have been woeful of late. Now maybe that’s something you can paper over for 12 more games, which is all that’s left. But the Cubs have been trying to get around it for a few weeks now, so there just might not be that much sand left in the top chamber here.

Two of them are easily explicable. Jon Lester might simply be past it, and the thin margins of error he already had the past couple seasons are simply now imperceptible and unreachable. His fellow over-35 southpaw, Cole Hamels, is coming back from an injury that derailed his career once already for a year and a half, and he seems completely lost or hurt or both. To expect these two to be anything more than what we’ve seen is almost certainly optimistic at best, deluded at worst. We have the evidence of why this is happening.

Jose Quinana, on the other hand, is a stranger case. There’s no injury that we know of. He’s only 30, though has certainly piled up his share of innings. So health and age aren’t the concerns for him that they are for Lester and Hamels. And yet his recent stretch is worrying as well. With three starters rolling, you figure the Cubs could close this season out triumphantly. With only two, it becomes more of a stretch of imagination as the Cardinals spend a majority of those games making sure the Cubs aren’t actually putting up a touchdown or two.

It’s easy to forget, even if it was just a month ago, how good Q was in August. He had an ERA of 2.02 with 39 Ks and only six walks. He had a four start stretch where he gave up just four runs over 26 innings. And the numbers could have actually been better. He had an extremely weird start against the Nationals where he literally did not give up one hard-hit ball, almost all of it was on the ground, and yet it all found holes or the Cubs starting throwing it around like a shuttlecock. Even his last start of that month was good, though Maddon got a little panicky and pulled him with two outs in the sixth even though he hadn’t given up a run.

But September has been puke-tastic. He’s only seen the 4th inning once, and has given up 13 earned runs in just 10.1 innings. Again, some of this is weird, as his start in San Diego was essentially sabotaged by defense again. But it’s not like Q to fall apart after something like that, which he promptly did after Ben Zobrist did a fine Mitch Trubisky impression on a double-play ball (too soon?).

So is there something going on? On the surface, there’s isn’t a lot of change. There’s no velocity drop, it’s not like his walks have risen hugely, or anything else we jump to first. When digging around a bit, it does look a little like his change-up has flattened and lost some drop:

The past two starts he hasn’t gotten a swing-and-miss on it, which is a problem.

Still, there’s an element of weirdness, as there always is in baseball. Quintana in his last three starts has been getting way more ground-balls than he did during his brilliant stretch in August, which you would think should be a good thing. In those August starts he only got half of his contact-against on the ground once. He’s done that in every start since and including that Washington one, but with these results. Does he miss Baez the most?

What he hasn’t gotten in his last couple outings is any whiffs on anything but his four-seamer, and that’s got to change. As you’d think, or hope, that with the greater amount of grounders, even adding a smidge of Ks to it would get Q back on top sharpish. It’s likely the Cubs will need that.

Baseball

Series Preview – Reds vs. Cubs: After The Destruction…

By Sam Fels 1258 0

vs.

Records: Reds 70-80  Cubs 81-68

GAMETIMES: Monday-Wednesday 7:05

TV: NBCSN Monday, WCIU/ESPN Tuesday, WGN Wednesday

NOT READY FOR FULL-TIME DALTON YET: Blog Red Machine

DEPTH CHARTS & PITCHING STAFFS

Note: Due to scheduling and traveling, there isn’t a Reds Spotlight today. Picture one in your head if you must. Maybe Votto’s regression or Aquino’s 12 wRC+ in September. Choose your own adventure. 

After 47 runs in three games and thoroughly burning any sense of self-worth the Pirates might have thought about having, the Cubs will look to keep it going against the Reds. The challenge with the Reds is they have one real live pitcher starting a game this series, and a couple ones in the pen, neither of which the Pirates can claim right now. And the Cubs might be without their linchpin.

We all are holding our breath to hear news of Anthony Rizzo, which will come down after this goes to print. Everyone’s expecting the worst, because when a player is helped off the field that generally means a week or two, maybe more. The Cubs don’t have two weeks or more, and face the apocalyptic seven games with the Cardinals. As if the Reds haven’t been enough of a headache. The simplest solution is a lot of Victor Caratini at first, though you may see some of Happ and Bryant there too. The latter gets David Bote’s bat into the lineup, though Caratini and Contreras both being in the lineup doesn’t leave you offensively short either. It just leaves you short of what Rizzo would provide.

Of course, another wonderful aspect of a Rizzo absence is more debate about the leadoff spot,, which has become the Cubs’ TIF funding. Rizzo moved there for the Pirates series, suddenly they turned into Loyola-Marymount, but now they have to figure it out again. Mostly you can count on Zobrist being there, and he can at least be representative. It’s basically a “So What Don’t You Want?” situation. Heyward has proven he can’t do it and doesn’t like it. They won’t try Bryant there, especially as he’s rediscovered some of his power over the weekend (if results against the Pirates even count). Contreras is another candidate against lefties, as long as we never see Almora there again. Go down the list and you see there aren’t a lot of answers.

Still, time moves on, and the Cubs have games to win. And as you know, the Reds are a spikier outfit than the Bucs. They’re coming off taking two of three from Arizona, seriously denting their charge to the wildcard. And they’ll have no compunction about doing the same to the Cubs. At least the Cubs will duck Trevor Bauer and Luis Castillo. But they’ll get Sonny Gray, who’s been one of the best starter in the NL and especially of late. Gray has quality starts in 11 of his last 13, and he had a 0.74 ERA in August. His two September starts have seen him give up four runs…so he’s slowing down? Maybe? We’re trying here. Needless to say it would behoove the Cubs to get Monday and Wednesday and consider anything off of Gray a bonus.

The rotation is another problem the Cubs have to solve. All of Quintana, Hamels, and Lester have been backing up for weeks now, and while they got to save the relievers who matter (such as they are) due to the offensive supernova against Pittsburgh, they don’t want to go to that well any more than anyone’s stomach can handle. Hamels doesn’t look healthy, and Lester might just be running out of racetrack in his career. They are wheezing to the finish line and have to find something this series and in the season’s last two weeks, even if it’s just a death rattle.

It’s only two games now. It’s one and a half behind DC while one ahead of Milwaukee. But if the Cubs can at least hold that two games behind St. Louis, that basically puts it all on the seven games they have left together. Let’s do that.

Baseball

Series Preview – White Sox vs. Twins: Part Of The Procession

By Sam Fels 991 0

vs.

RECORDS: White Sox 65-84   Twins 91-58

GAMETIMES: Monday-Wednesday 6:40

TV: WGN Monday, NBCSN Tuesday/Wednesday

THEY LOVE HAWK: Twinkie Town

SERIES PREVIEW POSTS

Depth Charts & Pitching Staffs

Twins Spotlight: Dingers!

After providing far too much hope for the Mariners future, the Sox head to Minneapolis to essentially form an honor guard for the Twins. Minnesota is goal-to-go for clinching the division, with a magic number of nine. They spent the weekend taking a doubleheader from the chasing Tribe, which essentially ended the discussion in the Central. 4.5 game lead with 13 games to go is going to be really hard to gag away.

So now it’s about setting up their rotation for the Division Series, getting guys rest who haven’t had it, and figuring out who can be in the bullpen and trusted with playoff innings. It’s a nice place to be, and perhaps another lesson for the White Sox on where they want to go.

That doesn’t mean the Twins are full-strength, or will be. Byron Buxton finally had to give in on his shoulder and have surgery, and he’s done for the year. Michael Pineda got suspended for taking a diuretic, which can be a masking agent but also can just be a diuretic. Still, MLB makes it pretty clear that anything taken should be checked with the training staff or league office, so if you get caught you had outs before. Still, MLB seems only to gobble up Latin players in this. Weird, no?

Which is going to leave the Twins short in the rotation, especially as they have to get through both the Astros and Yankees, in whatever order, to get to the World Series. And those two teams chew up really good pitching staffs anyway. Jose Berrios is your Game 1 starter, but other than him it’s basically Jake Odorizzi now and then a company outing. Berrios has the capability to shut anyone down on a crisp night, but he’ll most likely have to do it twice in a series for the Twins to have any chance.

Then again, the Twins aren’t going to feel like they have to apologize for anything offensively when the playoff roll around. They’ve hit more homers than anyone, so it won’t be automatic they get out-slugged in any short series. And seeing as hoe they get homers from everywhere, that makes their lineup just as hard to negotiate. It’ll be a coming out party for them in some fashion. Dylan Covey should probably just starting turning around and looking behind him now.

For the Sox, there probably is something to finishing the season strong, as after this they’ll have the long dead Tigers and recently probably dead Indians to finish out the campaign. 70 wins or 72 wins might not really matter, but it’s been a few years since the Sox eclipsed 70 wins and any step forward should be welcomed. The Twins will either already be daydreaming of October nights or hellbent on clinching ASAP to really start resetting their roster. If it’s the latter, then it’ll be worth watching how Lopez and Giolito do, not that the latter has anything to prove. Lopez kicked Cleveland’s dick in the dirt when they were hot on the trail, so maybe the brighter lights are what he needs.

And at least the Sox will be done with the Twins after this, laying the ground for bigger games with him as soon as next season, hopefully.

 

Baseball

Twins Spotlight: We Seem To Be Fine With This

By Sam Fels 1348 0

Perhaps we need the Yankees to pass the Twins in home runs, so that we’ll never remember that the Minnesota Twins–the TWINS! The harbingers of annoying, ticky-tack baseball, the slappy slappy Twins!–broke the MLB record for homers by a team with five weeks to go in the season. Because it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Let our colleague Fifth Feather sum it up best:

Now, Feather’s distaste for the Twins is a touch outsized, in the same style that the Pacific Ocean is a touch outsized. Still, the fact that this Twins team is putting up numbers never before seen is truly strange, if not as insulting as our dear boy takes it. The Yankees you get, even though their biggest mashers in Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton have spent most of the year injured. But they’re the big, bad Yankees playing in a shoebox with a jet stream right into Vinny from Astoria’s chest in right field. That’s what the Yankees do.

But the Twins don’t have any of that. Other than Nelson Cruz, who is three days older than water, before the year you never would have picked any of these guys to hit 30 homers. Four of them have and they might get a fifth.  Then Max Kepler might double his career-high in homers (he needs four more for 40). Jorge Polanco might do the same. Mitch Garver (he’s Old Man Garver’s boy), who had never hit more than seven homers in a season, has 30. Aren’t there laws against that? Eddie Rosario has over 30, and CJ Cron is close. Also, Target Field is not exactly a hitter’s paradise, being one of the worst homer parks in the league for years now.

The Twins will tell you that it’s a matter of Rosario, Kepler, Polanco all coming of age, that they were always destined for this. That might be true to a point, but you can’t help ignore what the baseball has done for the Twins. And hey, more power to them, if they’re figured out to just keep getting the ball in the air with this Titleist and reap the wins from it.

The Twins score over half their runs on homers, and while baseball will feign ignorance on changes in the ball, that’s about the weakest conspiracy they’ve ever concocted, including collusion. Fuck, they bought Rawlings last year. How stupid do they think we are?

What MLB is going to have to figure out is if this is the brand of baseball fans want. No fault to the Twins, they’re just playing the game as it is now, and mostly better than anyone. But if homers are no longer unique but merely holding serve, they lose any specialty. And judging by TV ratings and attendance, though there are other factors, fans haven’t exactly flocked back to see this avalanche of dingers.

It’s a different game for sure, but one where even less happens. A homer is technically action, but it’s supposed to be the apex of a baseball game. A definitive pivot point. The spike in the EKG. Now it almost feels like it’s no different than a three in basketball. A brief surge but pretty normal throughout the game. If this continues to be the norm, it’s hard to see how it brings fans back that have already left (or in baseball’s case, likely died) Is this what the younger generation wants? It’s most likely MLB has no idea what the younger generation wants.

One wonders what teams like the Twins will do if the baseball goes back, if it does. Maybe they’d just hit a ton of doubles and be fine. Maybe they’d keep flying out to the warning track and never score.

Baseball

Series Recap: LEAVE THE GUN, TAKE THE PRIMANTI – Cubs Sweep Pirates

By Forklift 1472 0

 

 

Game 1 Box Score: Cubs 17, Bucs 8

Game 2 Box Score: Cubs 14, Bucs 1

Game 3 Box Score: Cubs 16, Bucs 6

 

Morph

You thought you were only getting one LFO joke? HA! Morph is still a genious.

The Cubs arrived back in Chicago for their final home stand of the 2019 regular season with the stench of desparation and a shiny new shortstop who had hearts all over the City of Broad Shoulders aflutter. Fortunately, their dance card had the Pittsburgh Pirates for the first three numbers. Meanwhile, they knew down in Dogpatch the Cardinals and Brewers would be beating each other’s brains out.

Let’s…

Baseball

Series Preview – Sox At Mariners: Sailing The Seas Of Cheese

By Andy Jonathan 1189 0

VS sea captain

 

Records: Sox 64-82  Mariners: 60-86

Game Times: Fri 9:10/Sat 8:10/Sun 3:10

TV: Fri/Sun WGN  Saturday NBCSN

Tis No Man, Tis A Remorseless Eating Machine: Lookout Landing

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

Baseball

Mariners Spotlight: My Two Dans

By Andy Jonathan 1201 0

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.