Baseball

All The Boys In The Band Know How To Get Down – 2019 Sox Player Reviews: Dylan Cease

By Adam Hess 1289 0

In some ways, the future success of this Sox rebuild could end up depending on just how good Dylan Cease ends up being. There are legitimate questions about his ceiling, and he probably is not going to end up being a true ace, but he could very well be a top of the rotation starter. With Giolito asserting himself as the ace and Michael Kopech only having a ceiling placed on his potential by TJ surgery, the Sox don’t need Cease to be a world beater, but they do need him to be good. 2019 served as a decent starting point. Let’s dig in:

2019 MLB Stats

14 starts  73 innings

4-7 Record

5.79 ERA  5.19 FIP

9.99 K/9   4.32 BB/9  1.55 WHIP

45.7% GB-rate  68.1 LOB%  21.4% HR/FB

128 ERA-  0.7 fWAR

Tell Me A Story: After tearing a hole through AA in 2018, Cease was pretty close to MLB ready at the start of the season but still started out in Charlotte. I actually didn’t mind that approach because we all know TINSTAAPP, and that really was less about service time (they left him down until July, after all) and more about him finding a groove with his stuff before coming to the bigs. He was solid through his 15 starts for the Knights, though not nearly the dominant pitcher he had been in Birmingham last season. Still, he struck out 24% of his hitters and posted a 3.79 FIP, though his actual ERA was 4.48 and he walked 10.5% of batters.

Once he got to the majors, those K- and BB-rates were nearly identical. He actually struck out batters more frequently, with a 24.9% K-rate, but still had that 10.7% walk rate. The walk rate might just always be a thing for him – even in 2018 with the Barons he walked 10.8% of batters, he just had the fastball and curveball to beat guys after the fact, and ended up with an 85.8 LOB%. It’s not exactly surprising that moving up to AAA and then MLB resulted in him getting away with the walks far less often. That’s just going to be something he has to overcome moving forward if he can’t stop walking guys, and right now there isn’t really a reason to believe he will.

Luckily, the fastball is still electric and his curveball is one of the best in baseball, at least by average break. As he hones those in more and hopefully starts to throw more strikes, hitters aren’t gonna be able to wait him out as much, and he is going to keep them off-balance.

Perhaps strangely, I think one of the best things Cease has going for him is that by all reports he is one of the mentally strongest dudes in the Sox organization. He is a super-zen yoga guy who literally traveled to meet a yoga guru and wears #84 because that’s how many poses there are in yoga apparently. There’s almost always been reports on him being very calm on the mound and being someone who can easily keep his focus. He also has apparently invested himself briefly in the brain training Lucas Giolito did to help himself get back on track mentally, which should just help with all that even more.

Contract: Team control through 2025, likely arb eligible in 2023.

Welcome Back or Boot In The Ass: Easy call here that you’re keeping him. Overall, Cease absolutely has a high ceiling, but the control is a legitimate concern going forward. He won’t necessarily have to sort it out entirely to succeed, but he’s gonna need to improve at least a little bit to force hitters to not wait him out so much moving forward. He also needs to find a way to keep guys in the yard, although I am not wildly concerned about those considering that he gave up 15 homers in 14 starts last year after only surrendering 16 in his entire MiLB career. I’m confident (perhaps irrationally) that he isn’t going to live in the 20+% range on HR/FB. With Giolito and Kopech likely to be an elite 1-2 punch going forward, Cease being able to be a #3 in this rotation could be a huge advantage for the Sox in the years to come.

Baseball

All The Boys In The Band Know How To Get Down – 2019 Sox Player Reviews: Lucas Giolito

By Andy Jonathan 1496 0

With the position players done, we move on to the starting pitching staff where we begin with what might be the biggest success story in White Sox (pitching) history. More on this after the stats jump. To The K-Mobile!

 

2019 Stats

Games Started: 29

14 Wins 9 Losses

3.41 ERA 1.064 WHIP

228 Ks 56 BB 24 HR

11.62 K/9 3.43 FIP

5.1 WAR

 

Tell Me A Story: In 2018, Lucas Giolito was the worst starter in all of Major League Baseball. That’s not hyperbole at all, it’s a statistical fact according to Fangraphs. Out of  57 pitchers who met innings pitched requirements, Giolito ranked 57th. Having personally watched a few of his starts live last season, it was a ranking well earned.

With that in mind, expectations for this season were not very high. When he started the first five games of the season with a 5.32 ERA, most were ready to write him off as not a viable core piece for The Future™ being built by Rick Hahn.

Then he went and ripped off nine-straight starts where he didn’t give up more than three runs and struck out at least seven batters. Even more impressive was the improvement of his control, only walking 16 batters in those nine starts. His changeup was electric, with the kind of downward motion that Johan Santana used to beguile Sox hitters with. His fastball was located in the upper reaches of the zone, just at the spot where a hitter can’t possibly catch up to it but it still looks like it could be a strike.

He had one burp (unfortunately) against the Cubs where he gave up six, but he rolled into the All-Star break with an 11-3 record and a 3.15 ERA. This was easily good enough for him to be selected to his first ever All Star game (along with the guy he credits for some of his improvement, James McCann), and ranked him as the 2nd best pitcher in the AL after future White Sox signee (I hope) Gerrit Cole.

After the All Star break ended, Giolito ran into some trouble. From the middle of July till the end of August his walks-per-9 spiked from around 1.55 to almost 2.50. The changeup that was dancing so well at the end of July was just spinning in the middle of the zone and getting pummeled by opposing hitters. Most pitchers that like to live at the top of the zone are susceptible to the long ball, but as long as their out pitch moves out of the zone it’s a line they can walk. That wasn’t happening in Gio’s case, and the results were showing.

As is his way, Giolito dove into the Sox video archives of his starts and dissected his mechanics to find out what his issues were with the release point in his change that were causing it to get slaughtered. Whatever he found, it worked. From his start against the A’s on August 11th (where he gave up two in six innings and took the L while striking out 13) to when the Sox pulled the plug on him in the middle of September with a lat strain Giolito had a 3.33 ERA in seven starts while striking out 70 and only walking 10.

From the 57th starter in the league last season to the 10th overall this year, Giolito is deserving of a few Cy Young votes, and is one of the three players nominated for Comeback Player of the Year Award. He’s also become the surprise gem in the Sox pitching rotation of The Future™. The most impressive thing about Gio’s stats this year (other than the BB and K rates) is the fact that very little of his success is due to batted-ball luck. His FIP is 3.43, which is only .02 higher then his actual ERA, and his BABIP sits at a cool .275, where in comparison Gerrit Cole’s is at .273.

Credit to Giolito for not imploding in on himself like a dwarf star and becoming the latest in a long list of high hype pitchers that never live up to expectations. After the disaster that the 2018 season was for him, his hard work in the off-season should be the boilerplate for Sox pitchers, and something that Reynaldo Lopez should look to emulate this winter.

Contract: Giolito earned $573,000 in 2019 and is under team control in 2020. After that the arbitration years kick in and things will get exponentially more expensive. Look for Rick Hahn to attempt to buy him out of his arbitration years like the Sox did with Tim Anderson and Eloy with a 5-6 year extension.

Welcome Back Or Boot In The Ass: This isn’t even a consideration, as Giolito has become the ace that the Sox have been looking to develop since before Chris Sale suited up. As a certified member of The Future™, Giolito will be here for the long haul and should become the Obi-Wan Kenobi of the Sox starting rotation from here on out, teaching the young Padawans his secret Jedi pitching ways. Sorry, just watched the new Star Wars trailer for the 300th time and am still buzzing.

Baseball

An Ode To Lucas Giolito

By Sam Fels 1331 0

I know Sox fans can be an insular bunch. Actually, I know Sox fans can be THE insular bunch. But you’ll have to excuse a non-Sox fan being inspired to write this post.

Even up here on the Northside, with our daily rainbows and IPA-filled rivers (that actually might be true considering the amount of breweries clustered by the river), I was hit with a touch of disappointment when Lucas Giolito was shut down for the season. Which was silly, because he was only going to miss out on three starts or so, and none of them would matter in the long run. And it’s not like his arm fell off, or I have to write my own funeral dirge and wear a shroud like most of baseball media did when Christian Yelich broke his kneecap (and the Brewers have lost once since, because baseball is weird and evil).

And the funny thing is that it’s only been three seasons since the White Sox had another genuine ace in the rotation, one of the  10-15 there are in baseball (if that many). It’s not like it’s an unfamiliar feeling for the guys in black. They know the joy of the day when that guy is taking the mound, and even if it’s just for that day, your team is must-watch. And yet what Chris Sale and Lucas Giolito represent seems so different.

By the time Sale reached the rotation, the Sox were stuck in that skipped-record cycle where Kenny Williams would go for it every year, construct a mish-mashed collection of assorted parts that he found on the garage floor, and if absolutely everything went right…they’d finish three games or more behind the Tigers. Which they did once, in Sale’s first year as a starter in 2012. And then Sale never pitched an important game for the White Sox again. Sox fans had long ago seen exactly what was going on, and where it wouldn’t go, and how it would never change.

So almost from the get-go, there was this feeling that Sale was going to go to waste. Before his career unfolded, there was a fear that it wouldn’t amount to anything for the team. Sox fans had already tired of their front office approach, wanted coherence, and could see down the road that there wasn’t anything down that road. It was impossible to avoid the conclusion that something special was going to get tarnished by its surroundings.

(It also didn’t help that much that Sale turned out to be a complete pissbaby, but whatever).

Giolito seems to be the complete opposite. He portends to all the big things down the road. There’s a lot in the distance instead of a void.

Sox fans believe in the rebuild for the most part, but they hadn’t had much vision of it before. Yoan Moncada, Giolito, Tim Anderson, Reynaldo Lopez and others have come up, and they’re physically there, but they hadn’t flashed before this year what they could be. That’s what this year was about.

And obviously it’s not Giolito alone, because Moncada and Anderson have been great as well. But Gio…well, there’s a place a genuine ace holds that no regular player gets to. Sure, there might be a three-homer game there, or a 4-for-4, or a walk-off hit. But they rarely if ever hold the whole game in their hand and simply squeeze the life out of it just to hear the wheeze. And that’s what Giolito did most of the time this year.

The one that sticks out to me is the late-August complete game in Target Field with the 12 Ks against the Twins. But there are so many other to pick. That day, Gio’s change-up was Merlin-created. It seemed to stop in mid-air to point and laugh at whoever was swinging at it. That’s the thing with pitchers. Hitters can make one pitcher or one pitch look foolish once. Pitchers can make eight hitters look like it’s their first day on the job and they’ve been kept awake for three days before multiple times in a game. Gio did that that day, and many others, but that day it was to a lineup that’s going down in history (however strangely).

When Sox fans watched Giolito this season, they didn’t look into the future and have to wonder or dread that it would all be for nought. That it would be a well-kept secret, a cult hero, much like King Felix in Seattle as well. They watched Giolito and saw big starts against the Twins in September, or October. They saw starts and games they’ll talk about years later. The saw the spearhead to the charge up the standings. Because on that day, Giolito is on the hill and the Sox are unbeatable. There’s a tide or wave of confidence behind a top-end starter that seems to propel a team, if only for those nine innings.

When Sale was in his pomp on 35th, all you could see was doom. Giolito makes you see the possibilities. And sure, you don’t know for sure that they’ll all come to fruition. But that’s part of the excitement, too. At least they’re there. That’s a start.

 

Baseball

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

By Sam Fels 999 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.

 

Eloy 2
Baseball

Series Recap – Sox Lose 2 of 3 To Royals: Rearview Mirror

By Andy Jonathan 1164 0

BOX SCORES

Game 1: Royals 3 – Sox 7

Game 2: Royals 8 – Sox 6

Game 3: Royals 6 – Sox 3

 

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

 

THE POWER OF POSITIVITY

-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.

Baseball

Series Preview – Royals At White Sox: Twirling Towards Freedom

By Andy Jonathan 1868 0

  VS 

 

RECORDS: Royals 53-91  White Sox 63-80

GAMETIMES: Tues/Wed 7:10, Thursday 1:10

TV: Tues/Wed NBCSN, Thursday WGN

Are You Missouri Or Are You Kansas: Royals Review

SERIES PREVIEW POSTS

Depth Charts & Pitching Staffs

Royals Spotlight: David Glass

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.

 

 

Baseball

Series Preview – Angels vs. White Sox: Wave As You Go By

By Sam Fels 1266 0

vs.

RECORDS: 65-76   White Sox 62-78

GAMETIMES: Friday 7:10, Saturday 6:10, Sunday 1:10

TV: NBCSN Friday/Saturday, WGN Sunday

WALLY’S WORLD: Halos Heaven

PREVIEW POSTS

Depth Charts & Pitching Staffs

Angels Spotlight: Shohei Ohtani

It could feel like the Angels and White Sox are in the same place, given they have pretty much the same record and are both going to finish this year up the track. They have teams to catch that feel like they’re going to be around a while (though the Twins are a lot more unstable than the Astros), and it’s been far too long since either team was exactly relevant.

But as this week in Cleveland proved, the Sox have an upward trajectory you can at least see if they’re not fully fastened on yet. Whereas the Angels have been here forever, perennially stuck in not going forward or backward but most certainly not going anywhere. And the Sox don’t have the guilt of wasting the career of perhaps the greatest player to do it as the Angels do.

So, in a complete disservice to Mike Trout, these two teams will run out three more games on the schedule against each other this weekend on the Southside. The Sox hope for more than this soon. Trout hopes for more than this just anytime, given how long he has committed to Orange County now.

And that’s the thing with the Angels,. They don’t have a plethora or even a helping of young players that portend to anything more than this. They do have some expensive vets draining money and at-bats, and firmly ground the team in mud. One of this upcoming offseason’s big dramas will be the Angels trying to lure Gerrit Cole home, if they will and how hard. He certainly could help a lot, and with the better health of Shohei Ohtani that would give the Angels rotation a serious boost.

But that’s not enough on its own to catch the Astros, or even a wildcard spot considering how far ahead the Yankees, Rays, Red Sox, A’s, and Indians are now. Perhaps the latter will fall, but their slack might be picked up by the White Sox themselves. And you don’t build a team hoping for just a wildcard spot.

The lineup needs so much help. Only Brandon Marsh from within the system might help next year, and the Angels have a lot more holes. Catcher, 1st, 2nd, possibly third (David Fletcher might make that his own) and one of the corner outfield spots if not both. The Angels can’t spend their way to improving the lineup enough, or at least won’t. And they’ve tried that in the past, and it got them here.

Worse yet, there aren’t a lot of pieces they can flog to restock. Trout would have been one, but would have signaled a complete start-over which they didn’t want to do. There’s no pitcher they have to move, and really no position player either. They basically have to ace every draft and wait. That’s essentially what they’re doing now.

Anyway, they roll into Chicago after getting dumped on for three games by the A’s in Oakland, capping it off by blowing a 6-1 lead in the last two innings yesterday afternoon. It’s not a pleasant bunch at the moment.

The Sox will send out Giolito to carry out the momentum of yesterday’s wind, and Dylan Covey will save everyone the horror of watching Ross Detweiler start tomorrow night. They will hope the signs of life from Eloy and Collins are carried out a little more, before everyone gets to feast on a lot of Tigers and Royals before the season closes out.

Baseball

Series Recap: Sox Swept By Braves – GTS

By Andy Jonathan 1547 0

BOX SCORES

Game 1: Sox 7 – Braves 10

Game 2: Sox 5 – Braves 11

Game 3: Sox 3 – Braves 5

 

 

The pitching woes continue for the Sox, who faced their 3rd legitimate offensive juggernaut in a row this weekend, with predictable results. Giolito fared the best, though he was completely done in by 2 home runs, both coming from Young Christian Slater lookalike Freddie Freeman. Nova couldn’t go more than 4 innings, and Lopez backslid by not making it out of the 3rd. In a microcosm, none of this means anything really. Nova isn’t gonna be here next year, Lopez had one bad start after a string of solid ones and Lucas Giolito still went 6 while striking out 7. The offense wasn’t as putrid this series so that’s an improvement I guess. None of that makes it any easier to watch, however.

This last month of the season is going to be some 6 pack viewing for Sox fans, as in it’s gonna take a 6 pack of at least Bass Ale to get you through some of these games. Expect to see a lot more Carson Fulmer and Manny Banuelos, both of whom made their triumphant returns today. Jon Jay has gone back on the MIA list with season ending surgery on his hip, likely ending his tenure with the White Sox and ensuring his lasting contribution to the team being convincing Manny Machado that, yes, San Diego is nicer in the winter than Chicago. With Rick Hahn‘s steadfast refusal to call up Luis Robert from AAA, other than watching Moncada, Anderson and Giolito string out the remainder of their time there isn’t much here to lure people out to The Down Arrow in September. I’m sure Zack Collins will be here, but Renteria wouldn’t give him playing time over AJ Fucking Reed back in July so forgive me if my excitement is somewhat tempered. There’s a lot to be excited about this team, but right now it’s hard to see the forest for the trees.

Bullets, please.

 

BURN IT DOWN

–Lucas Giolito looked pretty good except for the 2 shitty changeups he threw to Freddie Freeman. He even made up for the first ones by knocking in his first career RBIs by smoking a single in the gap off Julio Teheran in the 2nd inning. Probably would’ve been a double for pretty much anyone else on the team but Lucas was blessed with the same type of speed that I was, namely “none.” Which is completely fine, because if you’re expecting your AL-based starting pitcher to challenge the arm of Future Legend Ronald Acuna Jr then you were fucked before word go. Giolito pitched 173 innings last year, and after today he will be sitting on 162. Should be no reason he couldn’t hit 200 this year, leaving him completely stretched out for next season’s hopeful contention.

-Eloy had some hits this weekend, which is a good sign for his timing (which has been shit since his last IL stint). What isn’t the best sign is that they were all singles. Eloy has now gone 10 games without an extra base hit, which is definitely cause for a second look. James Fegan had an excellent article the other day questioning whether or not he might need to adjust his batting stance in the off-season, basically implying that his crouched stance might be affecting his ability to catch up to fastballs up in the zone. Hitting coach Todd Steverson has had luck with Moncada and Anderson in the past few springs and I feel there’s no reason Eloy can’t have the same success. He just has to stay healthy, so as to not have to start from scratch every few weeks.

-The Sox bullpen wasn’t any better than the starters this weekend, with Aaron Bummer and Big Boss Ross being particularly putrid. Bummer has already thrown 20 more innings than ever before in his career and that might be getting to him as more and more walks have started to creep into his stat line. Fortunately Manny Banuelos and Carson Fulmer are here to lighten the load. I haven’t totally given up on Fulmer, and think that he could still be a valuable piece going forward. If that’s the case, now would be the optimal time to show it.

-I’m not a huge fan of Renteria’s management style to begin with, and watching him do it in a National League park is even worse. When I run for president next year on a “Designated Hitters For All” platform next year, don’t be surprised if I win in a landslide.

-Next up is the Indians, who desperately need to take this series from the Sox. I’m sincerely hoping they can play spoiler and ruin September for Cleveland before the Browns take over in October. “Keep Cleveland Depressed” is also one of my many main campaign platforms.

-In other news, AEW’s All Out PPV was Saturday night. I was there at the Sears Center and had a blast, even with Dad Bod Chris Jericho winning the title. Should give AEW some nice momentum heading into their television debut in a few weeks, unless one of the Young Bucks died last night, which is highly possible.

Baseball

Series Wrap – Sox Take Two of Three From Twins – The Neural Pathway to Victory

By Adam Hess 1123 0

BOX SCORES

Game 1: Sox 6, Twins 4

Game 2: Sox 4, Twins 14

Game 3: Sox 4, Twins 0

There are few things as frustrating as the White Sox getting their shit kicked in by the Minnesota Twins, but also few things more incredible than the White Sox kicking the Twins’ shit in. This week we got to witness both of these things happen, and it was a little strange but given that Lucas Gi0lito shoved in Wednesday’s game for the dominant win, it felt far more satisfying. Any time we can beat the shit out of those lousy idiots up north is a good time. Let’s do this:

– Ivan Nova has slowly grown on me this year, but I feel like it’s more like a disgusting zit and less like a nice beard. Not to say that Nova hasn’t been good, because he has been nothing short of solid in most of his starts for a while now (did I hedge this sentence enough?).  In reality, though, he was just so bad early in the season that he is now pitching less bad and this really is what the Sox were expecting and hoping for when they traded for him to be their innings eater rather than adding someone who could, you know, actually be a difference making starter.

– Fresh among a week in which Rick Renteria adopted the company line and told any fans who might criticize his lineup construction and in game decisions to kiss his ass, he made yet another extremely questionable and crticizable (?) decision by putting on a suicide squeeze with a two run lead and an 0-2 count in the seventh inning. Now to be fair, I also would probably rather not watch Yolmer Sanchez swing  a bat in an important situation, and it’s not like Ricky has a lot of options at his disposal (which I think was at the heart of his comments about critics), but I am just hoping that all of the bunting will go away next year when there is hopefully some real talent here.

– I do not want to talk much about Game 2, because it was very very bad. But Nelson Cruz is still fucking awesome and I am not looking forward to the Sox having to face him next year as well.

– Last comment about Game 2, but it’s tough to see Reynaldo Lopez get shelled after he had been having a strong second half of the season. Hopefully it was just one bad start and we move on.

– I am not sure what more I can say about Lucas Giolito at this point. The man is simply incredible, and it’s pretty cool to think that a huge part of his early struggles were mostly mental. It definitely seemed that way last year, and hearing about all of his neural pathway training (that inspired this recap title, thank you) was pretty fascinating. It was the kinda thing that makes you want to do the weird computer thing and figure out your own brain. But if you put me at full brain power I’d obviousbly be unstobbale and the whole world would be fucked.

– We should get Yoan Moncada back for this next series against the Rangers. So this team will become slightly more likeable and watchable. Thank you God.

Baseball

Ricky Adds To Sox Spiky

By Sam Fels 1345 0

Ok, sorry about that.

It’s been a cantankerous few days on the Southside. I suppose this is where a joke about it always being cantankerous around 35th and Shields would go, and that’s just the Sox Experience, but I’m trying to turn a new leaf here. So we’ll just leave it. A couple days ago you had Rick Hahn making the mistake of thinking Twitter represents all Sox fans and lashing out. And today in the Athletic, Rick Renteria has just about had it with people criticizing his lineup construction.

It’s not hard to see where Renteria’s anger, or insecurity, or frustration boils from. This is his second managerial job, and the first one lasted only one season before he was replaced by Joe Maddon and the Cubs went on to this era. His one season on the Northside was seen merely as a caretaker, someone to smile at Anthony Rizzo and Starlin Castro to aid their development after having their souls broken by Dale Sveum. And it was generally understood that Renteria would be moved along when things mattered again, which happened much faster than anyone anticipated. It felt like Renteria was never judged on what he could do as a manager, and though his one season didn’t mean much, we never got much of an answer.

The thing is though, both Rizzo and Castro had their best seasons in the majors in 2014, Rizzo’s by far. Now maybe you can chalk that up to just natural maturation and growth, but it would be a stretch to say Renteria didn’t have anything to do with it all. Moreover, Jake Arrieta became a star that campaign, Kyle Hendricks, Jorge Soler, and Javy Baez came up late in that season (though the latter certainly had some issues with the whole whiffing-at-the-world thing), and at least some seeds were planted. We can even throw in Hector Rondon having a great season as a Rule-5 pick, and he would be a valuable piece going forward. It feels like all of this couldn’t have happened in spite of or around the manager, smiling politely the whole way.

So to the Sox, and once again Renteria is being viewed as merely a placeholder or glorified mascot, even in his third year of managing. And for the most part, at least to start, he wasn’t given really anything to work with. You don’t want to look at that 2017 team if you’ve eaten in the last hour or are planning to in the next. Basically, it had one pitcher who was then flipped across town halfway through and not much else.

Still, this season, Yoan Moncada, Tim Anderson, and Lucas Giolito have all taken major steps forward–along with at least half of a breakout campaign from James McCann–and it’s easy to pass that off as them just being naturally talented and gaining experience. But this seems to keep happening with Renteria around, so either he’s one of the luckiest guys in the world when it comes to young talent or he at least can provide an environment for it to progress and even flourish. There are more than a few managers who couldn’t even figure that one out.

As the article is based around. Renteria gets a lot of shit for his lineup choices, and as it also points out he’s behind a handful of eight-balls when it comes to it. Earlier in the year it was Anderson batting seventh, though now he’s batted second even more. Some would have liked to have seen Eloy moved up, but he hasn’t really done anything yet to merit that. Overall, I’m of the opinion batting order is a touch overblown, but it’s easy to see where hitting third or fourth would add extra pressure to a rookie still trying to navigate the heavy waters of The Show.

Renteria doesn’t have an OBP-heavy leadoff hitter anywhere, which isn’t his fault. It also would seem that Jose Abreu is entrenched in the third spot as organizational policy, so someone has to go cleanup which we’ve come to find out isn’t really where you want your best hitters. In an ideal world where everyone was healthy and producing, your top three would be some combo of Moncada, Jimenez, and Anderson, but it just hasn’t worked out like that for various reasons. Renteria has black holes essentially in center, right, DH, and second base. That’s a lot to navigate around.

Of course, he can’t escape the criticisms of his in-game managing, and there’s way too much bunting and playing for one-run. And while James Fegan here leans to the “having no choice with the talent on hand” button, which is defensible, to me if the season isn’t really about wins and losses (and it isn’t) then you have to establish what you’re going to do going forward. How you’re going to play. Show the kids who will be here that no, we don’t bunt here or we don’t go for moving the runner over, just bash the shit out of the ball and let’s get two or three at once. But at the same time, does it really matter what he decides to do with Yolmer or Cordell at the plate? How much of a tone does that set going forward for Moncada or Jimenez? I’m guessing not much of one.

As for bullpen management, we know Renteria likes to go hard at times, and get the matchups he wants. There is something to be said of showing everyone that you want to get wins, that their hard work should be rewarded at times with the manager doing just as much to get those rewards. Though beyond Aaron Bummer and Jace Fry (maybe Jimmy Cordero), it’s hard to see out of the pen who is going to matter long term. But getting them in as many big spots as you can isn’t the worst idea in the world.

None of this means I or anyone else would expect Renteria to be around when the Sox are contending again, be that next year or probably more likely 2021. Which might be harsh on Rick for a second time, but that’s reality. But it would seem the main crux of his job–moving the players forward who are going to be the driving force for that contending team–he’s done. And he’s done it for a second time.