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South Side Morning 5: The joy of Sale and Quintana

With the Sox season having gone from one of their best starts in memory to dead by July, and with nearly all of their rosterable rookies maimed beyond reason, the 2016 season has lost a lot of the traditional reasons to watch it. That Chris Sale and Jose Quintana are saddled with this group is a source of aggravation, but while they’re here, there’s too little going on not to enjoy them for their own sake.

Sale was still thoroughly weird Saturday and somewhat inscrutable. He avoided his changeup as much as ever, his control was unusually spotty–even for how some of his rougher starts have gone–and he seemed vulnerable in the earlygoing. Watching Sale has switched from marveling and wondering if the world will notice this spectacle to wondering if he can maintain the results that his reputation commands, so it’s gratifying to see him do something that only he can do, like completely overwhelm the A’s lineup down the stretch by dialing up his fastball to another level and striking out five batters in a row.

He hasn’t been totally inspiring, but Sale’s conservation had a very specific goal that he may be near achieving.  He has never had a stronger first half than second half in his career, but so far is carrying a 2.47 ERA in six second half starts with an opposing batting line of .203/.278/.268.  That’s a big swing forward, but really the only big difference is that his home run rate has plummeted after an aberrant, awful first half.  That was seemingly bound to happen, but even just maintaining the same effectiveness over the whole year would be a big leap forward.

2. Quintana, whose level in investment in reaching the 10-win plateau was either charming or truly dismaying depending on your perspective, is free from the kind of judgment applied to Sale.  He’s never been overwhelming, or blessed with incredible weapons that we are constantly assessing for whether they are at max capacity.  Of course, whenever we check in on him he’s doing something like striking out batters at a career-high rate, steaming toward a career-high in innings, throwing harder than ever, etc.

Sunday found him lacking a minute amount of zip on his fastball, missing with his curve, and generally not getting whiffs, but still executing and floating his way through seven strong innings against a lineup that was too weak to force him into any truly challenging showdowns.  If it seemed like he was finding his way to a decent pitch to escape a jam Sunday, it’s because he was, and has been.  The A’s were 1-for-5 against him runners in scoring position, and his 80-percent strand rate this year is a career-high. It’s a bit harder to show sustainability with that, but betting against Quintana making his success permanent has not gone well so far.

3. CSN flashed Jose Abreu‘s home/road splits on the screen Sunday, and he seems to really be taking up the idea of being Paul Konerko‘s successor too literally. He’s hitting .315/.364/.531 at home with 11 of his 16 home runs at U.S. Cellular Field after Sunday, and scuffling to the tune of .257/.317/.379 on the road.  He’s always had a pronounced home/road split, which makes sense for a power hitter with a small, homer-prone home park, and may make extra sense for him, as someone with lower exit velocities and more home runs that barely clear the wall than most.

Or, this is still enough of a small sample that a discrete event such as Abreu being hurt or sore or slumping or having one of those random problems with his legs that he’s always having during a road stretch would be enough to drag down his already existent splits to an extreme level.  He’s hitting .361/.410/.639 in August, so maybe it all depends on how long his stretch of looking like himself again lasts.

4. Brett Lawrie is being brought back from his rehab stint in Double-A Birmingham to be re-evaluated on Monday, which seems…bad.  Typically they don’t call off rehab to discuss how great the injury recovery is going! His injury was originally described as a hamstring pull, but he left his last game in Birmingham–he has yet to play a full one–with “quad soreness” and now there’s speculation that his knee is involved.

Sunday marked a month since Lawrie last played a game for the White Sox, and all dreams that he would complete his second-straight year of 600 plate appearances after a spate of injuries in his early 20s have tanked during this stretch.  Being injury-prone Lawrie’s comfortably league average offense needs to be weighted with how much playing time for Tyler Saladino and Carlos Sanchez is involved in relying on Lawrie.  Fortunately, Saladino has made that much less of an issue this season.

5. Alec Hansen getting drafted by the White Sox in the second round transported him from Big 12 competition to the Rookie League, where promoting him from the Arizona Fire League to the Pioneer League is the biggest challenge they forced upon the massive (6′ 7″, 235 pounds), but wild right-hander.  It’s clearly a conservative, low-pressure assignment meant to allow Hansen to iron out control problems (39 walks in 51.2 innings in his junior year).  He should dominate this opposition, and uh, he is. He struck out 13 batters Sunday vs. Helena in six innings, and didn’t allow a hit until his final frame.  He still walked three, and has been ticking up in that regard recently, but he’s struck out 59 in 36.2 innings, so, there’s some potential there.

Closer than five promotions away from the majors, Zack Burdi has not been scored upon in seven innings since coming up to Charlotte, and has struck out 13.  In particular, he’s struck out 10 over two-straight two-inning outings in his last two games. The blitz to the majors path is not looking as ridiculous as normal these days, and of course any future use for him as a multi-inning reliever would be very interesting.

 

Lead Image Credit: David Richard // USA Today Sports Images

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