1. A.J. Pierzynski at least deked much of the baseball world into thinking he was retiring Saturday night; passing around cigars, having the ball from his final hit of the night authenticated, gave some cryptic quotes about being satisfied with his career. Then he promptly went back on the disabled list in early mid-September, only increasing speculation that he is done.
Pierzynski will turn 40 just before New Year’s Eve, and has been exiled to Atlanta these last two seasons, so a quiet exit was always likely, though very ill-fitting for the loudest, most rambunctious member of the 2005 World Series team. How can he leave the game without inflaming the hatred of the league once more, telling one last umpire “you’re f****** brutal,” before stepping on Casey Blake’s chest, swigging a rally beer and exiting the field?
At the risk of being extremely naive in my dismissal of the threat of Pierzynski of being made into another inexperienced player-turned manager for the Sox, the Sox fan adulation of him is fine, and overemphasized as evidence of their base and meatball core. The point of World Series, and pursuing them at full-bore is that they can be cherished forever, and everything we have learned about catching in the decade-plus since suggests it’s hard to overrate Pierzynski’s role on a team powered by dominant pitching.
2. Chris Sale threw three more innings than Justin Verlander on Sunday, pushing him ahead for the American League lead for innings pitched, despite making two fewer starts than Verlander and David Price. This was supposed to be an element of his Cy Young case that he ceded with his five-game suspension, but in throwing 7.2 innings per start in 10 outs since the All-Star break, he’s managed to not only overtake the entire field, but do so fairly quickly.
Sale started the eighth Sunday having already thrown 104 pitches, clipped 120 twice last month, and has now thrown 110 or more in his last seven times out, so it’s a fair speculation that no one else is being used this aggressively. Sale, at least publicly, refuses to give a hoot about the awards race, and even gave an all-time sad quote in response to being informed of making it to his fourth-straight season with 200 strikeouts.
Chris Sale on 4 years of 200+ K’s: “There’s not a single part of me that wouldn’t give all that to be in the playoffs four years in a row.”
— Paul Roumeliotis (@PaulRoumel) September 11, 2016
But while this usage is likely reckless and serves no purpose other to pad his resume, after sitting through endless blind speculation that his weird delivery doomed him to an inevitable elbow blowout, seeing him take the mantle of the ultimate workhorse is amusing, to say the least.
3. Brett Lawrie last appeared in a game for the Birmingham Barons on Aug. 20, the minor league season and any opportunity to play rehab games within it is over, and the Sox themselves have only 20 games left, so it was pretty easy to determine that Lawrie was likely done for the year before Robin Ventura acknowledged it over the weekend. If he’s done, 2016 will be his second-lowest total for games played since he was first called up mid-season in 2011, which is pretty notable given how injury-marred his career has already been.
In the meantime, Tyler Saladino has hit .296/.321/.421 in 40 games since Lawrie went down, with just an 18 percent strikeout rate, which has served to quell a little bit of concern about how full-time play would suit the utility man. Saladino hasn’t seemed quite as comfortable at second as all of the other infield positions he’s been trusted with, but there’s no doubt that he has the physical tools for the position.
The White Sox are so starved for some sort of depth to deal from that any hint of two competent players at one position conjures up speculation of a trade, but between Lawrie’s questionable prospects for staying healthy, and Saladino’s questionable prospects for producing at a starter level in a full-time role, maybe just having…infield depth…for once…would be worth trying.
4. The White Sox released groundball specialist Ryan Webb this week, ending injury-marred efforts to revive his career in park where groundball specialists have a lot of value. Looking at the list of minor league transactions revealed that Terry Doyle–a few months shy of 31 and four years removed from asking to be released from the Sox to go to Japan, as it became clear the finesse righty was not in their major league plans–is still kicking around and back in affiliated ball. He’s with the Diamondbacks too, so a major league appearance might still be possible.
5. It’s a little hard to comprehend still that Carlos Rodon threw a 93 mph wipeout slider to strike out Paulo Orlando on his 116th pitch of the night on Friday. It’s not really a point that needs to be made right now while Rodon is still just 23, and is in the middle of a second half where he’s recorded a 2.52 ERA over eight starts and posted a nearly four-to-one strikeout to walk ratio, but these are the sort of elite tools that force teams to give a pitcher as many chances as he needs to develop into a starter. It’s also the sort of overwhelming ability that made it hard for Rodon to grow in the minors and forced him to grow up in the majors, but that could be working out just fine.
Lead Image Credit: David Banks // USA Today Sports Images