It turns out there are limits to things. Limits to how long a team can stay in a game when failing to produce against 12 innings of fluff pitching (the game was 14 innings long but some of these pitchers were actually good), limits to how many one-run leads they can cough up, and limits […]
Category: Articles
South Side Morning 5: Sale forced into a change
1. As nice as it was to see Chris Sale stabilize himself by leaning a bit more on his mid-80s changeup in the later innings, it was more of a forced adjustment than an intentional shift in approach. His slider was hanging and getting appropriately hammered early, and the approach he used last week in Detroit […]
White Sox 7, Royals 5: Frazier’s blast, two-out rally carry Sox in extras
White Sox games against Kansas City, and certainly in Kansas City, feel like a nightmare. A specific nightmare, where the impossibly slow villain that you can easily outrun is chasing you, but you keep falling down, repeatedly, and then inexplicably, and then it becomes the rule, and by the time you realize the game is […]
South Side Mid-day 5: Please be alive, Jose Abreu
1. By the end of the year, the only thing that will stand out as garishly wrong with Jose Abreu‘s raw seasonal totals is home runs. His strikeouts are down, his doubles total will be fine (though it will obviously be leaching from the home runs), even his walk rate will look fairly normal because […]
Schedule makers can’t bear the blame for the Sox demise
When an organization waves the white flag before the trade deadline has even begun, the team can’t simply just quit. There’s a whole two and a half months of baseball left to play, and that notion becomes taxing on everyone involved with the team. From the front office, to the broadcast booth, to the fans; […]
Orioles 10, White Sox 2: White Sox lose game immediately
I went to the game Sunday with my sister, with tickets I bought her for her birthday. Despite getting inside the park 10 minutes before first pitch–would have been sooner if the pounding sunshine agreed better with the digital ticket scanners that had to read confirmation codes off phone screens–we made the critical mistake of […]
Investigation into Padres could shed new light on Shields trade
Last week, the Marlins made an uninspiring trade with the Padres to add struggling starters Andrew Cashner and Colin Rea to their rotation, and wound up getting even less than they bargained for. Less than four innings into his first start in Miami, Rea left the game with elbow discomfort, and is now ticketed for […]
Orioles 7, White Sox 5: Offense saves best moments for garbage time
Somewhere on their way to a run of the mill loss to the AL East-leading Orioles centered on blowing opportunities to capitalize on three Baltimore errors in the first three innings, the Sox staged a dramatic near-comeback, allowing them to blow later, far more high-leverage opportunities. 1. Carlos Sanchez was already having a bad game, […]
South Side Morning 5: The Bargaining Stage
1. Here’s a deal: play Avisail Garcia. Play him! As much as he seems burnt out and without upside, now that Charlie Tilson has torn his hamstring, the other outfielders this playing time would go to are J.B. Shuck, Jason Coats, or Austin Jackson if he ever is healthy again this year. If Avisail can […]
White Sox 6, Tigers 3: Sox rough up Zimmerman to dodge Detroit sweep
Like much of Detroit’s roster, Jordan Zimmerman looks like a troubling asset going forward. He’s owed $92 million through 2020 after this season, and his strikeout rate had collapsed to a career-low 15.2 percent coming into Thursday afternoon’s finale. Despite all this, like much of Detroit’s roster he had been effective in 2016, and healthy […]