In their efforts to piece things together and stay competitive in the 2016 season, the White Sox made a big change at the catcher position. Tyler Flowers had been the starting catcher since the departure of A.J. Pierzynski, but the team opted to replace him with a platoon of veteran catchers in Dioner Navarro and Alex […]
Tag: Alex Avila
How Good Is Omar Narvaez?
Catchers are weird. Let’s get that out of the way up front. They develop in strange ways, at strange times, if they develop at all. And given that it is the most difficult position to defend on the diamond, the bar for offensive production is extremely low. The White Sox’ recent saga at catcher is […]
Betting on the quiet competence of Omar Narvaez
One of the most puzzling decisions the White Sox made going into the 2016 season, a season fully meant to be one resulting in at least a Wild Card chase, was replacing Tyler Flowers and Geovany Soto’s perfectly serviceable seasons at catcher with a platoon of Dioner Navarro and Alex Avila. The company line about […]
South Side Morning 5: I cannot pretend that there is anything happening
By all means, the White Sox should have a firm price they stick by for all of their insanely valuable trade assets, and maybe even some of their only moderately valuable trade assets. By all means, they are not running late on the market that is slow-developing and was stalled by the holidays, and still […]
BP South Side 2016-17 Offseason Plan – Part 1
What should the White Sox do to redeem this perpetual mess? Let’s discuss with somewhat reasonable parameters. Our first session will be firing through basic decisions: player options, non-tender decisions and outgoing free agents, hugs. The second session will be about trading Chris Sale and raiding nearby buildings for copper piping. Player Options Pick up […]
Tigers 5, White Sox 3: Extra Innings, Extra Disappointment
Coming into today’s game, the White Sox were 5-11 on the season when playing the Tigers. It’s been bad. Almost comically bad, but not quite at that level. Just more tragic, which is the 2016 White Sox season in a nutshell. 1. The game started with bang. On the third pitch of the first at […]
White Sox catching gamble was doomed from the start
When the White Sox made the call to move away from Tyler Flowers in the offseason, the mindset behind the decision was likely that they were willing to sacrifice some defense for better offense. Moving on from Flowers made sense, as despite being heralded as a prospect whose bat would play even if his defense […]
Goodbye, Dioner Navarro
The White Sox have suddenly made as many trades in August as they did at the July deadline, trading Dioner Navarro to the Blue Jays last night. Despite Rick Hahn being coy about the offseason plan, this is an organization that has been gallingly passive in recent years. In that sense, it is a positive […]
Omar Narvaez: Symbol of Hope?
While it has been a rough season in many respects, one particularly disappointing aspect of 2016 has been–through misfortune and persistent organizational weakness–the lack of young players to watch with hopeful optimism. After all, once it’s clear a team’s immediate playoff fortunes have been dashed, the most obvious pleasure in continuing to watch derives from […]
The White Sox are done
Maybe this declarative headline is just for posterity, since the dimming playoff picture for the Sox has been increasingly apparent for weeks now, and is simply impossible to ignore now after a dismal 1-5 west coast road trip to start the second half, which came on the heels of home series loss to the tanking […]