The first acquisition of last year’s White Sox offseason was Steve Lombardozzi. The second was selecting Jacob Turner off waivers. Since moving to the bullpen, Turner does not look great, but has resembled a major leaguer in a way he certainly did not in his disastrous spot starts, allowing two earned runs, striking out seven […]
Tag: Chris Sale
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 […]
Mariners 3, White Sox 1: Brilliant finish from Sale brightens otherwise awful game
It’s the time of year to cling to positives, to look for something to track for progress, or given the absence of Jose Abreu‘s power bat and Chris Sale‘s most overwhelming strikeout stuff, and Jose Quintana striving for a career year, just some feats of strength from the core is enough to be heartwarming. In that vein, it’s […]
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 […]
White Sox 6, Athletics 2: This was how things were supposed to be
Having the 53-70 A’s roll in town is, typically, a good way for everything for operate like it was always supposed. Time was, just a Chris Sale start was enough to make the Sox look like a killer outlet, but holding back his best stuff as he sticks to a conservation plan that begun running […]
White Sox takeaways from Saberseminar
The 2016 iteration of Saberseminar, a conference devoted to baseball scouting, statistics, and sports science, took place in Boston this past weekend. In roughly 12 hours of baseball presentations across two days, it was inevitable that topics relevant to every team would pop up; here are the portions of my notebook that pertain to the White Sox. In […]
Marlins 5, White Sox 4: Sale underwhelms as Sox comeback comes inches short
Death, taxes, government subsidies for sports stadiums, and the White Sox losing reviews on the plate-blocking rule. 1. Pinch-runner Carlos Sanchez was beaten by a strong throw home from left fielder Christian Yelich, as he tried to score the tying run in the top of the ninth after Tyler Saladino singled with two outs. The […]
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 […]