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: Dioner Navarro
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 […]
You Got Framed
The accepted wisdom at this point seems to be that the 2016 White Sox invested in non-framing factors at the catcher position in the hopes that the new catchers’ other virtues would compensate for the harm they would cause. Of course, they wound up doubly bitten by the fact that Dioner Navarro didn’t contribute on offense at all, and […]
Year in Review: Carlos Rodon
The White Sox front office expected the team to compete in 2016, as did many fans. However, in order to compete the White Sox needed quite a few unlikely things to happen. One of those things was having Carlos Rodon grow into a top of the rotation starter. Rodon had a very encouraging finish to […]
White Sox Year in Review: Dioner Navarro
Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. If you’re the White Sox front office you do the latter far more often than the former. When the White Sox shockingly decided to non-tender Tyler Flowers this winter, they made it clear what they valued in a catcher. Framing was not one of those things. In the view […]
The Evergreen White Sox Problem
Upon drafting the headline, I hesitated, because it could describe a number of things with this organization. But in this instance, I am speaking specifically about the White Sox’ perpetual habit of gushing blood at several spots on the lineup and being clueless as to how to fix it. It’s been going on so long that […]
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 […]
Phillies 5, White Sox 3: A non-humiliating Shields loss
Recently, James Shields had been sliding back to his old habits of getting completely annihilated while pitching in a White Sox uniform. Coming into Wednesday night, Shields had allowed six earned runs in each of his August starts, given up nine home runs in 14 innings of work, only lasted 14 innings in four starts, been crushed […]