Assessing the White Sox

We’re 60 games into the season, well more like 65….or so, but by now General Managers have assessed their teams. It’s time to determine whether to buy or sell. The baseball teams on both sides of town are in a seemingly perturbing predicament. The White Sox, thus far, have stood pat. A.J. Pierzynski’s 10 and 5 vesting rights have been implemented as of this past Sunday. One could think that should he have been moved this season, it would have been before the rights kicked in, but the truth is it really doesn’t matter all that much. Rumor had it that the Rangers had and may still have interest in A.J. as they’ve tried out a trio of catchers this season, none of which produced what management expected for a team in the race for the AL West. Jarrod Saltalamacchia can’t hit big league pitching and he turned into Rube Baker of the motion picture Major League II with his troubles of getting the ball back to the pitcher, not even dirty magazines could help this kid out. I’m sure White Sox GM Kenny Williams performed his due diligence and listened to and is listening to offers for A.J., but for one, he hasn’t been hitting well especially compared to last year, and two, he’s got that sort of negative reputation and the ol’ “punch me” face. Yet, the vesting rights still don’t hold much water as Pierzynski has all ready said that he’d be willing to waive his no-trade clause should the White Sox fall further out of contention and be given the opportunity to be moved to a contender. Mark Buehrle’s 10 and 5 rights kick in in July, so there should be a circus following him in the coming weeks. Buehrle, if not all ready, is rapidly turning into a NL pitcher. He has a limited no-trade clause that will soon turn into the full no-trade, but I have to believe that at this point in his career that he’d only accept a trade to an NL contender by the name of St. Louis. They have a good shot at winning the NL Central, they’re looking for starting pitching, and it’s Mark’s hometown.
The starting pitching got off to a slow, nay, a bad start. The staff is starting to come around as they’ve thrown nine quality starts in a roll and they have won 8 of their last 10. The problems are that the Twins win when the Sox win and they lose when the Sox lose. (Although, the Sox did gain a game last night to bring them to 6.5 games back). Also, Jake Peavy is now experiencing dead-arm. His next start is being pushed back to Saturday and possibly further. I know, first thing’s first and the Sox have to get back to .500 and the they’re still 3 wins away from reaching that goal, but it would be nice to steal more games away from Minnesota along the way. The Sox were once 9 games below .500 so there’s been a little progress. Some fans, including this one, may have taken the staff for granted and just expected them to produce quality start after quality start right from the beginning and continue to do so the entire season. Hopefully they’re back on the right track though. Rios and Quentin were the next big questions and Rios has been stellar and Quentin is seemingly a fallen star thus far. Rios is on pace to be the first 30-30 White Sox while having the best average on the team by far at .313. Konerko is second at .294. Quentin has struggled mightily with a .213 average. The silver lining for Quentin has been his average with runners in scoring position hitting at a .314 clip. That has helped him to pot a respectable 36 RBI as he seems to come thru when the Sox really need him.
All the talk of this “Ozzie ball” ((which isn’t even real, and I’d like to know who coined that term so I can hate them directly) it’s just known as small ball and it’s the way baseball has been played for over a hundred years, a style that is still alive and well and living in the National League), hasn’t panned out as expected. Sure they have a lot more stolen bases this year and that has helped to move guys into scoring position, but most guys still can’t lay down a bunt and are just plain bad at situational hitting. White Sox have missed out on plenty of opportunities when all they needed was a sacrifice bunt or fly or a grounder to the right side. And as I’ve pointed out before, the Sox are still reliant on the long ball! They’re just doing it throughout the entire lineup as opposed to a few base-clogging power hitters. This brings me to the latest and greatest White Sox news…the call-up of Dayan Viciedo. Mark Teahen went on the DL with a broken middle finger, Jason Nix wasn’t getting it done in the field or with the bat so he was designated for assignment, and they can’t ask Omar Visquel to play every day at 43 years old. So, Vicideo is back at The Show. He brings a power bat to the lineup, which I like because though the thought of playing small ball to win the Central is a nice idea to entertain, it has failed and the Sox have to play to the small dimensions of their ballpark to win more games. Viciedo’s stat line for this year in triple A has been pretty good. He’s your typical free-swinging Cuban prospect with extra pop. He batted .290 with 14 dingers and 14 RBI. He posted a poor OBP drawing just 8 walks with 52 strikeouts in 255 plate appearances (courtesy of baseball-reference.com). But, like I said, the Sox aren’t doing much as far as situational hitting goes anyway, so they may as well have another masher on the lineup card. This is besides the fact that they’re hoping he’ll be the shining star they’ve paid him to be in the coming years and it’ll be good to get him some quality major league at-bats.
Tonight the White Sox will face rookie Phenom Stephen Strasburg. It should be a good game as Gavin Floyd takes the bump coming off a strong performance in which he took a no-hitter into the 7th and was the tough-luck loser. Strasburg has command of 4 major league pitches. Considering the fact that he’ll be pitching at home and facing AL pitchers in the batter’s box, his strikeouts should easily reach double digits. The White Sox handed a much less dominant 8-0 Carlos Silva his first loss of the season, hopefully they can keep that trend going and give Strasburg his first loss of his Major League career.

As always, tune in to Cover 3 every Monday evening from 7 to 9 on sportstownchicago.com. A huge thanks to Matt Spiegel of WSCR 670 The Score for joining the show last week.

Also, a shout out to Jay BLAAck and Joe Quelleville! Thanks Mayor Richie!

PREACH