Poetry in Pros

South Side Sox needs your help!

2019-02-26T12:05:00.000-08:00

When the Chicago White Sox lost out on Manny Machado last week, we spent the better part of a week beating our chests and wailing to heaven over the shortsightedness of the Chicago brass.

Well, the loss of Machado ended up having a very personal impact for us here at South Side Sox. Losing a marquee name to build buzz, staring at another 90-plus loss season, we’ve lost half of our operating budget for the coming season, perhaps beyond.

I don’t have to tell you that the Vox/SBN decision has serious ramifications. Slashing an already tight budget results in everyone being underpaid — or certain writers not being paid at all. One thing I’ve prided myself on establishing at South Side Sox over this past year is getting every regular contributor paid. That hasn’t happened before — at SSS, or at any other White Sox outlet. 

I also don’t have to tell you that this kind of threat to coverage is nothing new to us as White Sox fans. It’s been years since ESPN had a White Sox beat writer, or feature coverage that is in any way meaningful. A year ago, the Chicago Tribune laid off Chris Kuc and NBC Sports Chicago cut Dan Hayes loose, and neither outlet replaced the writers. (In the case of the Trib, which still employs ex-White Sox beat Mark Gonzales working the northsiders, the decision to leave the Sox seat vacant is particularly egregious.)

I’m also not going to take the easy out and dump on upper management here. The examples above prove that Vox is not alone in this sort of myopic, metric-driven, decision-making. As irritating as waiting for a page to load or a particularly in-your-face ad might be, listen, South Side Sox has been the foremost spot for White Sox content for close to 15 years, and remains so. It also offers the best and brightest fan community out there — a community, you guys, which is the backbone of the site. South Side Sox also boasts a reader-friendly format, providing virtually any photo we need to illustrate our words without having to resort to snaps taken from the grandstand at an MLB game.

Of course, I don’t agree with the shortsighted decision to cut back on coverage during lean times, only to pick things back up once Eloy Jiménez wins an MVP or the White Sox reach the play-in game. That’s a bad practice. But I wasn’t asked, but told.

And that’s why I want to fight back.

If South Side Sox cuts back coverage, it will lose its status as the White Sox coverage and community leader, period. And I’m not going to let that happen, if I can help it.

When the Trib and online outfits dumped their Sox writers, we as fans had no recourse or say in the matter. In this case, we do.

In order to fight back, I’ve created a South Side Sox Patreon page to carry us through this lull in corporate support.

Obviously, nothing about the site itself will change over the next month. (You’ll still see ads.) We’ll continue our daily coverage of spring training games and news. Minor league seasons will be previewed, and we’ll continue running through our Top 100 Prospects. Perhaps if the trolls have moved on to another SBN poll to taint, we’ll give the prospect voting one more try. You will probably see a couple of new writers and editors popping up as well.

If even 10% of our registered users offer minimal support, we should at least be able to get back to our normal budget, and carry on almost as if Machado did become a White Sox. With any sort of outpouring beyond that, we’ll pump the extra monies right back into providing even more coverage, and likely expand into areas we’ve not (or lightly) tread in the year I’ve been here: the South Side Sox Podcast, the Miñoso Baseball League, and more.

And if not ... well, we’ll cross that bridge as the season gets underway.

This post will sit prominently on our front page for the coming month, so if you don’t opt for immediate support, you should not have to search long to do so. I’ll also be adding a small endnote at the bottom of every future post, should a sweet post motivate you to help.

As you’ll see at our Patreon page, I’ve set up several tiers of support. They are hastily-assembled and subject to tweaking, perhaps based on feedback you provide. But it’s straightforward stuff, from Basic support to Sponsor level. Go on, take a look.

I’m no sales guy. None of this is meant to guilt or goad. It’s just the facts, man. The last thing I ever wanted to do here was drag out the begging bowl, no matter that a begging bowl is almost as important as a laptop in today’s sports journalism. But I’m not allowed to dog the Trib or other outlets bailing on the White Sox, and then snooze through a similar threat to South Side Sox.

So, again, I’m gonna push back. I sincerely hope you’ll join the fight with me.

Thanks for your consideration, every last one of you. South Side Sox is simply the best White Sox site and community out there, and that’s a direct tribute to all of you reading this, right now. I hope we can continue to prove worthy of your support.

White Sox Manager Survey: And a Ceviche Chef Will Lead Them

2017-04-04T23:28:00.000-07:00

And a Ceviche Chef Will Lead Them: Renteria's short managerial
track record holds immense promise for the South Side.

I've been dragging my heels about getting this Manager Survey series started, but with the season kicking off today in remarkable fashion—a 6-3 pasting in nanook weather—well, perhaps it's time for a bit o' sunshine.

When Rick Renteria was the instantaneous hire to follow Robin Ventura, I shook my head. Under Ventura, the White Sox had suffered years of mediocrity and malaise under a manager whose personality made Jerry Manuel look like Ozzie Guillen.

Yet the same bizarre rationalizing used to hire Robin (among other things, then-GM Ken Williams mused that Ventura could have been a great military general) seemed to be repeating itself (GM Rick Hahn noted with unnerving confidence that had the White Sox not snapped up Renteria, another team would have hired him away. Yes, the bench coach. Of a 78-win team).

There was no harm in talking to a few candidates. After all, Guillen crashed Williams' 2004 managerial search at the last minute, and the feistmeister's hung-over bravado convinced Ken to switch his hire from the dulcet tones of Cito Gaston to all-brass, no-bass Ozzie. For all the criticism levied on Guillen—and 2011's charges are beyond reproach—Ozzie ended his tenure with the seventh-best winning percentage in White Sox history, and as the sixth-best manager overall (more on that in a minute).

But after engaging in a pretty exhaustive investigation of every managerial performance in White Sox history and slotting in (sample size alert!) Renteria's one year in the big chair (2014, with the Chicago Cubs), I'm a lot more comfortable.

Why?

Because in Renteria's one season managing the Cubs, before being jettisoned in rather ungainly fashion once everybody's favorite quirky badass grandpa, Joe Maddon, became available, Renteria tore it up.

Sorry, I know Cubs GM Theo Epstein is a genius and he poops inconceivably delicious Skittles, but his decision to can Renteria was 100% optics, 0% methodology. Yeah, yeah, he'll point to a manila folder bursting with dot matrix research dating back to his junior high years to support Maddon as a better choice than Renteria, but, nope.

(Maddon is basically a wash as a manager, costing his team 10.69 wins over the course of his 13-season, 1,833-game career. Bizarrely, in his 2015 season with the Cubs, Maddon had his best season as a manager, with a 7.5 WAR identical to that of Renteria in 2014. Must've been something in the water.)

Hell, after Renteria's food truck schtick stretched all winter, I'm not even convinced Maddon brings a higher "crazy uncle" factor to the table than his South Side counterpart.

How do I know Renteria projects to be a terrific manager? Because it's nearly impossible to manage better than Renteria did in 2014. Yup, those baby Cubbies who grew up to become World Series champeens won just 79 games—but by all accounts, they were lucky to crack 70.

Here's how great Renteria's season on the North Side was: By my measure of managerial WAR (jesus, I said more on that in a minute!), Renteria logged a 7.5 WAR helming the Cubs in 2014.

Want some perspective? You got it, bub.

Great 5th: Only three White Sox managers, over four total seasons, have logged better than a 7.5 WAR.

Predecessorily Speaking: Ventura cost the White Sox about two wins per year (-1.98 WAR) during his tenure. To give you an indication of how bad White Sox managers have been over time, that kind of career mark places Ventura in the top half—18 of 31—of White Sox managers.

Context, Baby: OK, so White Sox managers have generally sucked. But in my admittedly random survey of mangers in history (small sample size, ranging from a "Hall-of-Famer" like Bobby Cox to a, er, really good hitter like Ted Williams) finds just eight better seasons out of 187 I've studied so far.

Now, do these stats, particularly given Renteria's small sample size, mean anything? Dunno. But White Sox fans are being asked to accept Cody Asche as a major league designated hitter, so perhaps a pinch of slack should be offered here.

And now, for the fine print...

The Methodology

I'm going to keep my explanation basic.

I prefer to use something I'll call team WAR, which adds replacement WAR (~48 wins) to the sum total of player WAR, and subtract that from actual wins.

In Renteria's 2014, replacement WAR + team WAR added up to almost 72 wins. Subtract that from 79 actual wins, and Renteria's WAR is 7.072.

That's one half.

As a bit of a control to the above method, I do the same thing, but with the team's Pythagorean (generated by run differential) wins and subtracting them from its actual wins. Pythagorean WAR is less nuanced than the team WAR method, but again, I'm applying it as something of a control.

In 2014, the Cubs had 71 Pythagorean wins, so the team's win total under Rick, 79, gives him 8.0 WAR in my book.

So in combining both methods, I get a 7.5 WAR (actually 7.536) for Rick in 2014.

Renteria's 2014 is rare. Pythagorean WAR is almost always a more modest figure than the team WAR method.

Luck?

Yeah, before you say it, I understand that manager WAR can be credited 100% to dumb luck. So if you choose to call this "lucky WAR" for managers, fine, go ahead a be a jerk about it.

I happen to believe a manager has a ton to do with performance on the field. Yes, he fills out the lineup and chooses his pitchers. But he's also creating a clubhouse culture, supporting his players, sensing when to give a guy a day off, juggling the batting order. And, for sure, whipping up some tasty queso.

A manager can benefit from trades or call-ups, health, weather, and hell, even a lack of travel delays. So you could term Managerial WAR something like "off-field WAR" instead, and spread the credit around.

But that's not my style. I'm crediting or debiting the manager, period.

Hahn may have been right in insisting he'd unlock greatness in Renteria. The new White Sox skipper may truly be a keeper.

Yeah, it's just one year to work off of, but lighten up, man. It's a bleak season ahead.

A Note About the Bleak Season Ahead

Yes, I plan to write more White Sox Managerial WAR articles, to discuss the best managers in White Sox history, who's had the best individual seasons managing the White Sox (indisputable, it's the same guy, in successive years!), and who's the worst manager in White Sox history (shockingly, it's not Terry Bevington). I'll get to it, someday, some way.

So, You Don't Like the Chris Sale Trade?

2016-12-06T16:44:00.001-08:00

Collector's Corner: There's a new reason to snap up a Chris Sale pajama set.

Well, OK, neither do I.

The Chicago White Sox traipse through season after season, a big-city club in small-market clothing. Under owner Jerry Reinsdorf, the team made a big splash in stealing Carlton Fisk from the Boston Red Sox 35 years ago and "broke the bank" to sign Jim Essian, Ron LeFlore, and Greg Luzinski to boot. Short of acting on a bizarre tip by Frank Thomas (!) to ink Albert Belle after Reinsdorf had hawked MLB execs into abandoning the 1994 season and the ill-fated "All-In" 2012 White Sox, that 1981 signing flurry represents one of the bigger bait-and-switches in Chicago baseball history.

But that's the hand dealt by ownership. No one is going to wave a magic wand and pretend the White Sox will up payroll by a third or buy up so much international talent that even the Los Angeles Dodgers or Red Sox cry foul. This is a team that scrimps its way into an infamously tone-deaf new ballpark naming rights deal, then ends up making little or no money from that deal.

The White Sox must do more, with less. That means fielding a high-priced team at the major league level at the expense of the minors (i.e. the All-In Ken Williams route), or fattening up the minors at the expense of the big club. Not both. You'd need dumber luck than Donald Trump to pull that off. Nothing to bet on here.

Yes, t fact that White Sox management hasn't proven adept at building a consistent winner over the last decade via either route is uninspiring by definition: How can we trust these clowns with a rebuild if they put us in this position to begin with? Yeah, yeah, I get it. But again, that's the hand dealt. Reinsdorf is loyal. Deal with it.

So the hue and whine over the Chris Sale trade to Boston for Yoan Moncada, Michael "Goldilocks" Kopech, Luis Alexander Basabe and Victor Ruiz is much ado about shredding. The Rick Hahn-Williams brain trust played the situation masterfully, period.

No. 1, and it's No. 1 because it CANNOT be overstated: Sale was on borrowed time on the South Side. And that's true not because he's one dugout-thrashing or uniform-burning or pickup-truck tumbling away from ending his career injured or arrested for upper management assault—although Sale going full Rodman/Rondo was always a remote possibility.

Truthfully, Sale's time was limited with the White Sox because three years from now, when Sale is bandied about as the free agent gem of the class and projected to destroy record contracts issued Clayton Kershaw, Zack Greinke, Masahiro Tanaka, whichever your flavor, the club will be twiddling thumbs, earmarking its compensation pick, and contemplating bringing back James Shields, John Danks, or Edwin Jackson on a fifth-starter flier.

What they WON'T be doing is preparing an offer to retain Sale, because Chris Sale is going to GET PAID in 2019.

From the moment he signed his "yes, I attack the plate like a Condor and everyone and their aunts have told me my shoulder/elbow/wrist/brain is going to disintegrate and jeezopete even my own club wants me to be a closer" financial comfort contract in 2013, Sale has had to hear about being the "greatest value" and "most underpaid player" in baseball.

Pro tip: Constantly hearing about being a "great value" or "underpaid" does not breed contentment or pride in professional athletes. See: Pippen, Scottie.

So in 2019, Sale is GONE. New York, L.A., Boston, Texas, Miami in one of their once-a-decade cash vomits, somebody is going to offer Sale stupid money. What's stupid money in 2019, $30 million, $40 million per year? Reinsdorf will choke on elotes before signing away that kind of cash, and that would happen even if he's re-signing three-time Cy Young Award winner Chris Sale or World Series Complete Game 7-winner Chris Sale, rather than his current incarnation, .500 pitcher and K machine Chris Sale.

Presuming the White Sox don't want to lose Sale for a first-round pick (or whatever the new CBA has reduced free agency penalties to), a move had to be made. Arguably, the White Sox dealt him at peak value—three years for the acquiring club to justify the deal, track record of solid health meaning less likelihood of complete shoulder disintegration, and still that undeniable "greatest value" moniker.

The White Sox, on the other hand, are trading a club 18 WAR over the next three years at a comically low pay rate, and have a right to demand a premium for it.

That's what they did in this trade with the Red Sox. It's truly a win-win.

The Red Sox, to be honest, have the greater risk. They get three prime years of Sale, then have to fight like hell to keep him at just the time at least one of the plum prospects dealt to acquire him is blossoming for the White Sox.

They have to feel a touch nervous that Sale can withstand the pressure of Boston. Virtually unprovoked, Sale shredded jerseys and defended clubhouse teens in bizarre outbursts on the South Side. What in the hell happens when a tool like Dan Shaughnessy gets a little Mariotty with Sale regarding, I dunno, his Florida upbringing, tats, what-me-worry 'tude, or, heaven forbid, his performance on the mound?

The White Sox were in the catbird seat, and they upped that cushion with a crafty, dastardly, hang-out-to-dry of nemesis GM Mike Rizzo of the Washington Nationals. The Nats hit the pillow last night thinking a heist of Sale for Schilling-or-Ruffcorn prodigy Lucas Giolito and low-minors star Victor Robles was going to get Sale to the Capital.

Nope. I've said it all along, there is major beef between Chicago and Washington stemming from Rizzo's rash turnabout on a deal agreed to in 2010, acquiring Edwin Jackson and pieces from the White Sox for the disaster awaiting that was Adam Dunn. Williams was furious then, and what makes you think a lifelong Oakland Raiders fan lets beef drop softly?

The swiftness with which things moved today proved a frame-up to a spectacular degree: The White Sox woke up and before even scraping the sleep from their eyes, were like, Nationals who? and commenced dialing up Boston, Sale's long-rumored destination and Hahn's most desired trade partner from the get-go. Rizzo was still at the buffet line, crunching out crumbs in lockstep to the SportsCenter crawl, when suddenly he had to drop the danish and start texting WTF! to all his junior lieutenants. For KW, revenge is a dish served in absentia, at Winter Meetings, six years gone.

And, you know, the White Sox didn't get Gaines Burgers by settling on Boston as a destination for Sale. They pocketed arguably the two top prospects in the rich Red Sox system, Moncada and Kopech.

Moncada is the top prospect (at worst, top-10) in all of baseball and Baseball America's reigning Minor League Player of the Year. He's a switch-hitting masher with Robinson Cano as a probable—not possible, probable—comp. And if he turns out to be more Ray Durham than Robbie Cano, uh, that'll be OK.

Kopech is ballyhooed as a guy who has hit an improbable 105 mph on the radar gun—apparently that is miles, not kilometers. But he's not a power arm, he's a pitcher. He changes speeds and boasts four strong pitches. Yeah, he's a head case and he's rocking the WWE locks, but figuring out what's rolling around between Kopech's ears is why the White Sox pay Dr. Don Cooper those manager's bucks, yeah?

The toss-ins ain't shabby, either. Foremost is Basabe, a switch-hitting center fielder with five-tool potential. The 20-year-old has been playing baseball for only five years, so his above-average defense and baserunning are products of pure, raw ability. At six-foot, 160, he'll fill out that frame and his already surprising power could see an uptick.

[Side note: Naming twins Luis Alexander Basabe and Luis Alejandro Basabe (the new White Sox has a brother on the Arizona Diamondbacks)—essentially the same name en español y inglés—is pure Foremanian awesomeness.]

Diaz is the fourth piece, a hulking fireballer tabbed for short relief. It's no stretch to peg him in the same place upon acquisition as Frankie Montas was just three years ago when Hahn nabbed Montas from Boston. Reading Diaz's profile: big promise, massive arm, control issues, weak slider, I smell more than a touch of Matt Thornton. Dr. Coop did all right with Matty Ice, you'll recall.

Did a spot of Kool Aid power me through this take on the trade? Hell yeah. But listen, we know the very best Sale will provide Boston, and it's massive—as many as two dozen extra wins over three seasons, for a salary of sawdust.

But the White Sox—by their own hand, a stance I will neither understand nor agree with, ever—are a small-market team playing with the big boys. Half-assing as a major market club wasn't working, due both to poor scouting of major league talent and an unwillingness to get all Kershaw or Greinke or Pujols on a player.

"The best that they could do" is not exactly an inspiring season slogan for the White Sox. But it also beats getting caught with their pants down, and the club has suffered too much of that over the past decade.

So now, what bright bulb out there is putting a Moncada 1976 Throwback up on eBay?

October Surprise?

2016-09-12T17:43:00.001-07:00

It is change,

continuing change,

inevitable change,

that is the dominant factor

in society today.

No sensible decision can be made

any

longer

without taking into account

not only

the world as it is,

but the world as it will be.

Isaac Asimov, My Own View

Formerly Yours: Robin Ventura's five years helming
the White Sox is due to end in a matter of days.

Let's first establish that undoubtedly, White Sox manager Robin Ventura will be fired or reassigned within the organization at some time this month.

After a surprising rookie season in 2012 that found him entrenching the team in first place for five months, Ventura's managerial career from his first September forward has been borderline-Bevington disastrous. Specifically, Ventura's handsy treatment of the bullpen helped torpedo his smooth-groove, first-place club in 2012. And in sum over five seasons, Ventura proved completely devoid of innovation or personality (meant not as a personal criticism but a comment on his utter lack of distinguishing characteristics as a manager/strategist, beyond being a "nice guy").

Ventura for all his deserved accolades as a White Sox Hall of Fame player, is a guy who was very lucky to get three years in the big chair, much less five. But given how Ventura was hired, no decision by the front office regarding his job status truly would surprise.

Five years ago, the White Sox dealt fans an ultimate "October surprise." Rather than even interview ready-to-wear managerial candidates like Dave Martinez or Sandy Alomar, Jr., GM Ken Williams hired Ventura resumé unseen—if not sight unseen. Ventura had spent all of a half-season in the White Sox organization as a roaming coach working out of his home base in southern California. Astoundingly, he had to be convinced to take the job—a job that Martinez would have shaken off his ZZ Top beard for.

Speculation abounds that the White Sox may have a new October surprise in store for fans, and it is coming with a couple of weeks leave in the regular season for a curveball of a reason: Campbell Soup Kid A.J. Pierzynski's imminent decision to retire from baseball/prank Atlanta Braves media/belatedly celebrate Julio Teheran's spawn/pander for attention. As a feistmeister on the level of ex-jefe Ozzie Guillen, it seems natural to speculate sliding Pierzynski into the big chair as Ventura's replacement, at least among the meatheads.

Though an avowed vegetarian, count me among the meatheads. But, wait, a qualifier.

If the White Sox opt again, as they did with Ventura, to choose someone with zero managerial experience, I'm in. Fans will get gaper's block whiplash with all the issues Manager A.J. the Skip will engender, and the front office will be told, with finality, to never again hire a manager who has never before been a manager.

In A.J.'s defense, he could be a kickass manager, if a bit Scrap Ironish for my taste. During his tenure on the South Side, for better or worse A.J. was always one to speak his mind, and though he would deny it, A.J. embodies The Fan on the field and in the dugout.

During the A.J. era, Paul Konerko was a curious choice as team captain under Ozzie (like Ventura fighting off the out-of-blue offer to be White Sox manager, PK did not want to be captain, wouldn't wear a "C," and offered little in the way of captaincy beyond meandering postgame quotes that took the heat off teammates due to beat writer narcolepsy, and perhaps powdering PK Mini-Me Gordon Beckham's hiney at regular intervals), especially when it seemed A.J. would be a natural fit in the role.

A.J. took the fight to opponents. He was mouthy. He was famously characterized by Ozzie as a guy who "opponents hate, and teammates hate a little bit less." Guillen never hesitated to call his team (or, undoubtedly seeing a touch of Oswaldo in his catcher, A.J. specifically) out. And A.J. more than once rolled his eyes in the clubhouse after getting the deets on a latest Ozzie rant to ask us on the beat, seriously, don't you guys get tired of listening to that guy spout off?

Counterintuitive or no, that's a guy I want bleeding for my team, and encouraging teammates to as well.

But, OK, that's all dropped third strikes under the bridge, because A.J. will not be the next White Sox manager.

Who will be? A hothead on the A.J. level—if you subscribe to the chill-feisty-chill-feisty pattern the White Sox seem to have established during Jerry Reinsdorf's ownership.

A more intriguing question is whether or not the White Sox actually will conduct an interview process this time around, rather than treating the most important hire in the organization with speed-dating attention to detail.

The guess here is yes, but my next post will reveal that the snap hire of Ventura isn't the only rash skipper snatch-and-grab made in the Reinsdorf Era.

Shields Are Down

2016-08-07T22:42:00.001-07:00

What could go wrong? I can't count the number of ways.

You could be mauled or burned for starters.

You could still drown in knee-deep waters.

That's enough to hold up and hide in this cave.

Shields, "Big Business"

It Bites: Could it get any worse? It did—once in the past 103 years.

Today, James Shields started against the Baltimore Orioles. He wasn't good.

Shields retired four batters. He also gave up home runs to four batters.

Shields was tagged for eight earned runs in just 60 pitches.

That's brutally bad, historically bad—almost worst-ever historically bad.

Shields finished the game with an impossibly-low game score of -15.

Recall that the game score of an average start is 50. A truly brilliant start would range from the 70s up to 100. A putrid washout would drop a guy's game score down to the 20s, maybe teens.

But almost before Robin Ventura could even finish one of his patented long yawns in the dugout, Shields's doleful drubbing had descended him to the historical depths of a -15 game score.

In baseball history dating back to 1913, there have only been 16 worse game scores than -15. And believe it or not, one of them was spun by a Pale Hose hurler, the famed Ted Lyons.

Jim Margalus at South Side Sox identified it, a 16-2 evisceration at Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C. It was a battle of third and fourth-place teams, but the Senators created just a bit of separation between the two clubs by pounding Lyons, who was struggling through his rookie season. Washington jumped out 6-0 in the 1st, made it 12-0 by the 3rd, and led 16-0 before the South Siders finally put a two-spot on the board in the top of the 8th.

The White Sox committed a whopping seven errors in the loss, yet somehow 14 of Lyons' 16 runs were earned. It could have been even worse; Senators were nabbed in three of their four steal attempts.

Lyons went on to Hall of Fame election; this debacle was just the 20th in what would become a 484-start career. Lyons retired in 1942, notching a 5.1 bWAR and finishing 12th in MVP voting.

"Big Game James" is merely a hurler on his last legs, who has topped that age-41 season of Lyons' in bWAR only twice, and never finished higher than 16th in MVP voting.

The last word on Big Game James is best left to a namesake, James Fegan of BP Southside:

Whatever, it is over now and we are still alive.

Not without scars; Fegan sat in the center-field bleachers for the game.

Something tells me the current No. 25 jersey will not be immortalized here.

Oh, and Lyons also has had his No. 16 jersey retired by the White Sox.

The last player to wear that jersey? Ken Williams.

No Justice

2016-08-07T19:01:00.000-07:00

Everyone is crying out for peace, yes,

none is crying out for justice.

Peter Tosh, "Equal Rights"

Tears of a Clown: New York City, of all places, allows A-Rod to bow out "gracefully."

I come here not to bury A-Rod, although today's performance makes me tempted to grab a shovel.

My emotions are somewhat conflicted when it comes to PEDs.

I don't downgrade PEDs as some would, equating them with the greenies of the 1960s and 1970s. But there's little I can do about the fact that everyone in the MLB of a decade or two ago looked the other way. There's little choice any fan, historian, scholar, writer has to do but do the same.

The truth is, the numbers are the numbers. You can't selectively erase them. And once it became clear that it wasn't just the hulking homer hitters who were doping up, but pitchers, runners, and fielders, the unbalanced became more balanced.

[Quick aside, I never will understand the fraternity that protects users. You had White Sox like Paul Konerko and Frank Thomas adamantly, violently against PED cheating—but ultimately, they looked the other way. The Big Hurt was a HOFer in any era, but Konerko on a more even playing field goes from an are-you-kidding candidate to well, yeah, Hall of Very Good.]

All that said, so much of the coverage of today's unsurprising announcement that the New York Yankees no longer wanted to pay Alex Rodriguez to play baseball for them was effete, flaccid, kowtowing. Press row may feign garrulousness, but damn if the hankies weren't soaked and the Hallmark aisle at Walgreens ransacked bare as A-Rod limped into the sunset.

To wit, MLB.com's Richard Justice, who goes beyond his customary feckless horseshit to set a new bar for beer crying:

Here's hoping that [Rodriguez] understands that plenty of people know how hard he worked to change, and in the end, how much he contributed to the game.

He was a joy to watch. He would do things that would bring you out of your seat, and two innings later, he would do something even more spectacular. For that, every baseball fan owes him.

We were part of the lucky generation that got to watch Alex Rodriguez play baseball. Let's how the ovation he hears at [his last game at] Yankee Stadium on Friday rings in his ears forever.

I "owe" Alex Rodriguez? Great player, unique talent, but, nope. A thousand times, nope.

Barry Bonds is the greatest player of my lifetime as a fan. I have mixed feelings about the hubris that drove a no-brainer Hall-of-Famer like Bonds to PEDs. But Bonds never even got the chance to weep his way through a midseason retirement after a shitty partial final season.

Why's that? Well first, he never had a shitty partial final season, rocking a 3.4 bWAR in 2007 that was just three years removed from his final full-season, 39-year-old bWAR of 10.6.

Second, in the most convenient collusion ever called, no team rang him up again. Coming off 3.4 and 4.0 bWAR in his 40s. Three years removed from his fourth consecutive MVP. Remember, it's not that Bonds was insulted with lowball offers and called it a day, or demanded only to return to the Giants.

No calls. No tears.

I get it, Bonds was as tone deaf to the adoration of media and fans as Rodriguez was driven by it, and that makes a big difference when it comes time to roll credits.

Justice, to be fair, pitched the Astros to sign Bonds in 2008—although it's hard to imagine a guy who despised Bonds as much as Justice did wasn't writing it up to take the piss out of the sub-.500 Astros, Bonds himself, or simply to amuse himself for a day.

No matter: Justice sure didn't write a tear-stained homage to Barry as Bonds sat by the phone in March 2008, waiting for a call. Or in April 2008 ... May 2008 ... June 2008 ... ad infinitum.

There are a lot of things that should ring in Alex Rodriguez's ears forever. Cheering isn't one of them.

The Last—er, Latest—Dog and Pony Show

2015-06-02T16:37:00.000-07:00

Their robes were black, their heads were white,

the schoolhouse doors were closed so tight.

Nine judges all set down their names

to end the years and years of shame.

David Arkin and Earl Robinson, "Black and White"

Coincidental Pioneer: Bill Berry [right],
the first African-American coach
in Chicago Bulls history.

That other Jerry Reinsdorf team, the Chicago Bulls, up and committed a Chicago White Sox today, hiring Fred Hoiberg away from Iowa State University.

That means the past two hires made by Reinsdorf''s teams, Hoiberg and Robin Ventura of the White Sox, are guys who had neither competition for the job nor professional coaching experience.

The Bulls and White Sox—especially the Bulls—are no Sacramento Kings or Tampa Bay Rays. They have the wherewithal to, you know, conduct coaching searches, fly several candidates in for interviews, otherwise avoid the notion they're being run by Freemasons or Scientologists.

The inevitability of Tom Thibodeau's firing and Hoiberg's hiring prompted some digging. How often have the Bulls conducted an actual coaching search? And in a league where more than three-quarters of players are African-American, how many coaches in team history have been black?

The first 10 years of Bulls history was marked by both competition from the ABA and the so-called quota system employed by some, if not most, NBA teams to limit African-Americans on the roster or lineup, so the Bulls get a pass with regard to a black coach at least through the ABA-NBA merger. (If you find the idea of institutional racism as late as the 1970s to be a liberal straw man, I'll dig up my notes from long talks with Norm Van Lier, Chet Walker, Bob Love and Clifford Ray and share their thoughts on the differential treatment dealt them by Chicago's first coaching legend, Dick Motta.)

For the first 10 years after the merger, history is a little sketchy on coaching candidates—DePaul's Ray Meyer was once a shoo-in for Bulls coach, I know that much—and let's face it, the Bulls were downright messy, on and off the court.

But beginning in the mid-1980s, the dawn of the Michael Jordan era, records are pretty clear. And when it comes to minority interviewing and hiring, the Bulls have an embarrassing track record.

When Doug Collins was hired in 1986, competing candidates were Jimmy Rodgers (Reinsdorf's choice, and a local guy from Oak Park) and Phil Jackson (who I believe legend tells it showed up for his interview in a Hawaiian shirt and/or straw hat and was dressed down by, of all people, the decidedly undapper Jerry Krause).

When Jackson succeeded Collins after the 1988-89 season in what was then a shocking turn of events—the Bulls had just come off the most thrilling upset in their history, "The Shot" over the Cleveland Cavaliers—Jackson was the first and only choice.

Post "Last Dance," sixth title, and lockout, Tim Floyd succeeded Jackson. Floyd came from Iowa State and had no professional coaching experience of any kind. If that sounds eerily familiar, well, rest assured that the Fred Hoiberg Era has no chance of being anything near the unmitigated disaster of the Tim Floyd Experience.

Vinny Del Negro was hired in 2008, the team's third choice behind Mike D'Antoni (who spurned Chicago for the New York Knicks, reportedly because the Bulls wouldn't budge on salary) and Doug Collins Mach 2 (Reinsdorf's preference). I don't think I'm speaking out of school almost a decade since when I say the Collins hiring was so close and so foregone as a backup plan that I was assigned features on Collins to write for the Bulls publications that summer. Once D'Antoni and Collins passed, among the secondary candidates considered were very possibly the first (and, sadly, potentially only) serious African-American head coaching candidates in Bulls history: Chuck Person and Duane Casey. Neither, then or now, inspired.

Two years later, after Del Negro's arrogant mediocrity was sent packing, the Bulls hired Tom Thibodeau. Thibs was a hot candidate, already first contacted by New Orleans that summer, so Chicago never got to much of an interview schedule. Kevin McHale's name shows up in searches, but it was Thibs's job to lose.

Oddly, even then Thibodeau's hiring profile consisted of all the stuff you hear now as reason given for his dismissal last week: "workaholic" and "a guy who finds is difficult to personally relate to players."

And now in 2015, 15 years after the uncontested, slam-dunk hiring of Floyd out of Ames, comes Hoiberg.

But what about Bill Cartwright (2001-03)? Well, Mr. Bill is Chicago's one and only non-interim African-American head coach. But even Cartwright wasn't a first choice, at the time a Bulls assistant held over from the Jackson Era who took over for Floyd mid-season. Just prior to Cartwright was Bill Berry, another Floyd assistant, who as an interim choice post-Floyd went 0-2 and is the true first black Bulls coach. Rounding out the proud history of black head coaches in Chicago is twice-interim choice Pete Myers, who spun an 0-3 record keeping the seat warm after both Cartwright and his replacement, Scott Skiles, were fired.

The Bulls have played almost 4,000 games in their history, and just 156 of them—that's 4%—have been helmed by a black coach.

Maybe picking a Scotty Robertson or Stan Albeck or Kevin Loughery back in the day was par for the course. These days, where almost half of NBA coaches are African-American, reflecting the makeup of team rosters as well as ever, the Bulls didn't bother to talk to anyone but Hoiberg. Whether Hoiberg proves to be the right choice, the method in getting him to Chicago was decidedly wrong.

We have enough quotas and rules in this world, and for all anyone knows, Hoiberg is the next Steve Kerr and a year from now all will laud Gar Forman's clever rookie hire. But it's odd that the Bulls paid lip service to diversity hiring and just rubber-stamped Hoiberg at a time when that is less and less expected, or appropriate.

As a fan, hope springs eternal, and Hoiberg's uptempo offense—while perhaps not a great match for his inherited Bulls personnel—should be fun to watch. But to have not vetted several candidates, even when the first choice was and likely would be Hoiberg, is a shame for the league and an embarrassment for the Bulls.

Snatching Kerr?

A trivial note, perhaps, but back when the Bulls backed into Del Negro as coach, he came with an endorsement from his employer, Phoenix Suns GM...Steve Kerr (Del Negro was Kerr's assistant). Like Hoiberg did with the Minnesota Timberwolves prior to coaching at ISU, Kerr got his start off the court in the NBA as an executive, so perhaps back in 2008 Kerr was unwilling to consider coaching. But given John Paxson's longtime admiration, what if the Bulls had focused instead on Kerr becoming their head coach instead of his minion, Del Negro? Even a year ago, if the Bulls had so soured on Thibodeau that a firing was inevitable, couldn't they have gotten in the ring to lure Kerr from the Knicks or Warriors?

Redux: The Eternal Autumn of Adam Dunn

2014-09-01T09:23:00.000-07:00

Players I covered on the Chicago White Sox are peeling away, set adrift to torment the fan bases of other clubs; Alexei Ramirez, Paul Konerko and John Danks are the last remaining guys who were on the club for the entirety of my season-and-a-half stint.

Adam Dunn was the latest Pale Hose to be trimmed, and it's remarkable that the Big Donkey is being eulogized as he is. Yes, he's a good guy. But he's a good guy who falls just short of Jamie Navarro as the most disastrous signing in the Reinsdorf Era.*

And remember how much hell J.P Riccardi caught when he suggested that Dunn didn't take baseball seriously (and yeah, accurate or not it really wasn't any business of his, but boy the straight talk was refreshing)? Based on how Dunn "bounced back" from 2011, almost four years and about $55 million later, maybe J.P. wasn't so far off, after all.

With Dunn appearing in White Sox storylines for the last time, I looked for one of my favorite all-time pieces on the beat, which, naturally, Kabletown being Kabletown, no longer exists on (at least any main byways of) the interwebs. What the hell, here it is once more, in all its wistfulness and three-year vintage tinge.

*This is, in fact, debatable on not only a visceral level — the high ("All-In") hopes of the Dunn signing in 2011 vs. the Navarro deal in the meandering late 1990s — but a statistical one, where FanGraphs (unlike Baseball-Reference or Baseball Prospectus) measures Navarro (2.5 career WAR) as an outright better White Sox than Dunn (-1.3 WAR).

---

The Eternal Autumn of Adam Dunn

Sunday, Aug. 14, 2011

Posted: 3:10 p.m.

By Brett Ballantini

Estragon, sitting on a low mound, is trying to take off his boot.

He pulls at it with both hands, panting. 

He gives up, exhausted, rests, tries again. 

As before: Nothing to be done. 

Beginning of Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett

Adam Dunn signed with the Chicago White Sox in early December, and the native Texan found the hullabaloo awaiting him at U.S. Cellular Field cut down by brisk gusts, cloudy skies and tiny specks of snow.

Dunn, chronically happy and chill, was nonplussed, walking through his new clubhouse and emerging into a windchilled dugout with the brashness that belied 38 homers per full season, pointing out at the massive, center field scoreboard, some 600 feet from home plate and 100 feet above the field, and asking — in serious manchild tone — whether anyone has ever lined a ball off of it.

It was that combination of brashness and naiveté that swept Dunn into Chicago, where he was penciled to cross 400 and 500 homer plateaus with the greatest of ease. After all, there was no reason to doubt that a slugger as effortlessly prodigious as he could ever lose his touch. As Babe the Blue Ox always followed Paul Bunyan, Dunn’s power stroke would never desert him.

Well, it’s August, the days are hot and sticky, and Dunn is nowhere to be found. Figuratively, his production has been vaporized: 11 homers and 40 RBIs in 99 games, a .590 OPS (he hasn’t been lower than .819 since 2003), and a slugging percentage of .296 that outpaces only the consummate Punch-and-Judy player, 44year-old middle infielder Omar Vizquel, among his Chicago teammates — and that by a mere five points. But literally, for the start of this homestand, Dunn is absent, excused to usher his family through the death of his uncle, which has incited an expected flurry of Twitterpating messages all reaching an apex of: Adam, don’t hurry back.

“Dude, this is who I am. What you see is what you get,” Dunn said last week in Minnesota, by way of efficient explanation, apology and excuse wrapped in an enigma.

We last spoke at length before the Twins series, right before the last vestige of value Dunn could provide to the White Sox, rote fielding at first base in the absence of injured regular Paul Konerko, had deserted him in a nervous and bumbling game at the first sack, misplaying several balls into additional Mark Buehrle pitches and even whiffing on a pickoff throw.

A day later, Dunn recorded three strikeouts vs. Carl Pavano and was eventually pinch-hit for in the ninth by Brent Lillibridge, who gives away more than half a foot and comfortably more than 100 pounds to Dunn but nonetheless achieved what Dunn could not, slugging a home run to left that sprung a 4-1 game into an absolute laugher.

Straw has been piled on the camel all season by Dunn, but manager Ozzie Guillen has refused to snap and sit the slugger. But it was that ruthlessly efficient effort by Dunn — seeing only three balls in 14 pitches en route to three straight Ks and a fly out after Juan Pierre had stolen his way to third — along with signs of outright disgust and frustration (tossing his bat, helmet and batting gloves all the way back to the foul screen after one punch-out) that may have finally broken the llama’s back.

Sure, Dunn got three more starts in Baltimore, good for 13 at-bats yielding a hit, four Ks, and disappointment more deeply entrenched in all parties involved. Meanwhile, it’s the relatively diminutive Lillibridge who appears to have won the backup first base job, when he’s not busy covering for Alex Rios miscues in center field.

Dunn prides himself not on home runs or mere runs produced but times on base, which means he’s surely devastated at the notion that while he’s never had an onbase below .350; he’s more than 50 points from that now. In fact, so many marks that should have been absolute basement level for Dunn in hitter-friendly USCF are now so far from attainment he must be tempted to throw the towel in on the entire season.

Dunn is hitting .161, which represents a modicum of improvement over the last snapshot taken of him. Still, that’s a full 10 points lower than the lowest qualifying average in the modern era, Dunn would have to hit .317 in the stretch run to tie Rob Deer — and that presumes the DH still receives the same rate of at-bats as he has been given, inexplicably, through game 120. As stubborn as Ken Williams is, or desperate as Guillen might become, it’s a virtual lock Dunn won’t see a similar rate of playing time as days get sticker and times get crunchier.

How could this have happened to a player who figured to go 40-100 in Chicago as easy as a sneeze? Mark Kotsay, 2010’s primary DH, was howled out of town, and Guillen’s decision to choose a multifaceted lefty DH over popular but immobile clouter Jim Thome was loudly derided — yet Kotsay’s OPS was a relatively bloated .683, almost 100 points higher than Dunn (White Sox DHs overall clocked in with a .728 OPS in 2010). What that indicates is in store for Dunn is unknown, but it’s a safe bet it involves pitchforks and torches.

I’ve said it before, but tracing back to the first day of spring training, Dunn was destined to struggle. The Big Donkey and I had many conversations in March, but it was the first one that still sticks out today. We spoke at length about his poor start (and finish) with the Washington Nationals in 2010, and Dunn had pretty well accepted the fact that he would start slowly in Chicago as well — if he got off to a strong start, I’ll paraphrase, look out, because Dunn thinks he might hit .400.

On Opening Day in Cleveland, having bothered to look up Dunn’s starts stretching before 2010 in light of his immutably ugly Cactus League performance, I was surprised to see that March/April was the strongest season segment of any in Dunn’s career — still standing at a .943 OPS for his career even after a horrendous April 2011. When I strolled up to him at Progressive Field on April Fools’ Day to give him that good news — no worries, Adam, you don’t have to start slow — the genial slugger spilled his Dr. Pepper in surprise.

Alas, my news came too late, as Dunn had already resolved himself to a slow start, a dangerous drop that would see him slip so deep he cannot climb back to the surface this season. And now, noting body language and the absolute inability to pull out of the swoon, it’s a legitimate question whether, at 31, Dunn can ever climb back out of the morass that 2011 has become.

With the Nats last year, Dunn opined to me that, on a team starved for runs, he was forced to abandon his Frank Thomas-like plate discipline and swing at pitches he’d normally take, and the stats bore that out — Dunn swung at more balls out of the strike zone than ever.

This year, the reasoning — and results — are more puzzling. He’s missed less strikes in 2011, is making more contact, and he’s chasing fewer bad pitches, at least compared with 2010 in Washington. But how he’s missing pitches indicates just how confused Dunn is at the plate, as he’s inexplicably missing more strikes.

So, he’s missing more good pitches, and chasing more bad ones. What’s next, dogs and cats living together, human sacrifice, mass hysteria?

We’re left with just the Canyonero shell, no motor or interior. Dunn has handled himself well throughout his descent, remaining a good teammate and an amenable interview. And the bluster of his earlier days, when Dunn could roll out of bed and stand a strong chance to clouting a ball 425 feet that night, remains — as recently as a month ago Dunn declared that he and fellow flounderer Rios would be putting the team “on their shoulders” in the second half.

If that’s what the club is dependent on, Sox fans, cancel the postseason show.

As someone who endorsed a rehab assignment rather than rushing Dunn back from an April appendectomy and not a couple of months later pressed the White Sox to begin platooning him to save the season, and Dunn from himself, regardless of salary (a strategy later apparently acceded to by the team), it’s safe to say that as unprepared as the team was to deal with a slumping hulk of a slugger, it handled the developments about as poorly as they possibly could.

No one can force Dunn to watch more video or accept the fact that until he develops beyond a Sosaesque handling of off-speed pitches, that’s all he’ll see in the American or any other League; but baseball is a long haul, and successful seasons are borne of anticipating and steering around any and all negative tendencies. The White Sox failed indelibly in doing so this year, with Dunn and players beyond. Instead, Dunn’s tendency to be in constant “I’m feeling better...I think” mode reflects that of the club as a whole, where every series is touted as the one where it all comes together and it defies its status as a mere .500 team.

In a year when the club dove All-In and the personally mended fences between key members of the team’s management branch promised great fortune on the South Side, there’s been a curious tendency toward cruise control as it has navigated the season.

Is there something wrong with Dunn? Certainly nothing that a little offseason work can’t cure. There’s nothing to prevent him from hitting fastballs again, relaxing at the plate, adjusting to the AL, its pitchers or the DH role.

What might be a problem is the very historic nature of his season-long swoon. There’s a reason why starters are rested to avoid 20 losses, or hitters sit to fall shy of 200 Ks. Dunn is so deep into his morass, it’s hard to imagine that the rest of his career, as long as it goes, isn’t just a matter of waiting for and accepting the inevitable declines.

Dunn still has every physical and mental tool he always has. Whether he can break out of the prison he now resides in is another question entirely.

The early returns, as summer cools, autumn creeps forward and suntans fade, are not generous to the genial giant.

Crystal Ball 2 (Rainout Boogaloo), or How a Rainout Could Have Saved a Season

2012-09-15T07:57:00.002-07:00

We can help each other.

Can we find a way? We can find a way.

Wiley, “Electric Boogaloo”

Lonely at the Top: It's not too early to say the season is in Liriano's shaky hands.

[Note at 3:33 p.m. after a sublimely dominating Francisco Liriano win over the Twinkies:

Never has it been so sweet to be revealed as a ninnied hand-wringer. If the White Sox's 4-5-6 starters Jose Quintana, Liriano, and Hector Santiago can stay in the groove of their last starts, it will take every bit of the dominating finish I foresee from the Tigers to hold off the Pale Hose. For now, you have to splash a sunny tint over the dour forecast that follows below.]

To wit, with 19 games remaining
In advance of the latest Series of the Season vs. the Detroit Tigers, I took a look ahead at how September would play out for the Chicago White Sox. As promised then: It wouldn’t end well.

But then, the Lord has provided durable evidence that indeed He believes good guys wear black.

With a washout on Thursday, the White Sox avoided what was almost certain to be a third consecutive free-fall out of sole possession of first place at the direct manhandle of the Detroit Tigers. The insipid return to April weather allowed the White Sox to avoid their executioner, Justin Verlander. The showers provided a pause for a club in dire need of a breath—as well as an excuse not to start Francisco Liriano in a game, ever again.

Except…

I wrote the above paragraph before it was announced that Robin Ventura was going to eschew the solid Gavin Floyd vs. Tigers matchup in the Monday makeup, give Jose Quintana a day of extra rest (hey, why ride him while he’s temporarily re-found his Rookie of the Year stuff?) and pitch—eek—Liriano on Saturday night at Target Field.

Liriano is much too scattershot at this moment to be pitching in a crucial game—yes, all 19 games remaining are crucial “playoff” games—and yet here he is, pitching Game 133, turning a likely victorious outcome behind Quintana into a tossup. Now, instead of a Minny sweep, I see a mere series win. With Detroit devouring its remaining schedule, that is foolhardy confidence on the part of Sox brass.

At a time when Robin should be finding reasons for Chris Sale or Jake Peavy to get an extra turn on short rest in order to remain ahead of Detroit, he’s essentially giving a game away in an attainable, necessary sweep. Woe is the White Sox.

Crystal ball

I’d originally revised the remaining season figuring on regular rest for the rotation of Peavy, Quintana, Floyd, Sale and Hector Santiago. Santiago should earn the fifth starter’s spot in spite of an inability to go more than, say, six innings in a start. Why? How about basing it on the fact that he’s been, like, unhittable in his two career starts (nine innings, six hits, six walks, one earned run, 14 strikeouts), with game scores of 60 and 61.

Screwy: Santiago should start any fifth-spot game to come.

Liriano over the same previous two starts? Nine innings, 10 hits, 11 walks, eight earned runs, nine strikeouts, with game scores of 40 and 35.

This giveaway game (I’m generously considering that Robin will realize the mistake of starting Liriano for the White Sox ever again and attributing the three future starts in the stretch run to Santiago) becomes the difference between trailing by a single game at the end of the season (making the Tigers catchable in the season’s final week) and two games (uncatchable without a massive 2008-everybody-wang-short-rest-tonight scenario).

One game—one loss—making that much difference? You betcha. Liriano, why oh why oh why oh why…

The results

Instead of using Thursday’s rainout to aggressively reshuffle the rotation and keep the pedal to the metal enough to stay within a game of Detroit, the season now plays out the same: Detroit takes the division at 89-73, with the White Sox two back, at 87-75.

Many of the same facts apply now, five days after my first crack at this. The White Sox have a fairly easy road the rest of the way—as do the Tigers.

The home/away advantage now actually does tilt in Detroit’s favor, with the Tigers getting 10 home games of the final 19, the White Sox eight.

Discounting the Detroit makeup, the White Sox play against two clubs (seven games) who are better than .500 and in the heat of the playoff race, the Tigers just one (three games, a home set vs. Oakland).

The White Sox are 36-32 against their opponents the rest of the way (including 5-12 vs. Detroit and 5-10 vs. K.C.), while the Tigers have gone 40-30 vs. their foes (under .500 against only Cleveland, at 7-9). So Detroit has an even easier trip into October than the White Sox.

The proper strategy

I made the point five games ago that the White Sox rotation is out of gas and tattered. That remains true. But if anything, that’s an excuse to push Peavy or Sale—perhaps even Floyd—out a day early at some point in the stretch run. (Of course, in a stretch run that involves trotting Liriano back out to the mound on September 15, don’t bother.)

The best chance Robin has to catch Detroit—because the division lead will be done for good as soon as Monday—is to push his best starters a bit.

I am not proposing a four-man rotation in the season’s last two weeks. But if Robin had skipped this Liriano start tonight by keeping his reliable four starters on regular rest, that alone would have added a win to the ledger.

Then, with Peavy being the best and perhaps only candidate to be run out on short rest, we could have seem him take a future Quintana start in the K.C. finale on September 20 or the Tampa finale on September 30. Q would still get his extra rest, and one of the more doomed Liriano/Santiago starts could be eliminated entirely.

These two simple but aggressive steps would both end the season in a tie with Detroit and re-set the rotation so that Sale is starting in the season finale vs. Cleveland. I already have the White Sox winning that game (perhaps improbably, although let’s nod to 2005 in predicting a season finale sweep vs. the Wahoos), but tell me, you feel better starting Sale there, or Floyd?

In the tiebreaker, then, you ask Peavy to come back again on short rest, with Floyd/Santiago/Liriano/Septimo/Marinez/Barojas/James/Thigpen all ready in case there’s a need to shatter glass to win the division.

The dirty details

Detroit shows cracks, largely with a defense that the whole of the Netherlands couldn’t plug. But where it really counts, the starting rotation, the Bengals have an advantage. The Tigs boast a Big 3 in the rotation (Verlander, Doug Fister, Max Scherzer) and even the back end is more stable than Chicago’s, with Anibal Sanchez and Rick Porcello.

If we generously call the bullpens a wash (seems there’s more stability at the moment in Motown), Detroit’s offensive advantage can be cancelled out by the White Sox’s defensive one. So it will come down to the rotations.

With Robin giving away the rainout advantage, I see the two teams tied for the last time on Monday, before the Tigers go out and, for the third time this season, take a division lead from Chicago by beating it head-to-head.

I’m giving gold stars to Sale, Peavy, Fister and Verlander for going undefeated the rest of the way. Here’s how the games will break down per pitcher:

White Sox: Peavy (White Sox go 4-0 in games he starts), Santiago/Liriano (1-3), Quintana (1-3), Floyd (1-3), Sale (3-0).

Tigers: Verlander (3-0), Sanchez (1-3), Porcello (2-2), Fister (4-0), Scherzer (3-1).

Detroit still will end up coming in and taking three of four from the White Sox, albeit in delayed fashion. But because of Chicago’s inability to properly take advantage of those Thursday raindrops by starting Liriano on Saturday, Detroit will leave town two days later in first place and will never look back.

Attacking series with a sense of "desperation" (yeah, with all of a one-game lead in the division) would have struck former manager Ozzie Guillen as symptomatic of the typical zeal of an out-of-touch analyst. Ventura at least regards such expert onlookers with, if not more respect, less expletives.

But in the end, it’s the same. If treating the remaining 19 games as one-game playoffs seems too stressful on the White Sox, they can take up golf. Pinning the meter, especially given a disadvantageous scenario vs. Detroit, is the only way to preserve what has been glorious surprise of a season.

It’s a shame the Sox are approaching it fat and sassy as opposed to having any sense of what lies ahead. Such laxity will cost them the division.

The grace of a September rain turns into a form of water torture.

Whoops! (revised, revamped, and still ugly)

2012-09-11T17:17:00.000-07:00

I drive around the streets

an inch away from weeping,

ashamed of my sentimentality and

possible love.

A confused old man driving in the rain

wondering where the good luck

went.

“I Made a Mistake,” Charles Bukowski

Comcast 'Boy': Even Peavy gets embarrassed over CSN's fussing. And the Bulldog don't embarrass easy.

As CSN renews its battle royale over who is Jake Peavy’s BFF, a gentle reminder to get off the Bulldog’s nut and pay better attention to the other guys on the roster:

www.csnchicago.com

Danks out of sling, expected to return during spring training

September 8, 2012 2:22:29 PM CDT

Jordan Danks is now out of his sling after undergoing shoulder surgery. He hopes to be throwing the ball again in December so he can be ready to return to the field during spring training.Read more…

I can just picture Chuck Garfien at the game last night telling Dan Hayes, “hey, I’m gonna write on Peavy tonight,” and a tiny tear streaming down the proud ex-San Diegan’s face. Immediately, both men text the Bulldog to see who wins drooling dibs for the day.

Best I can tell, the headline for Chuck's "Sox Drawer" originally was Medical miracle Peavy excited for stretch run and was toned down to, simply, Sox savior.

Hey, I’m all for giving Peavy his due. And Hayes worked late on Monday night to overcome a clunky lede and put together a nice Jose Quintana piece.

But this Padre pride stuff is a bit silly. Next you’re gonna tell me San Diego’s Shell Answer Man was touting Adrian Gonzalez as the best hitter in baseball, like a day before he was waive-traded to the Dodgers…

Wither MVP?
It's hard to keep up with ESPNChicago's Bruce Levine. He's their "Chicago baseball reporter" with web chats by the dozen to support his ubiquitousness, but man, he can't decide on a White Sox MVP.

A month ago Levine was touting A.J. Pierzynski as not just the White Sox MVP, but a viable candidate for most valuable in the entire league. Something about how "clutch" his hits were--when statistical analysis actually pointed to him trailing South Side clutch hitters, somewhere down in the Adam Dunn basement of shame.

A.J. must be wondering what he did to bug Bruce, because now the (somewhat) clear team MVP is Alex Rios.

Give Levine credit for getting it right the second time. But points are docked, as usual, for the awful writing and editing of ESPN.

Awful lede? Check.

CHICAGO -- There have been many important contributions to the Chicago White Sox's success story this season. You can probably make a case for any number of players being the key to the team’s position atop the American League Central.

Dissonant and contradictory premise? Check.

These days as you walk around the clubhouse, one name comes up more often than others.
"Alex Rios and (A.J.) Pierzynski have been their best players,” Tigers manager Jim Leyland said. “No question Rios has been big for them all season."

(It's not bad journalism to cleave Leyland's quote to suit your premise, Bruce. Otherwise, you confuse your readers.)

Incongruous grammar? Check.

Rios is coming off his worst season in 2011 when he batted .227 with 13 home runs and 44 RBIs, but he has rebounded this season with 23 home runs and 85 RBIs to go along with a .293 batting average going into play on Tuesday.

(No, Rios is not "coming off his worst season in 2011," he is "coming off his worst season, in 2011, when he ...")

And in a classic cover-your-ass move—and again, A.J. is left wondering what he did to anger Chicago's baseball writer—Levine pays lip service to Mike Trout and Miguel Cabrera but shoehorns in Rios as a "top-five" MVP candidate.

Hyperbole at ESPN? Check.

And in developments outside of Chicago…

It was bad enough that team president David Samson made references to the Miami Marlins being "all-in" for 2012 (in a March 5 SI article that proved 1. He's not an astute observer of the American League and 2. However improbably, "all-in" as a rallying cry wasn't tramped six feet down permanently by the prodigious clodhoppers of Adam Dunn and Alex Rios). But then, he acceded to a dreaded, can-only-bite-you-in-the-ass "forecast":

The best case over the next decade, says [Miami Marlins team president David] Samson: “We’re one of the top seven powerhouses in major league baseball. Consistently running a top-third payroll. Making smart decisions, competing for division titles every year and winning one World Series at a minimum, but making the playoffs at least 60, 70 percent of the time.” And in the worst case? “We lose 90 games, draw 1.3 million and people need umbrellas because the roof leaks.”

The Marlins will break two million fans, but sit at 12^th of 16 NL teams in attendance.

The Marlins are on pace to go 72-90.

No word on the need for umbrellas, but, yeah.

Crystal Ball (one man’s take on the stretch run)

2012-09-10T12:52:00.000-07:00

Then they told me to blow it all to hell and gone! And I blew

It all to hell and gone (oh, didn’t I)…

“In Order To,” Kenneth Patchen

September Wooz: The rocky road is bound to get rockier. (David Banks/UP)

A thumbnail sketch, for those hornswaggled and hashtagged by the Twitter world: It doesn’t end well.

I’ve had a habit of sketching out the last month of the season whenever the White Sox are close to first, to see how it all plays out. Admittedly, there’s a strange sense of fatalism in the exercise. (Somewhere, I still have a postcard where I tracked the 2005 meltdown, turning a 10-game division lead throughout into a mess of scratch-outs and, likely, fitful rips and dried teardrops.)

The 2005 Notecard of Dread, Gnashing and Doom
(courtesy of the author)

With a two-game lead heading into the “biggest series of the season,” it seems an apt time to play the rest of the year out again. I don’t like what I see.

Detroit takes the division at 89-73, with the White Sox two back, at 87-75.

The White Sox have a fairly easy road the rest of the way—as do the Tigers.

Forget home and away (essentially even) or games vs. .500 teams. The White Sox play against two clubs (seven games) who are in the heat of the playoff race, the Tigers just one, a three-game home set vs. Oakland.

The White Sox are 34-30 against their opponents the rest of the way (including 4-10 ver Detroit and 5-10 vs. K.C.), while the Tigers have gone 37-29 vs. their foes (under .500 against only Cleveland, at 5-9). So Detroit has an even easier trip into October than the White Sox.

Plus, the White Sox rotation is out of gas and tattered. Even a strong start by Hector Santiago—a potential Jason Bere for 2012?—was mitigated by the fact that, as the White Sox closer breaking camp, he can’t stretch out long to provide anything more that “long relief” starts. Jake Peavy is getting by on grit and duct tape, Chris Sale on that scary throwing motion. Francisco Liriano and Jose Quintana? Shambolic. Gavin Floyd, feeling “OK” after three side sessions, is going to be counted on in key games? Sheesh. Healthy, in 2012, he’s not been reliable in key games.

Detroit shows cracks, largely with a defense that the whole of the Netherlands couldn’t plug. But where it really counts, the starting rotation, the Bengals have an advantage. The Tigs boast a Big 3 (Justin Verlander, Doug Fister, Max Scherzer) and even the back end of the rotation is more stable than Chicago’s, with Anibal Sanchez and Rick Porcello.

Roughly speaking, we can call the bullpens a wash, and Detroit’s offensive advantage cancelled out by the White Sox’s defensive one. So it very well may come down to the rotations.

I have the two teams tied for four more days of the season, the latest being September 26. Not more than two games will separate the teams until September 29, when the White Sox are embroiled in a do-or-die quartet with the stronger Tampa Rays.

I’m giving gold stars to Sale and Verlander for going undefeated the rest of the way. Here’s how the games will break down per pitcher:

White Sox: Peavy (White Sox go 4-1 in games he starts), Santiago/Quintana (2-3), Liriano (1-4), Floyd (1-3), Sale (4-0).

Tigers: Verlander (4-0), Sanches (1-4), Porcello (3-2), Fister (4-1), Scherzer (4-1).

Detroit will come in and take three of four from the White Sox, with Peavy bulldogging his way to the only win of the series. Thus Detroit leaves town tied for first and basically never looks back. Chicago will falter in the two long series it has left (Detroit and Tampa), winning just one of four in both cases.

Believe me, I hope I'm wrong about these prognostications. For what it's worth, I missed on Verlander's loss in Anaheim on Saturday but got both getaway losses correct, for the White Sox and Tigers. Let's hope I'm being a little to hard on the likes of Francisco Liriano and Groovy Gavin.

At any rate, merely splitting this coming series, much less winning it, will change the White Sox’s fortunes considerably and basically make or break the season. If the idea that for the third time this season the White Sox will drop out of sole possession of first after a series with the Tigers isn’t enough to crush the club’s playoff hopes, the fact that Detroit has an easier go of it after leaving Chicago will certainly do so.

It’s simple. Win this series, White Sox, and you win the division. Split or lose it? Pack up the cats, it’s been fun.

The Case of the Disappearing Clutch

2012-09-02T17:52:00.000-07:00

I’ll clutch-and clutch-

Next-One-Might be the golden touch-

Could take it-

Diamonds-Wait-

I’m diving-just a little late-

But stars-go slow-for night-

“I’ll Clutch-and Clutch,” Emily Dickinson

Mudflappin: All the Yosemite-Samming in the world can't improve Peavy's luck. (Brian Kersey/GI)

[Updated through games of September 4.]

Half and Half

The White Sox arrived back home after being driven out of Detroit by pitchforks and torches (although not quite as horrifyingly as a year earlier) with one of the sweetest salves available, a series vs. the Minnesota Twins.

Hectored: It took someone outside the rotation to snap
the Sox out of their sorry clutch streak. (Brian Kersey/GI)

Still, in a series that begged sweep, the White Sox could only split the first two games. And it was a newcomer thrown into the morass of awful clutch starts, Hector Santiago, who righted the rotation and put the South Siders back up a game on those bully Bengals.

Santiago’s 4-2 win on Sept. 3 was a tidy and efficient five innings, restoring calm after the Motor City storm. He provided the first clutch quality start in three weeks with the effort; hopefully manager Robin Ventura’s pregame proclamation that Santiago would be heading back to the bullpen and ceding his next start on Sunday to Dylan Axelrod has been reconsidered (the White Sox are listing “TBA” at the moment).

Unfortunately, the slumping Jose Quintana gave any momentum right away in Tuesday’s game, beginning a chain of pummeling that left outfielder Dewayne Wise finishing up the game. His game score of 16 was eight points lower than the previous-worst clutch start, Francisco Liriano’s no-decision in a 9-7 loss to the Oakland A’s on August 11.

So the average game score in two eminently winnable, clutch games against the Twins was 38. Yikes.

Jaked Up

Jake Peavy, is well-admired as a fighter. He’s the kind of hurler who’s seized a de facto captaincy among pitchers with his vocal leadership, frank talk, and, at least in the first half of the season, a willingness to shoulder the burden of a young starting staff hopscotching through the minefield of major league hitters.

A reputation of not being too strong in the clutch has dogged Peavy in his career. And judging by won-loss record, as easy as it is to root for a fella willing to cuss seemingly on alternating pitches of a big game, he has faltered when the chips are down.

But the following study may get Peavy off the hook.

While the “clutchosity” of a pitcher can be measured in a number of ways, looking at the leverage he faces in games is a thumbnail spot to start. But given that a starter, in particular, will often create the very high leverage he is then challenged to pitch out of (with, say, a hit or a walk), leverage index alone isn’t a square measure.

In the 135 White Sox games of 2012, there have been 53 “clutch” starts so far. That includes every game past April where the White Sox found themselves within a game of first place, heading north or south. It also includes the six interleague games with the Cubbies, which everyone admits count a mere game in the standing but much more given the fan interest. Any game of 40,000-plus fans packs with it a playoff atmosphere, so such games are included as well.

Pitcher	Clutch GS	White Sox Record	Pitcher Record (W-L-ND)	Average Game Score (Avg=50)	Average Leverage
John Danks	2	1-1	1-1-0	62.0	0.84
Jake Peavy	12	5-7	3-6-3	57.4	0.94
Gavin Floyd	10	5-5	3-4-3	50.4	0.94
Philip Humber	6	5-1	4-1-1	56.8	1.03
Chris Sale	9	6-3	6-2-1	63.7	0.92
Jose Quintana	8	5-3	2-2-4	51.3	1.08
Zach Stewart	1	0-1	0-1-0	28.0	0.61
Dylan Axelrod	2	1-1	0-0-2	61.0	1.09
Franciso Liriano	2	0-2	0-1-1	32.0	1.15
Hector Santiago	1	1-0	1-0-0	60.0	1.10
Totals/Avg	53	29-24	20-20-14	55.0	0.98

A game score of 50 or better is considered a quality start. “High pressure” leverage is greater than 1.00.

Humber’s showing here is somewhat surprising, as is Axelrod’s, in an admittedly small sample. But how pathetic is Peavy’s record, 3-6 with three no-decisions, while Floyd and his average game score thisclose to falling short of a quality start sits at 3-4 with three no-decisions. Even Quintana has mustered a .500 record (and the White Sox a winning one) in spite of an average clutch game score falling dangerously near the minimum for a quality start.

I’ve designated 15 starts as “double-clutch,” with extra pressure attached to them:

April 6—season opener (Danks)

April 13—home opener (Peavy)

June 12—at Cards (Quintana)

June 16—at Dodgers (Humber)

June 18-20—vs. Cubs (Stewart-Peavy-Floyd)

June 25—Twins (Peavy)

July 3—Rangers (Sale)

July 20-21—at Tigers (Peavy and Sale)

July 27—at Rangers (Sale)

September 1—at Tigers (Liriano)

September 2—at Tigers (Sale)

September 3—Twins (Santiago)

The selection of such superclutch games is somewhat arbitrary, but are based on some fairly standard guidelines. Counting double-clutch games twice—remember, this is simply a look at clutch performance so creating “fake” stats is of lessened consequence—here’s how the White Sox starters morph.

Pitcher	Clutch GS	White Sox Record	Pitcher Record	Average Game Score	Average Leverage
John Danks	3	1-2	1-2-0	59.3	0.85
Jake Peavy	16	6-10	4-9-3	58.2	0.92
Gavin Floyd	11	6-5	4-4-3	52.0	0.94
Philip Humber	7	6-1	5-1-1	53.7	1.10
Chris Sale	13	8-5	8-4-1	59.9	0.93
Jose Quintana	9	6-3	3-2-4	50.9	1.09
Zach Stewart	2	0-2	0-2-0	28.0	0.61
Dylan Axelrod	2	1-1	0-0-2	61.0	1.09
Francisco Liriano	3	0-3	0-2-1	34.7	1.09
Hector Santiago	2	2-0	2-0-0	60.0	1.10
Totals	68	36-32	27-26-15

In superclutch games, Peavy’s game score has been better than his overall average, while Sale’s has been lower.

Here’s something a little scary, though. Check out the first- and second-half splits per clutch starts.

Season	Clutch GS	White Sox Record	Pitcher Record	Average Game Score	Average Leverage
First Half	35	22-13	15-10-10	59.3	0.94
Second Half	18	7-11	5-9-4	46.7	1.04

QS AWOL: Sale's Aug. 12 gem is the South Siders' the only clutch quality
start out of the rotation in nearly a month. (Dennis Wierbicki/USP)

While the White Sox were stellar in clutch starts in the first half—at one time, the team won 10 straight clutch games in May and June—that success hasn't been sustained. And with as many as 27 more clutch games this month, the significant faltering from every White Sox starter in clutch games is very worrisome.

Just seven of 18 clutch starts achieved a score of more than 50, and there have been just two clutch quality starts in the last eight opportunities). Sale's win nearly on August 12 vs. the Oakland A's remains the regular rotation's only clutch quality start in nearly a month.

It's not the roof caving in at Comerica that's creating such a huge challenge for the White Sox, it's the faltering of their core starters. It's going to be a massive challenge to the rotation to regroup and muster a finishing kick as the Dog Days start howling.

Given that starting pitching has been the best aspect of this White Sox team outside of an uncanny ability to tap out clutch RBI, this shift from cool to crazed by the starters in the clutch should make any White Sox fan plenty edgy.

Attack of the Colorblind Duffers

2012-08-27T19:38:00.002-07:00

The murder

of two men

by a young

kid

wearing lemon-colored

gloves.

"The Murder of Two Men by a Young Kid Wearing Lemon-Colored Gloves," Kenneth Patchen

Gordon Goes to Hollywood: Relax, don't do it, Bacon.

Apparently I made a bunch of otherwise responsible and card-carrying adults wet themselves with frenzy, humiliation, and anger a month ago when I called them out on some elitist bullshit.

Since then, I've remained more apt to criticize than compliment, which is the nature of the beast anyway, right? I mean, Dan McGrath is just asking to be punched, metaphorically.

Still, you might wonder, well, what makes this smart-ass with the venomous fingertips giggle?

Tom Fornelli kicked ass all over a needlessly written column about White Sox fans last week. Alas, his mockery is amounting to a loogie in the wind, as now even the estimable New York Times is running their take on the horseshit that is the White Sox vs. Cubbies attendance debate.

[Please, people, there are no simple answers in this world. But jumping Jesus on a pogo stick, for three decades one team had what amounted to free commercials in the most powerful media channels in Chicago, while the other was left with ... Sportsvision ... the Daily Herald ... WCIU. If you believe the attendance discrepancy is effect-and-cause rather than cause-and-effect, you are beyond gullible and you really must burn your laptop rather than type any more words. Ever.

Seriously. If you're not on board with this extremely simple concept, destroy that which you are reading from.]

Anyway, as you can see above, that's not the point of my modest post. It's this review of the photo above, from the incomparable James Fegan over at White Sox Observer.

This is the very, very best of what sportswriting can do. Oh, I get it; it's a dumb little catwalk review of a scene it seems readily apparent not all White Sox were on board to release to "twitpic." But in this writeup sits all the fun and flavor that we so rarely get to see in sportswriting today.

Oh, there's more sportswriting than ever, to be sure. Relentless gobs of information, often parroting itself into a draining, wasteful game of Telephone, where even the final, inaccurate, inarticulate answer isn't much fun to read.

Not here. James has written some of my other favorite stuff, because it's funny, inventive, creative, and insightful. More so than even I can muster most days.

I'll piggyback his wonderful post with some observations of my own:

Gordon Beckham is far, far, far, far, far too comfortable as a metrosexual. I didn't even recognize him at first—with his jaw jutted out like a come-hither collegian on 80s Night, I thought for sure it was the Bulldog.
Contrast Bacon with Alexei right next to him, too cool for school. Tipo just wants to finish his beer and smoke a Sancho Panza cigarro.
I'm not going to bust Vinny Fresso (behind Bacon and Bulldog) because it seems several in the party are wearing "wacky pants only," but seriously, if you're not dressed for the photo, why stand in?
Don't be fooled: Cultural attaché Jackson Miranda (left of pinko Paulie) is not wearing a "wacky" outfit. Jackson would totally wear that outfit out clubbing. OK, minus the hat, maybe.
Dewayne Wise isn't just fake-geeking it here with his understated polo, as James scoffs. He's throwing up signs for the shot! ("Weezy holla'n back to the Carolinas, yup-yup!")
Philip Humber, in front of Weezy, misunderstood the schtick and thought the gig was to dress up like a clubhouse attendant for the Baltimore trip.

And how about this for comedy: There are at least three guys regularly working the White Sox beat at Comcast, so how come the guy who pulled the best stuff from the recent Yankees series--exclusive chortles from Derek Jeter, no less--isn't one of them? Hat tip to Jeremy Lynn for not just going through the motions in getting a view from the other locker room, but hitting Jeter up with some interesting questions about his future and White Sox manager Robin Ventura, and conveying the answers in a pretty artful way.

Contrast that with the Yankees backup work done by well-paid Tribune hustlers Phil Rogers and Dave Van Dyck. Both hightailed it from USCF somewhere between the hot dogs being served in the press box and the proper end of game; Phil the Baseball Expert split before Jeter passed Eddie Murray on the all-time hit list (ironically, just the sort of thing he likes to pull out of his boots as a game witness in another empty-caloried "Morning Phil"), the almost-Hall-of-Famer Dave deciding to split without postgame reax from that grumpy Buffo's booster Joe Girardi, who chose that night to chase down an overserved South Side fan.

They both love the game. Except for when it gets in the way of a smooth drive home.

Meanwhile, back Comcast way, the new White Sox guy apparently is doing a lot more for the ball club than any previous writers did. I haven't been able to locate his ERA or OPS, but it must be pretty good.

Atten-dance

2012-08-23T20:32:00.001-07:00

now old friend

I walk on cement

and carpet

and sit in cars

I miss dancing on

turf

dirt

looking at sky

for clouds

to daydream with

wind to judge

friend or foe

immense blue sky

full

of the mind of God

Dan Quisenberry, "A Day at the Park"

Short posts ain't my style, which I understand puts me on the outs with an ever-increasing portion of the readership, folks (not any of you bright persons, of course) who think of polysyllabism as a venereal disease.

There are a few angles to take on this recent, latest, tedious, unnecessary debate over Chicago White Sox attendance. But lucky for me, they've almost all been made in Tom Fornelli's brilliant call-and-response answer (indeed, it won't be long before "going FJM" on bad writing makes its way into the AP Stylebook) to the sheer idiocy Tim Baffoe posted over at CBSChicago.

No, I'm not going to link to Baffoe. You can get there through Fornelli, who probably already dirtied himself having to link to Baffoe. But if you're going to thrash a fella that hard, guilt alone oughta compel you to link.

Anyway, I'd already addressed the argument in my own thrashing last week of favored piñata Dan McGrath, so feel free to check it out.

Fornelli doesn't care if more fans show up to Wrigley, in light of all else being a White Sox fan accords him. I imagine most White Sox fans feel that way.

But that said, it's important not to underestimate the impact of some 28 years of the most powerful media entity in Chicago owning one baseball team, and not the other. And that holds true even if the decision-makers at Tribune sports—or likely, the whole of the Tower itself—chose only the most subtle of ways in highlighting their team and downplaying the White Sox.

We all know the Tribune didn't choose the most subtle means of bias, not when pot-smoking in the U.S. Cellular neighborhood graces the front page of the paper on the day of Game 1 of the ALDS in 2005.

But I digress. For the sake of argument, imagine what 28 years of such subtle bias—some 10,000 days—could accomplish.

Could it earn you 11,000 more fans per game? Fucking well right, it could.

And look at how things continue to break against the White Sox in terms of coverage. The holdover bias from the actual Tribune newspaper/site is hardly notable any longer (at least as far as I've bothered to follow). But look at the discrepancies in the broadcast schedule (as laid out before the season) and dare to tell me that there's no lingering bias in the way things wring out:

Channel	White Sox	Cubs
CSN	94	71
WGN	30	63
WCIU	25	8*
CSN+	7	9
FOX	5	9
ESPN	1	2
Total	162	162

*apparently eight is the customary and traditional (contractual?) WCIU max for the Cubbies each season.

The national games are added just to get to 162, but all that's concerning here are local broadcasts. The only possible head-to-head broadcast disadvantage the Cubbies have is with two extra, where-the-hell-are-they-oh-it's-the-number-of-the beast-on-DirecTV CSN+ games. The Cubbies have more than twice the number of national broadcasts (63-30) via WGN, while the White Sox have more than three times the number of please-no-not-more-Family-Guy-promos WCIU games, and if that's not the equivalent of black sheeping a team, what is?

The White Sox getting some 23 more CSN games is meh epitomized. Perhaps that provides a nice bonus for viewers, in that you can enjoy some pre- and/or postgame coverage you wouldn't normally—but then for White Sox fans, that also requires heavy doses of Chuck, Beltin' and Big Hurt, and sometimes even the insufferable pointlessness of PGL Interactive.

Anyway, this post was supposed to be short, merely praising Fornelli's fangs and then dropping the mic. Oops.

Well, as the credits roll here, I'll add that the normally-incisive and entertaining Jon Greenberg weighed in on the attendance topic yesterday in a surprisingly pedestrian manner. Oddly enough, the other writer to address attendance was not another city columnist but Sun-Times beat Daryl Van Schouwen, who likewise didn't take much of a stand but did incorporate some tweets and addressed the prohibitive pricing that makes a weeknight game against anyone more exception than rule.

Plus, Daryl included this typically kickass Ken Williams gem:

“I know there at least 2 million of our fans rooting and watching every day in their own way. We met them all one day on LaSalle Street [at the 2005 World Series parade], and I’m pretty sure they haven’t moved."

Bravo to the GM for showing some restraint vis-a-vis fanbase blame and sort of getting off the nut of that hopeless fight.

Some of the other writers in town should take his cue.

The Devil's Deal

2012-08-20T15:44:00.000-07:00

Lucky number seven called my name and passed on by.

Well he came back, don’t you know,

with his brother six in tow,

and that's how number thirteen wound up by my side.

Johnny Hickman, “Lonesome Johnny Blues”

Nosfera-tude: Who'd have known Floyd and Danks came to Chicago in deals with the devil?

There are two trades on Chicago White Sox GM Ken Williams’ resume that stand above all others, and they took place within three weeks of one another at the end of 2006.

It always had been an uphill climb for Williams on the job, but his December 6, 2006 acquisition of Gavin Floyd (along with Gio Gonzalez) from the Philadelphia Phillies for Freddy Garcia was the first unadulterated steal of his tenure. Three weeks later, he pilfered John Danks (and Nick Masset) from the Texas Rangers for Brandon McCarthy, thereby setting up 40% of his rotation for several years to come.

At that moment, Williams was riding higher than he ever had. After all, the White Sox had won 189 games over the previous two seasons and snapped an 88-year title drought in 2005. There was every reason to believe that the Pale Hose would win another 90 in 2007 and continue on as a serious factor in not only the AL Central race, but the fight for the pennant, season after season.

But at that moment, after securing Floyd and Danks in trades that at the time could have been perceived as salary/veteran dumps, the only place Williams would go was down. For any lows of the early years of his tenure (paging Todd Ritchie), it’s been rough going for the GM since acquiring Floyd and Danks.

As Gavin prepares to ascend to the mound to take on Garcia and the New York Yankees on Monday night, the question is thus begged: Was the Floyd-for-Garcia trade Ken’s own deal with the devil?

Yes, there are the obvious signs that some satanic skullduggery was at the core of Ken’s holiday shopping in 2006, namely the shoulder problems that would see Garcia win just one game for the Phillies and delay McCarthy’s ascendance into a reliable rotation piece. And noting those shoulder woes doesn’t even begin to acknowledge another Beelzebubba moment of that month: That Williams, just one year after dealing diminutive future starting star Giovany Gonzalez as part of the Aaron Rowand-Jim Thome swap, was able to steal him right back from Philly along with Floyd.

Alas, it got much more complicated and painful for Williams ever since.

In the six years leading up to the Floyd and Danks deals, Williams traded away 84.1 seasons’ worth of players and acquired 82.8. Those players dealt had a 57.5 WAR, and the players acquired amassed 74.4. The dollar value of the players traded away was $204.3 million, and the players brought to Chicago totaled $275.2 million. The overall surplus value of the players dealt was $74.4 million, and those acquired were $15.8 million.

In the almost five years since the Floyd and Danks deals, Williams has traded away 46.7 seasons of players and acquired 31.6. The WAR of the traded players totals 35, compared to 21.4 of the new White Sox. The dollar value of the players traded is $154.4 million, of the acquired just $94 million. The total surplus value of the traded players is $53.6 million, of the acquired players -$19.6 million.

Obviously, subtracting the two best deals of the Williams era is going to tarnish the overall statistics. But the contrast of pre-December 2006 and post- is staggering. Take the difference in WAR, for example. The key hallmarks of a Williams deals are:

1. he brings a huge WAR advantage to the White Sox in trades and

2. he tends to pay pretty dearly for that WAR advantage.

Will dealing Floyd away save Ken's soul?

But look at that post-December 2006 WAR differential: Here Williams has “lost” the WAR battle, as the players he’s dealt have earned 164% more WAR than those acquired. His biggest strength as a GM has failed him.

Williams has had a similarly rough track record in the free agency arena post-December 2006 as well. In his first six years, players Williams allowed to sign elsewhere accumulated a total surplus value of -$47.7 million, while players signed by the White Sox have amassed a surplus value of $77.1 million. In the five years since, Williams has cut loose a total surplus value of -$15 million, while the players he’s signed have compiled a surplus value of -$45.9 million.

Put in a slightly different way, seven of the eight best WAR trades and five of the six best surplus value trades Williams made came before December 2006.

Floyd has been the subject of almost constant trade rumors over the past few years, which is puzzling given that until this season, he’s always been a great value for the White Sox, basically drafting right behind Danks in terms of his overall value to the team.

However, it's now very clear that the righthander has been the equivalent of an upside-down horseshoe hanging in Williams’ office. Perhaps once the GM deals Floyd away, Williams can break out of his Swisher-Dunn-Rios-Young slump that has marred the latter half of his tenure.

P.S. to Groovy Gavin: When the Grim Reaper guised as the GM comes for you, be sure to cite the names Youkilis, Liriano, and Myers, and don’t forget to mention how very good the second half of 2012 has been to everyone. We’d love to keep you in town, big fella.

White Sox Value Survey: Almost Home

2012-08-19T10:29:00.001-07:00

Locked in heated battle for the cure that is their prize.
It's so dangerous, but they're determined.
Theirs is to win, if it kills them.
They're just humans, with wives and children.

Wayne Coyne, “Race for the Prize”

Alex & Adam Lumber Co: The bats have awoken, but only one stick offers surplus value. (Nam Huh/AP)

The successful season of the Chicago White Sox has been a story of the fortunes of two of its most star-crossed players, and they provide a great contrast for the purposes of this White Sox value survey.

Alex Rios isn’t a legitimate MVP candidate, but he should be a shoo-in for Comeback Player of the Year. He has done everything and more that White Sox GM Ken Williams hoped he would when he lifted him off the waiver wire three seasons ago. In 2011, Rios was a shell of a player, Frisbee-tossing in throws from center field (if his guess-me-if-you-can reads on fly balls and liners even allowed for fielding the ball cleanly), losing all hope in the batters’ box by either waving off any notion of contact or tapping out customary 6-4-3s, and generally making all the mental errors not of a man being steadfastly supported by his manager (in this case, the consummately-forgiving-unless-he-changes-his-mind Ozzie Guillen) but of one being thrashed nightly by a disapproving helicopter parent. Rios’s turnaround in all phases of his game translates into gaudy WAR numbers, the best of his White Sox career (currently 3.8, projecting to 5.3, the best among Sox hitters this season).

Adam Dunn is the brasher older brother of 2011’s disappointing pair. It was Dunn who cajoled Rios last July into forming a blood brotherhood wherein if the White Sox were to make a move in the standings, it would be “on their backs.” As it turned out, Rios and Dunn played the rest of the season as if lying on their backs, not strapping the team on them, which is why the All-In 2011 South Siders sported a record payroll but languished four games under .500 by the time Ozzie cleared out his office and unpacked his linenwear.

Dunn, with 35 homers that lead the majors, is the more popular choice for Comeback Player of the Year in 2012, especially after having played the Worst Season in Baseball History in 2011. But even in Dunn's comeback season, the flaws in his game long before his ballyhooed, I’m-homering-to-the-scoreboard arrival at USCF are apparent. As a defender, Dunn is generally passable and mildly on par with the club's regular first baseman, Paul Konerko, but still appears to be every bit the guy who had played one full season at first base before turning DH in the American League. And as a hitter, his approach still betrays a Three Outcomes Guy who seems to pride himself on putting the ball in play as rarely as anyone in the game ever has. Somehow, Rob Deer doesn’t pop up among Dunn’s similarity scores at Baseball-Reference, but still, Adam, being Rob Deer is no way to go through your baseball life. Even in such an uplifting bounce-back, the limitations of Dunn’s game are apparent in a 1.5 WAR (projecting to 2.1), a figure that would be decidedly better than only about half the 12 seasons of Dunn’s career.

For value survey purposes, this difference in all-around games between the two guys—what either player provides a team at his best—is absurdly evident. Rios’s high WAR balanced against a $12 million salary means that he roughly projects not only to earn his salary, but double its value … in other words, Rios will provide $12 million in surplus value on top of salary, back to the White Sox. Dunn, with a modest WAR that seemingly represents about the best he can do at this time and position in his career, is playing a game he can’t possibly win; it will take some luck (and maybe a couple of actual base hits supplanting Ks) for him to push his WAR high enough to earn his $14 million salary—that is, break even with the White Sox for the season.

It’s studies in contrasts like these—mining more deeply into the numbers than mere home runs or errors—that make the value survey so fascinating. It tells a true tale of each season, of the bottom lines of teams and players. We’re three-quarters in, so it’s time to dust off the midseason survey and update it for the stretch run.

White Sox Bargains

Bargains are the players who have added surplus value to the White Sox (production beyond their salaries).

1. Chris Sale ($14,790,418)

Prior survey: 1

The good news for Sale is that he is still far ahead of the race to be the best value on the White Sox, to the extent that he has effectively clinched the title, with a $5.5 million lead on Alejandro De Aza. The bad news? His value has essentially remained the same in the third quarter of the season.

2. Alejandro De Aza ($9,251,103)

Prior survey: 2

De Aza’s production trails Alex Rios, but his bargain-basement price nudges him ahead of his outfield mate.

3. Alex Rios ($9,091,714)

Prior survey: 3

It’s quite simple: There is no more valuable position player on the White Sox this season than Rios.

4. A.J. Pierzynski ($8,498,959)

Prior survey: 5

The first significant jump of this survey is A.J., who is having a second half for the ages.

5. Jose Quintana ($7,567,270)

Prior survey: 4

Quintana only lost the No. 4 spot because of Pierzynski’s ridiculous gain of more than $3 million in surplus value.

6. Kevin Youkilis ($4,925,826)

Say what you will about Yolk cooling off after making an immediate impact on the South Side, but he’s on pace to provide close to $10 million in surplus value for the White Sox.

7. Addison Reed ($3,181,137)

Prior survey: T7

Mr. Excitement continues to compile stirring surplus value.

8. Jake Peavy ($2,734,871)

Prior survey: 6

As great as Peavy’s value to the White Sox has been—in the mix forteam MVP for sure—in surplus value terms, it’s a near miracle that his value continues to surpass a $17 million salary.

9. Francisco Liriano ($2,611,344)

Another extraordinary pickup for loose change made by GM Ken Williams.

10. Nate Jones ($2,475,022)

Prior survey: T7

Overlooked in Reed’s record-breaking rookie season is Jones’s terrific work in front of him.

11. Tyler Flowers ($999,174)

Prior survey: 12

Continued production on both sides for the ball would give Flowers a chance to surpass last year’s surplus value of almost $1.5 million.

12. Dewayne Wise ($890,142)

Yes, a ridiculously small sample size. But yes, another sly snag by Williams.

13. Eric Stults ($544,892)

Prior survey: 13

Ah, the power of one good start.

14. Jesse Crain ($537,024)

Prior survey: 17

Through multiple injuries, Crain is gradually building a solid surplus value season.

15. Donnie Veal ($484,892)

Among all the in-season bullpen adds, Veal might be the real keeper.

16. Gavin Floyd ($411,701)

Prior survey: 13^th on the Busts list

It’s a down season for Floyd, but there’s still time for him to change that.

17. Dylan Axelrod ($404,892)

Prior survey: 11

Liriano’s gain is W. Axel Rod’s loss.

18. Hector Santiago ($324,892)

Prior survey: 11^th on the Busts list

Having settled down before and after his stint down in Charlotte has brought Hector back to the plus side, where he ended last season as well.

19. Brett Myers ($218,346)

The Games Finished Watch is fully on.

20. Brian Bruney ($98,013)

Prior survey: 19

Hip surgery means Bruney finishes this season where he could not in 2011—on the plus side of the ledger.

21. Dayan Viciedo ($40,283)

Prior survey: 16

It says a decent amount for the Tank that he’s having a very modest season, but is still on the plus-side in surplus value despite a $2.5 million salary.

White Sox Busts

Busts are the players who have cost surplus debits to the White Sox (production at a negative-WAR level and/or modest WAR unable to keep pace with salary).

1. John Danks (-$5,541,554)

Prior survey: 1

It will take a terrible stretch run from Dunn for Danks not to finish atop this ignominious list.

2. Adam Dunn (-$3,836,033)

Prior survey: 12

Talk up a comeback season all you wish, but Dunn’s fairly modest production overall can’t keep pace with his salary. On the plus side, at this time a year ago, Dunn was fast approaching -$20 million in surplus value to the White Sox.

3. Brent Morel (-$3,612,216)

Prior survey: 2

Morel is earning at a minimum level, so his being this deep in the hole is purely a product of running up a tab of -0.7 WAR in just two months.

4. Will Ohman (-$2,944,677)

Prior survey: 3

Now rocking a 4.26 ERA and 3.16 WHIP at Louisville for the Cincinnati Reds.

He's Pawtucket's problem now.

5. Zach Stewart (-$2,899,239)

Prior survey: 4

Now rocking a 4.13 ERA over 10 starts at Pawtucket for the Boston Red Sox. No word on the return of his permed locks.

6. Orlando Hudson (-$2,297,529)

Prior survey: 8

The O-Dog experiment did not work. It was the last hunch that failed to play out well for Williams this season.

Danks (R) is probably not discussing Beckham's poor
faring in this latest value survey. (Jennifer Stewart/UP)

7. Gordon Beckham (-$1,773,772)

Prior survey: 9

There’s no urgency to give up on players making nothing at the major league level, from a salary standpoint. But the value survey screams murder when a below-replacement level player gets 500 ABs in the majors.

8. Brent Lillibridge (-$1,620,212)

Prior survey: 6

Three teams in one season; as bad as he was for Boston, he’s been good for the Cleveland Indians.

9. Kosuke Fukudome (-$1,275,118)

Prior survey: 7

Now rocking a .749 OPS at Scranton/Wilkes-Barre for the New York Yankees.

10. Eduardo Escobar (-$1,261,342)

Prior survey: 10

Now rocking a .634 OPS at Rochester for the Minnesota Twins, his worst mark since Single-A.

11. Matt Thornton (-$1,179,538)

Prior survey: 21^st on the Bargains list

His wishy-washy production is swallowed up by salary.

Q remains puzzled.

12. Pedro Hernandez (-$1,149,785)

Now rocking a 5.40 ERA in three starts at Rochester for the Twins. Carlos Quentin goes all Hulk whenever he remembers this was one of the guys traded for him.

13. Philip Humber (-$950,732)

Prior survey: 15

It’s doubtful that spot appearances out of the pen will get Perfect Philip out of the value hole he’s dug for himself this season.

14. Paul Konerko (-$674,773)

Prior survey: Ninth on the Bargains list

PK’s 1.7 WAR is fighting to keep pace with his salary, especially after being shelved for a week post-concussion.

15. Ray Olmedo (-$660,094)

If O-Dog had done his job, Olmedo would still be luxuriating in his Charlotte digs.

16. Jordan Danks (-$393,010)

Prior survey: 20^th on the Bargains list

That game-ending dinger couldn’t stave off a demotion, and it couldn’t raise his WAR to 0.0, either.

17. Alexei Ramirez (-$229,481)

Prior survey: 5

The Missile has turned his season around in the second half and is on pace to be a plus-value player for his fifth straight season on the South Side.

18. Jhan Marinez (-$181,223)

19. Leyson Septimo (-$80,000)

Prior survey: 14^th on the Bargains list

20. Brian Omogrosso (-$40,000)

Prior survey:18^th on the Bargains list

With just 18 appearances among them, this trio of bullpen arms are the epitome of replacement players.

Yolk leads the way for White Sox value gainers. (Nam Huh/AP)

White Sox Value Gains

Since the midseason report—thus over the course of approximately a quarter of the 2012 season—these White Sox made positive value gains.

1. Kevin Youkilis ($3,968,816)

2. A.J. Pierzynski ($3,193,879)

3. Francisco Liriano ($2,611,344)

4. Alexei Ramirez ($2,270,519)

5. Alex Rios ($2,105,589)

6. Jose Quintana ($1,780,307)

7. Chris Sale ($1,086,238)

8. Hector Santiago ($1,002,962)

9. Tyler Flowers ($999,174)

10. Dewayne Wise ($890,142)

11. Alejandro De Aza ($589,517)

12. Gavin Floyd ($553,161)

13. Addison Reed ($500,667)

14. Donnie Veal ($484,892)

15. Jesse Crain ($304,625)

16. Kosuke Fukudome ($281,892)

17. Brett Myers ($218,346)

Unfortunately, back in a familiar place.

White Sox Value Losses

Since the midseason report, these White Sox lost value.

1. Adam Dunn (-$3,329,096)

2. Paul Konerko (-$2,677,850)

3. John Danks (-$2,271,671)

4. Philip Humber (-$1,415,849)

5. Matt Thornton (-$1,203,984)

6. Pedro Hernandez (-$1,149,785)

7. Orlando Hudson (-$995,443)

8. Jake Peavy ($-885,078)

9. Gordon Beckham (-$758,765)

10. Ray Olmedo (-$660,094)

11. Leyson Septimo (-$640,094)

12. Eduardo Escobar (-$568,338)

13. Jordan Danks (-$461,048)

14. Brent Morel (-$347,187)

15. Dylan Axelrod (-$298,825)

16. Dayan Viciedo (-$219,732)

17. Nate Jones (-$205,448)

18. Jhan Marinez (-$181,223)

19. Brian Omogrosso (-$162,023)

20. Will Ohman (-$88,419)

21. Zach Stewart (-$54,816)

22. Brent Lillibridge (-$36,199)

23. Eric Stults (-$19.202)

24. Brian Bruney (-$4,801)

Team Value Summary

White Sox hitters boast a cumulative $16,728,129 in surplus value on the season so far, an improvement of $4,245,775 since the midseason report. The average White Sox hitter brings $929,340 in surplus value to the team.

Pitchers are, as in 2011, carrying more than their share of surplus value for the team: $22,504,205, a drop of $38,675 since the midseason report. The average White Sox pitcher brings $978,444 in surplus value to the team.

The roster has produced a surplus value of $39,232,334 at the three-quarter mark of the season, an increase of $4,207,100 since midseason.

In 2011, the White Sox provided just $20,573,350 in surplus value (pitchers $33,253,350, hitters -$12,680,000), so the 2012 club is assured of providing more value than their predecessors.

Note: For batters, 1.0 WAR is equal to $4,650,708; for pitchers, 1.0 WAR is equal to $4,236,693. WAR data was compiled using Baseball-Reference, Baseball Prospectus, and FanGraphs. Small changes in inactive player values are most often a result of slight tweaks in the $/WAR data. Players not on the roster for the midseason survey don’t have “prior survey” results. Figures are through games of August 17.

"Just saying"

2012-08-15T18:40:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow,

I'll be at the table

when company comes.

Nobody'll dare

say to me,

"Eat in the kitchen,"

then.

Besides,

they'll see how beautiful I am

and be ashamed--

I, too, am America.

"I, Too" by Langston Hughes

Attendance Clause: Did ticket sales determine Tribune editorial placement as well?

Back around 2003, before I’d even taken a first stab at blogging, I’d already found a favorite foil: Dan McGrath.

At the time, McGrath was then about halfway into his decade-plus tenure running the Tribune’s star-crossed and unfailingly biased sports section. At the Cubbies Convention in January, Ron Santo predicted that the team would win 100 games. As everyone knew, Santo was many things, foremost among them a consummate Cubbies homer, so to take to the bank anything the team announcer and future Hall-of-Famer said was well, you know, cute, quaint, or perhaps heartening. But foremost: It’s a Ron Santo prediction about the Cubbies!

Santo, star-crossed no more.

Natch, McGrath took Santo’s prediction Ph.D. seriously, enough so to assign a story about “how it could happen” to beat writer Paul Sullivan, and it ran over the fold along with a heady, season-schedule graphic. Never mind that the North Siders had won 100 games just five times in the then-127 years of the franchise or that they’d hit the century mark just once in the past 94 seasons heading into 2003. The entire piece read with the hopefulness of … a Cubbies fan, not a responsible writer or objective editor.

While the Cubbies would win just 88 games in 2003, that flaccid number was enough to take the NL Central, where the team would take a 3-2 lead on the Florida Marlins before a colossal collapse that’s winceable even for a non-fan to recall some nine seasons later. And this McGrathian embarrassment--the 100-win prediction detail was no "goof" or back-page filler, mind you--was by no means the worst or most offensive of his 12-year tenure helming the most influential sports entity in the Chicago market.

Here it is, a decade later, and, somehow, McGrath is still an active media member—more visible than ever as a writer, in fact—surfacing at the rival Sun-Times, whose membership standards apparently are swaying by the day. [To be fair, I have found McGrath a much better writer, generally, than he is an editor. His writing across sports is solid, qualifying him right upon hire as the best writer on the Sun-Times staff.]

And once more, I am forced to scrape my jaw up off the ground after some of McGrath's more inane ramblings, which this time around includes a bonus treat—a completely voluntary and unnecessary reference to his tenure at the Tribune, by way of dissing the White Sox.

McGrath set the stage of his column nicely, with “curiosity” compelling him out to USCF to see the first-place White Sox (well, not exactly) take on the phenom of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Mike Trout (there, that's more like it).

Then, McGrath affixed a garrulous countenance and went full-on grump, excoriating White Sox fans for committing the act of a wave.

No argument there, Dan. “The Wave” is, indeed, sheer foolishness.

But McGrath posited his criticism in much the way his Tribune sports section did lo those years ago. Somehow, in McGrath’s mind, foolish acts of fan frolic—like The Wave—are only committed on the South Side.

Surely, this man is joking—or his fading memory escapes him.

The premise of his piece sets White Sox fans up as a straw man—they claim to be “all about baseball,” but really, they’re not. As McGrath posits:

OK, but in all the years I’ve been going to Wrigley Field, I’ve never seen the wave done. Not once. Just saying.

To that, Dan, I'll retort, shocked: You must be joking.

I won’t even get into the reputation for sheer boobery and boozing at Wrigley Field, or the notion that Cubbies fans “don’t care” about the game. For the prices paid and inconveniences weathered, I’d sure hope every fan entering the gates there cares and pays plenty of attention.

But said fans pelt the field with garbage when things don't go their way. They throw opponent’s home run balls back onto the field. In spite of his own paper’s many, many, many attempts at misdirection, they have perpetrated a number of dangerous acts, including the assault of an opponents’ bullpen, tackling a Cubs pitcher on the mound, running unimpeded to the mound from the outfield, beer showering an opponent’s center fielder, and several other acts of fan interference. And there are assaults of other kinds, like the abomination of Horry Kow.

Most importantly of all, Dan: They do The Wave at Wrigley Field.

[The last "Field" link above was written by McGrath's Cubbies beat writer, Sullivan, in 2006. That was during McGrath's Tribune tenure as editor, so I guess Dan must have been off that day and failed to read the sports section at all to catch up on what he'd missed.]

Worse, McGrath not only attempts to take the piss out of the notion that White Sox fans are more “purist,” he resorts to referencing his insipid tenure manning Trib sports, saying that attendance (!) was the reason for his paper’s discrepancy in coverage between White Sox and Cubbies.

At least that's an answer, albeit a lousy one.

But still, let’s pretend that attendance, rather than wins (the South Siders averaged four more wins per season during McGrath’s Tribune tenure, while averaging 11,000 less fans per game) or any other factor should determine how a paper covers sports franchises. How disingenuous is it (modest, the former sports editor might call it) to assume that the relentless promotion of a Tribune company asset in the pages of the Tribune had nothing to do with the discrepancy in ballpark attendance?

In the 11 years leading up to the Tribune purchase of the Cubbies, North outdrew South by an average of just 2,272 fans per game (and not as a means of excuse, but in that time span Bud Selig reached an agreement to buy the White Sox and move them to Milwaukee, a deal the AL owners struck down, and the White Sox also were rumored to be off to both Seattle and Denver before Bill Veeck raced to the rescue in 1975). And in the 11 years before that—call it the last era of stability for Chicago baseball, a stretch unaffected by either franchise relocation or new ballpark construction—the White Sox outdrew the Cubbies by 2,486 fans per game.

So all evidence points to the White Sox and Cubbies essentially drawing equally prior to the Tribune ownership. But to complete the cyclical argument, McGrath’s admits attendance drove Tribune coverage of the competing baseball teams.

Photo research by Brian Dykes.

Funny, when I was in contact with Dan a decade ago, he didn’t use that fairly reasonable (yet) disingenuous argument. I wrote conscientious (if sarcastic) letters to Dan, from my stead less as sportswriter than as a Tribune subscriber. My hope, truly, was that coverage errors might be corrected and the strength of the paper would improve. The two most memorable responses from Dan? The first told me to “stick my letter where the sun don’t shine.” A second informed that I should “put away the crayons” I was apparently writing with.

Those aren’t bad retorts, I suppose—if you’re having an argument at a sports bar. When you are the man charged with outlining coverage between two competing and contentious teams in town, helming the most powerful media entity in Chicago, it’s inappropriate to say the least.

Not to mention this delicious factoid, dug out by my friend Jeff McMahon and the dean of Tribune watchdogging: During the 2005 and 2006 regular seasons, during which the White Sox won and defended a World Series title (to the tune of a 90-win season), the Tribune published nearly 1,400 more stories mentioning the Cubbies than the White Sox. That’s just about two articles per day—and assuming more coverage in-season, we can estimate the true number in-season to be more like three or four more Cubbies articles per day than White Sox over both summers.

I guess we can just chalk that up to the 5,700 more fans per game your paper helped put into the seats over those two seasons, eh, Dan?

McGrath's tenure at the Tribune, senselessly referenced even today, amid writing at a competitor that was otherwise worthy of highlight, represented a wave of its own: A wave of bias. And that wave, years past McGrath and Tribune ownership of the Cubbies, refracts even today.

Adventures in Bad Journalism

2012-08-14T10:09:00.000-07:00

when the sentence wielded its wit towards it-

the sentence, relentlessly, kept firing,

not satisfied & not feeling safe,

until the paragraph, with all of its fellow sentences within,

crumbled to the page,

now,

a mere pile of

sentence fragments & misplaced

words & punctuation.

"bad writing," Andrew Delapruch

Poetry in Pros has stooped to bully some bad writing here and there already, be it haughty tweets or the negative predilections of the Sun-Times. But the examples are coming faster and furiouser, so here we go, into what could, sadly, become a regular feature.

Cy Young Wins and A.J. = MVP?

Exhibit A is a pair of placemarker ESPNChicago features from Bruce Levine that beget his blessedly and vaguely apt monicker of “Chicago baseball beat reporter.”

The first—disguised as a game story but revealed as an advocacy feature yet hardly scratching the surface of either—touted Chris Sale as a Cy Young candidate. This would have been notable or prescient in May, say. In August, after he essentially missed starting the All-Star Game at the behest of a White Sox club guarding his arm? Boring filler. Bonus points for Levine citing wins—hardscrabble harrumpher of a beat man he is—as the first evidence for Sale (apparently just now) bullying his way into the discussion:

The 23-year-old left-hander won his 14th game of the season on Sunday. He now trails only Jered Weaver of the Angels and David Price of Tampa Bay who have 15 victories apiece this year.

A.J. will not--and should not--come close to sniffing an
MVP this year. Even on his own team. (Brad Penner/USP)

And in the popular ESPN category of covering a team from 500 miles away, Levine emerged with an even more puzzling piece on Monday,

With just seven weeks left in the baseball season, White Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski is making a case for MVP honors.

touting A.J. Pierzynski at the Chicago White Sox’s team MVP, a controversial stance to be sure given the presence of Alex Rios, Sale, Jake Peavy, and even Jose Quintana.

Normally the smart money is on a position player who puts up 40 home runs and 115 RBIs to be the eventual winner. This season, the list of top players in the American League is short, with Los Angeles Angels rookie Mike Trout leading the way.

The 21-year-old Trout is leading the league in batting average, runs scored and stolen bases, the Texas Rangers’ Josh Hamilton is the home run and RBI leader and Detroit’s Miguel Cabrera is a legit triple crown threat, but none of the three have had bigger or more productive hits then [sic] the White Sox catcher.

Oh … wait. Levine isn’t pimping A.J. for White Sox MVP. He’s pimping him for AL MVP. Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick, with bonus grammatical incongruity to boot.

Even if you were to grant Levine’s nonsense notion that A.J.’s hits have been somehow bigger and more clutch than Hamilton (!), Trout (!!) or Cabrera (!!!), there’s no evidence, again, that Pierzynski’s hits are the most clutch on his own friggin’ team. In fact, employing the “clutch” stat (a delicious mashup of Win Probability Added and Leverage Index) with just one click it’s easy to see that A.J. is not only not the most clutch hitter in the American League, only Adam Dunn (-0.8) on his own team ranks worse in the clutch than Pierzynski’s -0.6 (FYI most clutch on the club are Missile, Yolk and Rios).

Levine’s shoddy work is exacerbated by supporting quotes from Pierzynski’s understudy, Tyler Flowers, who praises A.J.’s work ethic.

“A.J. is at the ballpark working out early every day,” backup catcher Tyler Flowers said. “He has been a great example to me the way he prepares himself doing his cardio work and yoga both before and after games. I have learned a lot from him.”

This article, short and harmless as it may appear, is something I’d wince over if it was written by an MLB.com intern, giddy with a first one-one-one with a player. That is comes from Levine, the dean of baseball media in town, is utterly reprehensible.

Updates … unless there are none

Over on the other side of the web comes a mystery update from CSNChicago.

Originally, Dan Hayes’ game story, with clubhouse quotes, featured a lede so inane it begged a scolding. The story was edited and postgame video embedded, and I don’t have the ability to conjure up the original lede, but I recall it as something to the effect of: “Adam Dunn was the only White Sox player to get much done tonight.” (If you think my memory is treating Dan unfairly, trust me, the original was even less enlightening and was a bigger grammatical mess.) The lede now stands acceptably:

TORONTO - Adam Dunn and Jake Peavy did plenty for the White Sox on Monday night.

But it was a bunch of unheralded youngsters who helped lead the injury-sacked Toronto Blue Jays to a 3-2 victory over the White Sox in 11 innings in front of 16,828 at the Rogers Centre.

But there lies the problem. The original timestamp remains on the story: 8:30 p.m. (that in itself seems a specious stamp given a three-hour game, extra-inning game). No one is required to note the edits made on a story with an “updated” timestamp—although it is universal practice as far as I know—and not the entirety of the intestinal tracts of the media need to be transparent. But for the benefit of all readers, transparency should be the default.

For the record, and just to offer that not all stories need be so very dry and unenlightening as CSN’s timestamped 8:30 from Monday, here are the ledes from last year’s gamers in Toronto:

May 26

TORONTO – Contrary to reports, Chicago manager Ozzie Guillen was not seen mouthing “there’s your run” to White Sox starter Phil Humber after Juan Pierre drove in the first, go-ahead, Pale Hose run of the night.

The young righthander—who could find himself on the outside looking in when Chicago’s rotation narrows back down to five in a week’s time—was again brilliant. And again, he fell short of a much-deserved victory, in spite of 7 2/3 innings of six-hit, one-run ball.

May 27

TORONTO – If you listen very closely, you can hear it. The sound is faint, weak, dying.

It’s the sound of the White Sox’s season dripping away, aided by a toothless offensive attack that mustered a mere three hits against wild and combustible Toronto Blue Jays righthander Kyle Drabek.

Drabek was saved from himself by the Pale Hose’s usual combination of failure in the clutch, bad luck and negative-value foot speed. The rookie didn’t pick up the win, but was allowed to live into the seventh inning of Toronto’s 4-2 win.

May 28 (extended the lede for bonus Ozzie hilarity)

TORONTO – Last night, the White Sox struggled to score, when they weren’t getting smacked in the eye with baseballs or pitching through traffic.

On Saturday afternoon, the Pale Hose offense awoke from spring slumber to the tune of eight runs on 11 hits, not all attributed to the batting-practice hurler gumption of Blue Jays starter Carlos Villanueva. But in spite of fighting their way back to ties three times, Chicago fell short, dropping the third game of a quartet in 14 innings, 9-8.

Ozzie Guillen was beside himself with disgust.

“It went from a very good game to a very horses--- game,” said the manager, head down as if in pain. “It was a good game because we battled back, but after the ninth inning, we (expletive) stunk---flat-out stunk. We come back, very excited in the ninth inning, a base hit with two out from PK … after that we’re horsebleep. Our offense (expletive) sucks after the ninth.

“[The hitters] can say whatever they (expletive) want to say. For nine innings, they battled, 3-0 battled back into the game … after the ninth inning, they all sucked. Next question.”

Photo: Chris McPherson/GQ

May 29 (getaway game lede)

TORONTO – White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen, as he’s wont to do, stole thunder from his club this weekend, his frustration boiling over in comments following Saturday’s extra-inning loss and spilling over into pregame Sunday.

With the precedent set, there was cause to brace for an explosion after the two-hour festival of ugly that passed for the finale of a four-game set in Toronto that saw his Chicago 9 wilt at the Rogers Centre, 13-4.

But if Saturday Ozzie was Angry Dad, busting coffeemakers and searching for someone who cared, Sunday’s manager smoked a pipe and was mild-manned, philosophical even.

Teaser time

There’s a third and most egregious media offender to report on, my old pal Dan McGrath, in the Sun-Times. But there is absolutely no way to address his utterly abominable piece from last week without extending today's post interminably. So Dan, who apparently has dragged his biases from the Tribune with him through the rocky and tumultuous terrain that led, improbably, to the Sun-Times, will be featured separately.

Will They Stay or Will They Go?

2012-08-11T15:59:00.000-07:00

Esta indecisión me molesta.

Si no me quieres, librame.

Digame que tengo ser.

¿Sabes que robas me querda?

Me tienes que desir - ¿me deob ir or quedarme?

"¿Me Debo Ir o Que Darme?" por Mick Jones

In-cinder-ary: Everyone with a $22 million option year, take your calls in the tunnel.

On Thursday and for the second consecutive week, Daryl Van Schouwen wrote off-day copy that demands an answer. Last week, it was the notion that Adam Dunn and Alex Rios were, somehow, equally deservingComeback Player of the Year candidates. The Dutchman might not have said so explicitly, but his piece provided a launching point.

This week, Daryl writes a somewhat dismissive piece on the 2013 White Sox; namely, enjoy these White Sox while you can, because “it says here” that potentially a half-dozen key contributors will be gone.

Under first-year manager Robin Ventura and his new-look coaching staff, the team has played a clean brand of baseball on the field and has been refreshingly distraction-free off the field.

Enjoy it while you can.

In the always-changing roster landscape driven by free agency, it says here the team as constituted will be no more after this season, whether it ends with a second ticker-tape parade in eight years or no postseason at all.

I actually had to double-take on this piece, because it sure smelled Cowleyesque, but then, I remembered that Cowley had been demoted--er, "reassigned"--to the Chicago Bears beat from the columnist post he held for just about 18 months. Perhaps the writer was Rick Telander, orchestrator of the Gordon Beckham-Chris Getz controversy a year ago, a cheap and shameless grab at relevancy that was trumped only by Sun-Times sports ogre Chris DeLuca chastising the White Sox beat for largely ignoring his paper’s insulting non-story.

Turns out it was neither writer, but in fact Daryl who penned the pessimism. For so many years the Sun-Times, in spite of the presence of all-time South Side hiney bird Jay Mariotti, was considered the healthy alternative to the pro-Cubbies Tribune. But between Cowley’s muckracking and the more subtle negatives abounding in seemingly innocuous pieces like Van Schouwen’s, the Sun-Times actually has emerged as the publication more dour toward all things South Side.

Anyway, yes, Daryl is merely stating the obvious, that the 25 men on the roster today will not all be White Sox in 2013. So let’s examine the six players he drops into the departure pot and stir up some reality-check odds on their returns.

A.J. Pierzynski

Not everyone attaches to A.J. a proper value.

After an 12^th hour re-signing in 2010 that many predicted would bite the White Sox resoundingly in the ass come 2012, A.J. has outperformed his $6 million salary this season in absolutely astounding fashion. (In fact, to date Pierzynski has provided $20.8 in value per FanGraphs on his two-year $8 million deal--one that seemed overly sentimental and a huge risk for Chicago.) That sets Williams up for another game of chicken this offseason, as fans will clamor to bring the seemingly ageless backstop back for another couple of seasons, while the GM will keep looking at the clock, sun dial or calendar and thinking that at some point, Pierzynski will collapse into a pile of dust, leaving the team badly undermanned at catcher. Pierzynski’s career year has made what could have been a tricky decision a no-brainer, especially with the regression of Tyler Flowers and absolutely no one in the minor leagues capable of even replacing Flowers as the backup at this point. If we’re to believe A.J.’s constant proclamations that his first choice is to continue his career in Chicago, this is a consummately easy call.

Chance of 2013 return: 95%

Gavin Floyd

Kicking the man on his down year, Van Schouwen questions whether longtime rotation stalwart Floyd will have his relatively inexpensive, $9.5 million option picked up. At 2012’s rate of production (1.2 WAR/$5.4 million) it’s possible decline, sure, but if Williams looks at Floyd’s body of work for the White Sox he’ll see a surplus value to Chicago of some $45 million dollars. Put another way, 2012 is the first season Floyd won’t provide substantial surplus value for the White Sox. If Floyd isn’t on the Opening Day roster in 2013, it won’t be because his option was declined.

Chance of 2013 return: 90%

Jake Peavy

Peavy has been healthy for a full season for his first time in a White Sox uniform, and as a result he’s on track to actually outearn his onerous, $17 million contract (3.4 WAR/$15.3 million value projects to 5.0 WAR/$22.5 million for the full season). His value as a de facto captain of a pitching staff in which no man wishes to lead (no thanks to the ineffectual and now injured John Danks) adds dollars to his contribution, in much the same way Paulie doesn’t have to produce $12 million on the field to earn his postgame spreads and beers. So if Peavy can duplicate his 2012 in 2013, he’d be a fair deal for the White Sox even at the pricier ($22 million) option rate.

But it shouldn’t come to that; while Peavy is proud, the Bulldog is not obstinate and realizes he's in the red with the White Sox overall. Provided the White Sox roll his $4 million buyout into a contract extension (maybe it will come in the form of deferred payments later this decade), Peavy would be good to stay in Chicago for a few more years. Look for Danks money in a three-year, $42 million extension.

Chance of 2013 return: 75%

Liriano, under scores of watchful eyes.

Francisco Liriano

Obviously, how the southpaw performs in the stretch run will have a lot to do with Williams’ interest in bringing him back. But in the midst of a disappointing season, (0.7 WAR/$3.2 million value), Liriano could jump at a Floyd-like deal (an escalating, three-year, $24 million contract, let's say). That way, Williams will keep his man and, as an added bonus, potentially torment the rival Minnesota Twins three or four times per season directly.

Chance of 2013 return: 35%

Kevin Youkilis

Yolk is a tough call, as for all the life he breathed initially into the White Sox, he’s still just a 1.2 WAR/$5.4 million player so far this season. Granted, he could sit the rest of the year and remain quite a steal for Williams, who is paying just $1 million for the sweaty one in 2012. His $13 million option in 2013 is another matter entirely, and short of Yolk wanting so badly to stay some sort of Sox that he accepts a Visquelian veteran’s package (let’s say a drop to $4 million), he’ll be gone. Shame, because it’s hard to imagine Brent Morel being any less Morellian in 2013, and I’d wager that $6 million would keep Yolk in Chicago.

Chance of 2013 return: 20%

Snapshots like these will become increasingly rare in the Dog Days.

Brett Myers

Myers was a gratuitous addition, to the degree that if Jesse Crain hadn't been alternating injured obliques all season long, Myers wouldn't have been added at all. That said, the righthanded veteran has blossomed into an ideal and efficient setup man for rookie Addison Reed. In order for a monstrous 2013 option ($10 million) to kick in, Myers needs to finish 45 games in 2012; he’s at 32 at this point and it would take an absolute implosion by Reed for Myers to finish more than 12 additional games for the White Sox from here. Myers has provided more than .05 WAR per game for the White Sox (per Baseball-Reference), but even that unlikely clip (Myers is just a 0.2 WAR performer on the season overall) won’t make him a good buy in 2013.

Chance of 2013 return: 5%

You guys are really asking me if I'll be back?

Orlando Hudson

Wait, Hudson wasn't on Daryl's short list. No respect for the O-Dog, Dutchman? Sheesh.

Chance of 2013 return: Less than zero.

NOTE: Unless otherwise specified, WAR figures cited are a supermix of Baseball-Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus. Per-WAR dollar figures come via FanGraphs: $4.5 million per 1.0 WAR.

Get Done on the Good Foot

2012-08-08T12:53:00.000-07:00

At a time in my life when little or nothing was necessary to stir the courage of my convictions,

I felt particularly oppressed by Martha Stewart. Whether she was

clipping credit cards as a shill for Amex or recycling used paper towels into colorful centerpieces,

her tanned, relaxed face menaced me. I decided to trek eastward to her pristine home, where I could scoop up the real deal,

the dirt that Martha Stewart hides from us all.

Martha Stewart's Dirty Secrets

"I guess that was your accomplice there in the wood chipper?" (Polygram)

I promised something like what has turned into this detailed transaction series on Ken Williams a year ago, around the trade deadline. But there’s little room for in-depth writing on the beat, even less for anything remotely artful.

[The first gamer I ever wrote in Minneapolis was a Fargo pastiche. It was rejected in typical CSN panic, and then and there I knew that for all the talk of game stories having gone passé, passé was indeed the order of the day at that stodgy megacorp of mediocrity.]

At that time, my impression of White Sox GM Ken Williams is that he was dramatically underrated, and the Moneyball stain on his record was unwarranted, cheap, and inaccurate. As envisioned in the first in this series, I imagined Williams as so quick and aggressive, he was sitting pretty, smiling with his prize before another GM realized what hit him.

While that hasn’t entirely turned out to the be case—Williams has his soft spots, and generally has “overpaid” to bring wins to town—the notion that he's an underrated, uncommonly durable and clever GM is now more firmly rooted to me than before.

Sometime in 2013, I will update this entire series, not only with the additional travails on field and transactions off it to come, but by broadening the scope of the WAR and WAR/$ study beyond that of just Baseball-Reference. For now, here’s an updated and revised snapshot of how KW has performed, broken down by trades and by free agency, followed by a bit of trivia/miscellany regarding his near-dozen years at the helm.

Trading Summary

Williams has traded 134 White Sox players and acquired 120.

He’s traded away 136.3 player seasons and acquired 128.

The players dealt went on to accumulate 93.6 WAR, while the players acquired have provided the White Sox 128.2.

Translating WAR into sheer dollars, Williams has dealt away $363.6 million in talent and acquired $507.5 million.

The traded players went on to earn $244.2 million in salary, while Williams has paid his acquisitions $408.8 million.

The GM has included $13.9 million in total cash considerations over 17 trades, while getting back $47.8 million in 14 deals for the White Sox.

The overall surplus value—the dollar value players produced, above player salary—that Williams has dealt away is $119.5 million, while acquiring $98.6 million.

Free Agency Summary

Including the commitments to his own players (avoiding arbitration, extensions, or re-signings), Williams has done an outstanding job with regard to free agency. Counting all signings, here’s how the numbers break down:

Williams has signed 115 players and cut 34 loose.

He’s signed 156 player seasons, giving up 42.

He’s acquired 174.5 WAR, surrendering just 28.2.

The dollar value of players he’s signed is $661.5 million, while allowing $102.2 million to walk.

He’s paid players he’s signed $648.7 million in salary, while the players he’s cut loose signed for $164.9 million.

The overall surplus value Williams has gained from his signings is $13 million ($83,000 per player season, or $113,000 per player).

The locks of a champion.

Baby Steps, Bobby.

The players Williams has let go have produced -$62.7 million in value for their new teams, an ugly figure gobbled up substantially by just two deals: Magglio Ordonez’s seven-year, $99 million contract (producing -$52.2 million for the Detroit Tigers) and Bobby Jenks’s two-year, $12 million deal (producing -$13.8 million for the Boston Red Sox).

Even when parsing out returning White Sox and evaluating only outside players brought into Chicago, Williams’ record remains consistent. He’s signed 77 outside players, who have played 86.6 seasons and produced 56.7 WAR. The dollar value of that WAR comes to $222.5 million, so $214 million salary paid leaves a surplus value of $8.5 million ($98,000 per player season, $110,000 per player).

Two Generations Removed

I extended the survey to not only track how traded players fared with opposing teams—after all, how else to determine who “won” a trade?—but to what return a team got if they traded a former White Sox asset. For example, Chad Bradford, acquired from the White Sox by the Oakland A’s, was eventually dealt to the Red Sox for Jay Payton. So in looking solely at second-generation assets, Payton’s $6.7 million in value brought to Oakland for Bradford counts for the A’s.

There have been 29 such deals by my count, around half of which were “megatrades” of between five and 12 players that I didn’t attempt to extrapolate a value lineage for. But of the others, former White Sox assets collectively brought little return back to teams: 20.4 total player seasons, but a mere 1.1 total WAR and a total surplus value of -$28.7 million.

PTBNL Losses

Williams has lost the war of players to be named later. Of the four significant PTBNLs (Miguel Olivo and Neal Cotts acquired by the White Sox, Frank Francisco and John Ely dealt away) included in deals, the White Sox come out behind in both WAR (-1.0) and surplus value (-$800,000).

2012 Report Card

Counting only Williams’ trades for Kevin Youkilis, Brett Myers and Francisco Liriano, the White Sox have come out ahead thus far in more spectacular fashion: 2.3 WAR and $3.6 million in surplus value.

No Deal

Danks gets on his horse, Toby Hall.

There are just two teams Williams has not made a trade with, at least one that had major league ramifications: the Tigers and Tampa Bay Rays. The most significant dealings between the two had mixed results: Williams letting Ordonez walk to Detroit as a free agent (-$52.2 million in value for the Tigers) and signing Toby Hall from the Rays (-$7.8 million for the White Sox).

Ken’s Faves

Williams has made eight trades with the Cincinnati Reds in his tenure, with a net WAR of -3.2 and net surplus value of -$2.3 million.

He’s made six trades with both Josh Byrnes of the Arizona Diamondbacks/San Diego Padres and Walt Jocketty of the St. Louis Cardinals/Reds. Against Byrnes, Williams has won the WAR battle (1.5) but lost in surplus value (-$13.6 million). The GM has fared better vs. Jocketty: 1.1 WAR and $7.7 million surplus value.

Interestingly, Williams didn’t make his first deal with either Jocketty or Byrnes until five years into his tenure.

Evened Out

Discounting one-time trade partners, there have been four teams which have made essentially “even” WAR trades over time with Williams:

Boston has made six deals with Williams, netting the White Sox 0.1 WAR and $1.4 million in surplus value.

Toronto and Miami have made five deals with Chicago. Williams has taken 0.1 WAR and $2 million in surplus value from the Blue Jays, while giving up 0.1 WAR to the Marlins but taking $1.4 million in surplus value from them.

San Francisco has made three deals with the White Sox, surrendering 0.3 WAR and $2.7 million in surplus value to Williams.

Six different GMs have battled Williams essentially to a tie:

Cashman, the vulture.

Brian Cashman of the New York Yankees has given up 0.4 WAR and taken $15.9 in surplus value from the White Sox over four deals.

Larry Beinfest in Miami has made three deals with Chicago, surrendering 0.3 WAR and $5.4 million in surplus value.

Kevin Malone and the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago have made three swaps, giving up 0.1 WAR but taking away $3.3 million in surplus value.

Dave Dombrowski of the Marlins made two deals with the White Sox, netting him 0.5 WAR and $1.1 million in surplus value.

Allan Baird of the Kansas City Royals dealt twice with the White Sox, netting him 0.1 WAR and $5 million in surplus value.

And finally, Brian Sabean of the Giants has his three deals with Chicago outlined above.

Part One: Williams’ WAR wins.

Part Two: The difference in trade value.

Part Three: Free agency travails.

Part Four: Who Bullies Ken? (A study of GMs)

Fine print: In many cases, exact details of cash considerations are unavailable, so educated guesses were made to arrive at value judgments. Some player-for-considerations deals have been skipped or omitted, as are players included in trades who never contributed at the major league level. WAR data used courtesy of Baseball-Reference, while yearly dollar/WAR values were estimated primarily from Fangraphs data.

The One and Only COY Choice

2012-08-06T13:10:00.000-07:00

If it wasn't for disappointment

I wouldn't have any appointments.

John Flansburgh, "Snowball in Hell"

Ascendant Ales: Rios has exceeded even his most optimistic preseason projections. (Jonathan Daniel/GI)

This offseason, the question asked most often centered around whether or not the two biggest disappointments in recent White Sox memory, Adam Dunn and Alex Rios, could rebound in 2012.

Full disclosure: I was not bullish on either one ever becoming a notable contributor to the White Sox ever again. Dunn looked like he aged a decade between a the lost appendix and deserted confidence that plagued his debut in Chicago. Rios, never one to be accused of Charlie Hustling, appeared both on and off the field to have lost any and all motivation to improve and earn the balance of the bounteous contract Toronto handed over just two seasons into his baseball stardom.

If pressed to choose one of the pair to contribute in 2012, I would have taken Dunn, with his solid track record (remember those "guaranteed" 40 homers per year at USCF?) and the solitary focus (slugging) that he would need to remaster in order to get back on top of his game. Rios was so extensively lost as a hitter and a fielder that when coupled with his seeming indifference to the game and his past barren stretches of play, he looked to be a Lost Cause.

Last week, Daryl Van Schouwen wrote about the resurgence of Rios, which is all well and good, because the oft-maligned outfielder has resurged, for sure. But there's a passage, in which Daryl connects Rios and Adam Dunn as Comeback Player of the Year candidates, that rings hollow:

Rios and Dunn have a lot in common: big-money contracts and career-low experiences on the South Side last season. And now, bounce-back years that make their contracts look pretty good. Remember all the talk last year about the Sox being stuck with those deals? Dunn is in the second year of four years worth $56 million. Rios signed a six-year, $64 million deal with the Toronto Blue Jays that pays him $12.5 million this season and $13 million in each of the next two (with a club option for 2015), and nobody even brings it up it anymore.

I suppose as far as quick-n-dirty comparisons go, it's easy to look at Rios and Dunn as equal parts of a same solution so sugary sweet it launches Sox fans into diabetic comas. But the two are not nearly equal in what they have brought to the table in 2012, nor are their future projections likely to keep their debilitating contracts off of the minds of fans in the same measure.

Rios has, quite simply, defied all odds and logic to become an All-Star caliber player again, some four seasons (and countless agonizing boo bird sessions) after his previous peak. Dunn, frankly, is doing nothing special, unless you are going to award full credits for simply being a lot better than the guy who just had the Worst Season in Baseball History, as was his 2011.

Dunn be COY? Nope.

Still, the perception is that Dunn is a shoo-in for Comeback Player of the Year in 2012. Ignoring anyone else's candidates, Dunn doesn’t even have a better case than his own teammate, Rios. An argument might even be made that Jake Peavy is a better COY candidate than Dunn.

Dunn’s WAR at the two-thirds point of the season stands at a paltry 1.5*. There’s nothing special whatsoever about such a figure; Dunn himself has surpassed it in between five and seven previous seasons in his career, depending on which WAR you fancy among Baseball-Reference, Baseball Prospectus, and FanGraphs. Of his 12 seasons, 2012 will project to be somewhere right on average for his career.

There’s no doubt that Dunn could easily have just packed in his career—going through the motions for the three years remaining on his White Sox contract, or outright retiring in citation of his oft-repeated "no fun anymore" personal contract clause. His overall gain in WAR from his beyond belief 2011 (-3.0) to 2012 is 4.5 WAR, which is an amazing swing. But keep in mind that no one but the Positively Marlins Way Ozzie Guillen wouldn’t have allowed Dunn to dig such a preposterously deep hole in the first place, in 2011. (Somehow, it was more insulting to Guillen to have Dunn chalk up the Worst Season in Baseball History on his watch than it was to mercy-kill him to the bench.) Dunn is approaching 400 career homers and could easily become a 500-homer hitter (and who knows, get some postseason credentials on his resume, wink wink), but thanks to Ozzie’s sleepwalking, the question right now that Dunn will have to answer first for the rest of his life will be about authoring the Worst Season in Baseball History.

What’s a bummer about Dunn is that he was never going to be a bargain. In fact, the way he’s hitting today as a master of the Three Outcomes (Ks, BBs, HRs), he’s much less valuable a one-dimensional slugger than was even his spiritual predecessor on the South Side, Jim Thome. As argued in this analysis of Ken Williams’ free-agency moves Dunn’s extreme adherence to the Three Outcomes guts his value to the team, as much as everyone simply wants to throw their hands up and say, dude, he’s just a slugger … this is what sluggers do! With the White Sox, Thome was a slugger-first ballplayer, but his slash of .265/.391/.542 say he was more than a mere Three Outcome Guy, in spite of less speed than Dunn and having to hit against similar, diamond-shifting defenses. Thome averaged 2.9 WAR per season, while Dunn even in his “comeback” season is on track for only 2.3.

Quoth the Bulldog (L): "I can promise you this:
None of us are worried about that award." (h/t Merk)

Peavy wasn’t a debit at all in 2011—OK, erratic and a touch too braggadocious—punching in a 1.8 WAR. That means his All-Star caliber 3.3 at the moment is a modest raise of just 1.3 WAR. That’s dwarfed by the swing Dunn has enjoyed, but then, COY can be qualified in different ways. In sheer value, Peavy has been worth more than twice as much to the White Sox than Dunn this year. Then there’s the matter of his, um, esoteric value to the team, basically as the one guy who’s bulldogged his way to the front of the rotation and hardly faltered all season, in spite of the past buffet of injuries he’s suffered on the South Side.

As for Rios as Comeback Player of the Year, well, few players have ever been able to make such a compelling case, and there are numerous angles with which to praise. Within the White Sox, he’s ascended past even the meteoric Chris Sale to become team MVP, out-WARing him 3.7 to 3.6, and dwarfing any closer position player (A.J. Pierzynski is closest, at 2.5).

Belle: Despicably delicious.

Rios is projecting to a 5.7 WAR and stands at 10^th among all AL position players in the category right now. How rare is that sort of production among White Sox hitters? It’s been since 1998 and Albert Belle’s despicably delicious 7.4 WAR that a White Sox outfielder has topped Rios’s projected 2012 season, and since 2000 (Frank Thomas, 5.8) since a White Sox hitter in general has topped Rios.

There’s also no other hitter in the AL who can match Rios’s comeback swing of 5.0 WAR and counting—the closest challenger is the out-of-nowhere Edwin Encarnacion of the Toronto Blue Jays, and his swing is just half that of Rios (2.5 WAR, from 0.9 to 3.6).

Rios projects to a WAR swing of around 7.0 WAR, and while applying the same caveats as were to Dunn (namely, Zombie Bus Driver Ozzie should not have “honored” Rios so deeply with automatic PT as to drop him to a -1.3 WAR in 2011) it’s safe to assume there have been few such positive swings in baseball history.

Thus I fully, and delightfully, rescind my sour prognostications regarding Rios.

The Comeback Player of the Year was designed for such glorious resurrections as this.

*NOTE: In all cases I have taken Baseball Prospectus, Baseball-Reference, and FanGraphs WAR figures into account for this study, grinding all three into a sort of SuperWAR.

The Hawk Flies to Freedom

2012-08-03T09:50:00.000-07:00

He stands under the oak-bush and waits

The lame feet of salvation; at night he remembers freedom

and flies in a dream; the dawns ruin it.

Robinson Jeffers, "Hurt Hawks"

It was 45 years ago today that the Hawk was set free.

Charlie Finley, a meddlesome owner if ever that was, took a break from firing and rehiring manager Alvin Dark over a Kansas City Athletics player revolt to give Ken Harrelson his unconditional release on August 3, 1967.

The Hawk, at the time, with an .832 OPS and 147 OPS+ in 61 games, was K.C.'s best hitter.

The quick and dirty summary of the circumstances:

Hawk had been a member of the Athletics organization since signing with the club in 1959 (convinced he could make the majors more quickly through lowly K.C. than in the system of his other suitor, the Los Angeles Dodgers). He was traded to the Washington Senators in 1966 and sold right back to K.C. a year later. For two months, it looked as if he had finally found a home in Kansas City, and in the majors.

Then, a trumped-up episode on a commercial flight, involving supposed drunkenness from three players (Hawk not included) resulted in a report filed to Finley from broadcaster/team spy Monte Moore. Finley, no debonair practitioner of the finer things himself, was nonetheless outraged by this half-story and announced that no A's would be served alcohol on any future flights. The clubhouse was up in arms over such fire-breathing restrictions, and a team statement was released in response to Finley, which got Dark in hot water (Finley believed Dark was behind the team statement, when in truth he was unaware of its release).

After Dark's firing, Hawk--a little bristled up, as you might imagine--told a reporter that he felt Finley's actions were detrimental to baseball (pretty inarguable, that). Harrelson was also misquoted as calling Finley a "menace to baseball" (probably not far off, but something employers don't usually want to hear).

Finley, in typical rash fashion, chose not to trade or waive Harrelson, moves that would have netted his club players or cash in return. No, the hotheaded owner gave Hawk a taste of free agency, in a sense, with an outright release.

Harrelson got to choose from several contending teams pursuing his services (including the Yomiuri Giants), and as anyone who watches Chicago White Sox broadcasts knows, he chose the Boston Red Sox. Hawk would play somewhat sparingly as the Red Sox fought their way to the 1967 AL pennant but had a key RBI in the pennant-clincher on October 1. Later that month, he would get his only World Series experience (four games) in Boston's crushing loss in seven games to the St. Louis Cardinals.

In 1968, Hawk had a monster year for the Red Sox, finishing third in MVP voting, earning his only All-Star selection, and leading the AL with 109 RBI. His OPS of .874 and OPS+ of 155 were career-best marks, and his 4.6 WAR that single season essentially represents the sum value of his entire career.

Between the senseless release from Kansas City and confirmed success as a major leaguer in Boston, it seems something clicked in the Hawk. He'd finally learned how to be a pro, and he wasn't going to let anything hold him back from there. He took the unheard-of freedom (a so-called "sneak peak" at free agency that would arrive in baseball eight years later) allocated by Finley and made it work phenomenally for him. After badly breaking his leg sliding into second in 1970, Hawk would lose his passion for the game and play in just 69 more contests, quitting the game three years into his Cleveland Indians tenure to pursue a career as a golfer.

He did come back to the game some four years later, broadcasting for the Red Sox, and is now a mainstay of the White Sox organization as booster and critic alike--colorful either way. And to think, if not for Finley rashly cutting him loose 45 years ago, the Hawk might just be hustling pool or scratch golfing instead of entertaining hundreds of thousands every night.

The First Great South Side Run

2012-08-02T14:36:00.000-07:00

The ponies run, the girls are young,

the odds are there to beat.

You win a while, and then it's done -

your little winning streak.

And summoned now to deal

with your invincible defeat,

you live your life as if it's real,

a thousand kisses deep.

Leonard Cohen, "A Thousand Kisses Deep"

Messrs. Wonders, Hitless.

Surely more than a thousand lips kissed the 1906 Chicago White Sox, a true miracle of a club, who pulled off the first great World Series upset, over the crosstown Chicago Cubs.

It was just 106 years ago today that the White Sox embarked on the streak of a lifetime, setting an American League record with 19 consecutive wins. That record run would be tied by the New York Yankees in 1947 (the Yanquis would eventually upend the Brooklyn Dodgers to win the World Series in seven games) and last 96 years before being surpassed by the 2002 Oakland A's (who won 20 straight and made the playoffs, but failed to take home the pennant).

G. Davis, prodigious.

Those Pale Hose of ought-six are said to have dragged Wiffle bats to the plate, being dubbed the Hitless Wonders for a league-worst .230 team batting average. But that reputation as a punchless club is a bit overstated, as they finished third in the American League with 567 runs. Still, these White Sox were no clouters, to be sure, finishing last in the majors with just seven home runs and last in the AL in slugging (.286), total bases (1,410) and OPS (.588, tied with the Boston Americans). If not for the utterly hapless offense of the Boston Beaneaters of the National League, the White Sox would have finished last in baseball in batting average (Boston hit .226), total bases (1,385) and slugging (.281).

Offensive leaders, so to speak, were second sacker Frank Isabell with a .279 average, outfielder/manager Fielder Jones with a .346 OBP, shortstop George Davis with 80 RBI, a .355 SLG, .694 OPS and 120 OPS+. Jones and catcher Billy Sullivan tied for the team lead with two dingers.

So it's safe to assume that the Hitless Wonders might also have been nicknamed the Hurling Mites, because pitch the Chicago 7 sure could (you got that right, the White Sox used just seven pitchers all season: Frank Owen, Nick Altrock, Ed Walsh, Doc White, Roy Patterson, Frank Smith, and Lou Fiene, with Isabell throwing two mopup innings in a rout). The White Sox ranked first in the AL in run differential (2.99 runs per game), shutouts (32, best in the majors), walks (255, also best in the majors) and second in ERA (2.13) and WHIP (1.067).

F. Owen, iron man.

D. White, stingy.

Individual pitching leaders were Owen with 22 wins (22-13) and 27 complete games, while Altrock added 20 wins (20-13) and was the team's only other 20-game winner. White spun a 1.52 ERA and 167 ERA+, and Walsh threw 10 shutouts. No. 4 starter White also threw an incredible 20 complete games in 24 starts, at .833 the highest percentage of CGs on the team.

The White Sox could also pick the pill, finishing third in the AL in defensive efficiency (.705) and second in fielding percentage (.963).

White paced the Pale Hose with a 6.1 WAR, followed by Davis (6.1), Walsh (4.1), Jones (3.9), Isabel (3.3) and Altrock (3.1). (Walsh, in his third campaign of what would become a Hall of Fame career, was paid $1,800 for his 4.1 WAR.)

The Streak, in Focus

The South Siders' record run started with them lodged in fourth place at 50-43, 7 1/2 games behind the AL-leading Philadelphia A's. The New York Highlanders stood in second, with the Cleveland Naps third. On the afternoon of August 2, 1906 the White Sox knocked off the Americans, 3-0, in front of a crowd of less than 15,000 at South Side Park, which was located just three blocks south of where the team plays today.

Eleven wins into the streak, on August 12, the White Sox finally reached first place, after a 3-0 win over the Highlanders (the contest was played in Chicago, as the White Sox were playing in game 16 of a 17-game homestand). The record run didn't propel the Pale Hose into first place for good, however; by September 5, Chicago had fallen out of first and the club would fight back to the top and fall out twice more before ascending to first for good on September 25.

Among many things, what impresses about the 19-game streak is how uncharacteristically dominant the White Sox were. Before the run began, Chicago had a 0.0 run differential, scoring 318 runs, and surrendering 318. But for those 19 games, the White Sox thumped four opponents (Boston for six wins, Philadelphia for five, New York for seven, and the Washington Senators once) 100-24, a run differential of 4.00.

The pitching and defense were remarkable. Aside from an 11-6 win at the Highlanders and back-to-back 9-4 and 4-3 wins at Boston, the White Sox staff failed to surrender more than two runs in any of the wins. They also threw eight complete-game shutouts during the streak--although to be fair, almost all games were completed at the time, and certainly all shutouts were--and spun five one-run wins.

The streak jump-started a storied White Sox run to the AL pennant, of course, spurring them to a 43-15 record, second in baseball only to the Cubs, who went 50-7 over the same period. After that 318/318 scoring split start to the season, the Pale Hose scored 249 runs the rest of the way, surrendering just 142 (2.45 per game) for a differential of 1.84.

Base-ball triumph, ca. 1906.

Chicago would finish second in the AL to Cleveland with a 0.7 run differential on the season. The Naps were likely both woefully unlucky and terribly managed by Nap Lajoie, as their run differential was a league-best 1.2 and their pythagorean record was 98-55, eight games better than Chicago's.

But win the pennant the White Sox did, buoyed by a league-best 54 wins at South Side Park and a second-best 29-19 record in one-run games.

So if you've got a cap, short-billed or no, doff it to the first of three White Sox champions, who started a miraculous run to the title 106 years ago today. "Breaking down fences" (see third subhed, at right) is optional.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

2012-07-31T07:29:00.000-07:00

You are the common factor in all of your problems.

That, and more waffles.

Ethnocentric Republicans, "Waffles at Eleven"

Apparently I broke some news yesterday: Beat writers tend to disdain bloggers.

By misinterpreting an aspect of a tweet I did overstate the case of one particular fuck you from the beats to the blogs. And for that I apologized to Scott Merkin as I'll apologize to Dan Hayes now, as the incorrect passage was excised. But the larger issue--a haughtiness that comes, perhaps naturally, with the beat territory--remains.

I'm not sure how that comes as a shock. I was once fervently pro-traditional media and anti-blog, at least in one specific aspect: collaboration. In the traditional publication-editor-writer relationship, there are crucial checks and balances, copyediting, and brainstorming, all of which give traditional media a huge advantage over even the best lone-wolf blogger. It is a rare case where a self-published piece (and that includes the "big" bloggers) doesn't have outright grammar errors, if not larger issues of sourcing, attribution, context.

But my view has changed per my last experience with traditional media. Although Comcast boasted no publication per se, I wrote thousands of words per day for the CSNChicago site. Mistakes were caught and headlines improved, sure--but not often enough. Editors have been replaced by producers, whose responsibilities only partially involve editing, too often only after a piece has been uploaded live to a site.

So the job of copyediting, brainstorming, fact-checking and so on--a process that used to be collaborative--is increasingly falling to writers and writers alone. Are many of us up for the task? Sure. But presumptively and virtually eliminating the job of "editor" in electronic media bodes poorly for its future.

Thus I have no choice but to modify my stance, given that all too often a beat writer is a blogger, with greater access, responsibility, stature, and pay.

At any rate, yesterday's post dealt with the White Sox beat forsaking the blogosphere, something I see as a very valuable asset--often in a rather uppity or resentful manner. Pretty much as simple as that. And who knows, perhaps the Twitterpating that went on yesterday surrounding that post and the larger issue of getting to the bottom of Chris Sale's velocity issues will actually lead to a better relationship between the beat and fans.

I might have been different from the rest of my peers last season in that I was flying fairly solo in my writing endeavors. But when a fan was bowled over by a piece, it became a major editorial board vote and I took it as incentive to keep digging in that direction. And if a blog posted an intriguing question that hadn't been answered on the beat, I saw the opening and took it.

Two quick, late cases in point, September 2011. Cleveland Indians pitchers had been drilling White Sox with impunity, ably noted on Twitter. At the first pregame opportunity, I went to Sale, Sergio Santos, and Paul Konerko to get a read on why Chicago hurlers weren't retaliating, and whether or not retaliation was just an NFLization of baseball in the first place, no longer playing a role in today's game.

Upon Ozzie's resignation, it was larry at South Side Sox who captured his blog post stating he was headed to the Marlins before it was pulled down. I happened to catch his tweet and passed the news on, fully crediting his find. Thanks to larry's open eyes, I was able to squeeze the fact into coverage as early as my rough gamer, before Ozzie had left the field. That made my story was the only one with apparent confirmation on where Ozzie was headed.

To me, that's just using open, available and willing resources, nothing to be intimidated or put off by. Had I worked this 2012 season on the beat, I'm sure I would only have increased my dialogue with fans and blogs, especially with Comcast moving on to more unified and collaborative blog overall.

While I hope White Sox beat writers begin to see some in the blogosphere as collaborative partners, I have my doubts.

* * *

I heard from Merk yesterday, and he wasn't happy, beyond my misinterpretation of the #GoBlue tweet cheer. But he jumped to some conclusions that were likely spur of the moment, thus untrue. As much as he thought my chastising of he and Dan's reactions was a cheap shot, his complaint that "I was recording everything" was a similar cheap shot.

But in the spirit of clearing the air, I'll open the door to the press box a bit wider. That comes with hazards, but I imagine no one will object to my reflections this time around.

Mark Gonzales of the Tribune is not the longest-tenured White Sox beat, but he is the most tenured of the writers. Alhough he blushes the notion away, he's a future Hall-of-Famer. There is not a more genuine guy out there, and that's a quality especially hard to find in sports journalism. Given all I knew of the horribleness of Tribune personnel before meeting Mark, I was utterly, pleasantly shocked by how great a guy he is.

On a personal note, Mark displayed kinship I had perhaps not yet earned, which stood out particularly with his disgust at how Comcast treated me. It was nobody's burden, of course, but Gonzo was the only one of my peers who offered any sort of serial sympathy for my plight. And beyond that, he has always been willing to offer supportive words for my actual work--as many as I ever got from my employer itself.

Merk has perhaps the most difficult job of all, both in that MLB keeps him hopping year-round and in that he has tighter editorial line that can't be crossed. I wonder sometimes how he would do without positive-spin restrictions, but then, he's chronically nice enough that it's hard to imagine him wielding a poison pen. Merk and I are fans of each other's work and we have been longtime (mostly de facto) teammates in White Sox Magazine. I do regret ticking him off, whether or not we agree to disagree per blogging.

Daryl Van Schouwen came to the beat in 2011 and had the considerable challenge of following in Joe Cowley's footsteps. He has proven to be the reasoned, assuring voice (say, a Robin Ventura) following one much yappier (Ozzie, anyone?). Cowley himself, I have many harsh words for. But it would be remiss of me to not say that while anything but brotherly, Joe has both complimented my work for its uniqueness and in his own way looked out for me, a newbie, on the beat. I wish I would have gotten to enjoy more authentic Joe on the beat, not the more clownish center-stage Cowley.

Doug Padilla, dearly departed to the Cubbies beat, was my closest competitor as such last year. Both he and Joe share a yearning for the spotlight, which can only help you in this line of work. Doug had a strange propensity to want to comment on my every outfit, which is a little odd for a guy wearing chronic polos and jeans. But he and I faced some similar challenges, both in the direction of coverage and in lugging around extra equipment: he audio, me video. Maybe I'll finally get to buy him a beer one day.

While I can't make heads or tails of ESPN's plan for baseball coverage in Chicago (and really, ESPN, ugh), I'll say that Jon Greenberg is by far the best columnist we have in town, across sports.

Scot Gregor is the longest tenured White Sox writer and has had the considerable challenge of adjusting almost exclusively to home coverage as the Daily Herald has shifted its mission. He still finds a unique angle to report from, and has worked hard to be the closest to Paul Konerko among the writers; you can't do worse than the Captain.

As for Scot's admitted old-school approach to bloggers, well, he's made his feelings known. I don't agree with them, and I still react to his back-and-forth with South Side Sox per Dayan Viciedo with sheer amazement. Did I use his curmudgeonly attitude to advance a relationship with "outside" media and fans, to help emphasize myself as a different flavor? Sure. I'm guessing I'm not the first to do so--and if I was guilty of anything, it's that I overprioritized my true boss, the fan.

I also had a lot of fun with two other "home" media, the AP's Travis Miller and The Northwest Herald's Meghan Montemurro. Talking to Edwin Jackson and Gavin Floyd, respectively, was never the same without them.

Yesterday I made a brusque brush of WSCR's Chris Rongey as gruff, but wouldn't you be, doing 162 postgames or more a year? Ranger is a calming and reserved presence in the clubhouse and dugout, sorta wry, sorta mysterious. As has been pointed out to me, his debates with fans even on Twitter are met with increasing respect on his end, and that's a wonderful sign.

I'll make no secret that two folks who performed above and beyond on my behalf at Comcast, producers Jeremy Lynn and J.J. Stankevitz. Jeremy was extremely engaging when it came to brainstorming and feedback, making him a standout editor for me as well as a true partner. J.J. was only just transitioning into a true support position there as the season wore on, but his unfailing energy on the night of Ozzie's departure made our total coverage package better than anyone's on that night.

I know little of my successor at CSN, other than to acknowledge he's brought a lot of energy with him, and that alone provides promise. I'd like to see Dan liven up what can be a pretty stolid beat. There will probably be a few missteps as he adjusts to the responsibility and humidity of his new home, but those missteps will be nothing his predecessor didn't do, and then some.

When I left Comcast, I had a lot to say, and in a rare twist for me, I mostly didn't say it. I left with a gracious mea culpa of a message to those I knew there. I sent a mock news release that edged more toward gallows humor to my peers on the beat. And that's it. For now, though there is unimaginably more to comment on, that's where I'll keep it.

I've benefited from the kindnesses of many along my sportswriting path: Steve Greenberg, Jason Langendorf, William Wagner, Scott Reifert, Anthony Hyde, Adam Kempenaar, Ben Osborne, Ming Wong in particular. I believe I have paid that forward with interest; as a former editor I've advanced story payments to help writers through rough patches, ghostwritten for my own pubs to free up budget. I've led writers to jobs permanent and freelance. I've offered an ear, a red pen, an encouraging word to keep others going.

Being on the beat is being part of a less intense, more sedentary, but still bonded band of brothers. I enjoyed my brief time in that brotherhood and hope that came clear in both my writing and my personal interactions. I said it yesterday: As much as it is hard for a fan to believe, the beat job is near impossible. For that alone, the beats earn our admiration even as they dodge our arrows.

This mea culpa disguised as insight and explanation could end up eulogy. I truly don't know where to head from here. It could be a post tomorrow, or it could be retirement to the farm, where I will cheer on the first-place Pale Hose in a way I (mostly, right Joe and Doug?) couldn't in the press box.

For now, just bang the gong.

The Club

2012-07-30T08:48:00.000-07:00

You're in the club!

Being in the club means being stirred up by things!

You look about as stirred up as a cesspool!

Dead Poet's Society, 1989

Claire Standish: So academic clubs aren't the same as other kinds of clubs.
John Bender: Ah, but to dorks like him, they are. What do you guys do in your club?
Brian Johnson: Well, in physics we ... we talk about physics, properties of physics.
John Bender: So it's sorta social, demented and sad, but social. Right?

I was happy just gearing up to finish my Ken Williams series, when the haughtiness of the White Sox beat reared its head yet again.

I get that beat writers are protective about their territory. They worked hard, and for a long time, to get their jobs; and in many cases they have to work harder and longer to keep them. (Other times, you just have to get lucky, or know when to look the other way, or, if the media outlet is completely bereft of rules, ethics, or anything remotely resembling couth, you can literally sleep with somebody to get a "professional" gig. But really, that's another post entirely.)

I was there on two beats, Blackhawks and White Sox, and believe me, I was keeping close watch and making notes on any shortcuts some of my peers were taking. And they took 'em (with one exception, who should be obvious to any White Sox reader): Borrowed facts, fake or trumped-up sources, false hustle, bias up the wazoo (here's a fun game...read any home game story and note how quickly and disparagingly USCF home attendance is referenced), bad writing, inept editing. The total package.

On the beat, I was all too often a one-man band, unlike my peers, who had a support staff of editors to check and improve copy. In rare instances maybe those editors would even--gasp--brainstorm ideas with writers. (There were two outstanding behind-the-scenes folks working closely with me on stories and providing such support when I was on the beat, neither of whom probably want to be named by me, shunned. But they were just two people. One a part-timer, with an apparent appetite beyond his ability to eat. So ... )

One thing I made sure to do was keep a careful eye on something else that my peers, for reasons practical and just plain lazy, didn't often, unless you're counting microbrew tips--interact with fans. Frankly, on a beat, you're just that, beat by the ritual and sameness, even in an Ozzie Guillen world, so it became important and interesting to take note of the plaudits and criticisms of fans, the range of which ran from the beyond sharp "bloggers" to just a casual booster of the team.

I was implored by the guy who hired me, a hyperkinetic fella with the depth of a tweet, one of the many in the business world who become expert at being busy while contributing nothing, to bond with fan bases via Twitter. This is something I doubt I would have felt encouraged to do on my own, because frankly, 140-character sharing seemed the ultimate in narcissistic, lightweight, empty, time wasting. But given the conscription, I tried to have fun with it, in my guise as @CSNChi_Beatnik.

I came to take the connections made there more seriously, for two reasons. One was obvious, seeing the sharp commentary from fans and realizing there was something for me to gain there, personally and professionally. Second was seeing how derisively many of my peers tended to treat tweets, and more so, tweeters.

It's how I came to ally myself with blogs (particularly South Side Sox) and be open to fans of any depth, rather than spending inordinate time sniffing jocks and stealing anything I could to stay ahead. On the job, I dealt with upper editors who were either absent completely, or utterly unrealistic in their demands (my company was unconscionably green in the field of journalism, so it was amateur hour, all the way, and I'm sad to say that little has changed): If I delivered desired breaking news or insider info, they had no way to package it and frequently ignored it entirely. If I followed my own instincts and delivered unique content that the other beats could or would not, it was met with mostly one long yawn. Wearing your own sandwich board gets too burdensome.

Blogs connected me with smart fans, way more than a chat would, or, frankly, no offense to cuddly Cubbies fan "Kap," more than a rushed CTL appearance did. A compliment from someone there meant as much or more than one from my peers, who often were just busy surviving the season. Criticism from a smart fan led me to correct or further explain, not to dismiss or ignore. I took all that stuff to heart.

Maybe it was my rudderless existence on the job, with so little true feedback, that drew me to Twitter crit. Or, maybe I'm just more amenable, engaging, and interactive than the average guy. That, as you probably now know, is the swiftest means of losing a foothold in the business world, where sociopaths rule and the good guys too often do finish last.

In the link up top, Scott Merkin of whitesox.com--a guy who once characterized me as a "true man of the people" for my varied, hilarious fan interactions--"respectfully" dismisses the exhaustive study of Chris Sale by SSS's colintj as "pie charts," while lauding Robin Ventura's "gut"--which even Merk might admit has been pretty lacking when it comes to all things Sale. Later, colintj winsomely takes it up with Dan Hayes, who dismisses Sale's clearly diminished velocity with true asininity--"Can't throw 96 mph & expect to pitch 7-8-9 innings." As if that was the point, at all.

*Deleted text; see below.

If you aren't challenging a beat writer, they are OK with fans and even "bloggers." But if you imply they are not doing their jobs, you must be an idiot. They are paid to write about the White Sox, you're not. And while you're at it, use your real name--and move out of your parents' basement.

Joe Cowley's outrageous tweets, mercifully now emptied into Lake Michigan along with all the other bile and detritus and sewage our daily digestion produces, are of course an extreme lesson in how not to interact with fans. But the more subtle, shake-your-hand stab-your-back engagement is even more dangerous. What choice does colintj have but to continue interacting with the Merks and Hayeses, in hopes they will deign a question or criticism with kid gloves and not dismissive hostility?

It's not just Merkin or Hayes, of course. Last summer when the SSS tiff with Scot Gregor over the Dayan Viciedo Conspiracy Theories, I was amusedly dialoging with some of the principals, reporting live from beat row on the harrumphing and mocking going down in the Gregor-Merk row in front of me as it all unfolded. Ranger Rongey, who met me in the dugout with a usual greeting of, "I hate people" throughout last year, has had a number of Twitter battles with fans--because he just doesn't get enough on postgame radio. If the Phil Rogerses or Dan McGraths or Dave Van Dycks of the world used Twitter for anything more than a one-way pneumatic for all that's fit to puke, lord knows there would be a Twit kerfuffle a day.

Beat writing is an impossible task. I have told some bloggers I admire that in a way, it's not a fair fight. To do any artful writing at all is a beast of a challenge when you're faced with a day-to-day drill of locker room--manager--transcribing--game action--tweets--postgame--rinse--repeat. I had the thrill of juggling obtrusive camera equipment on the road, then praying I could upload the bounty back to Chicago in less than an hour or two, on top of the common beat duties as well.

And I have feet in both camps, still. I write for the White Sox and have occasion to step into the clubhouse. But given no daily, "professional" outlet, I'm way more blogger than beat. I'm not sure that's the wrong place to be.

*Note: This post was edited some hours after posting, as Scott contacted me to offer a brief explanation of what seemed to be the most dismissive interaction of his and Dan's tweets. I took it out of context and overreacted to that aspect, and for that misunderstanding I apologize.

www.csnchicago.com
	Danks out of sling, expected to return during spring training	September 8, 2012 2:22:29 PM CDT