Quack and Crap

Start with the saying: If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. First, drop the adverb (you know which one that is, right?). Next, substitute Dallas Keuchel’s ERA (presently, 5.33) for the personal pronoun (hint: it). Then, switch all the verbs over to “stinks,” at which point decide on your favorite version of the word “crap” to use in place of “a duck.” And there you have it, a simple truth nobody on the White Sox wants to utter, least of all Dallas Keuchel and his manager Tony La Russa. Last night in Oakland, Keuchel went 5.2 innings yielding five earned runs on eight hits and a walk in a 5-1 loss to the A’s. Afterwards, Keuchel declared to reporters, “I felt like this was a good one,” while admitting the other side did score those five runs. Keuchel also said, “There weren’t a ton of hard-hit balls. They just seemed to find holes, and they did.” La Russa continued the quacking with, “He had one spot in the fourth and one in the fifth, but he made a lot more good pitches than not,” which to La Russa means Keuchel “really made progress.” (all quotes from today’s Tribune online story) What a crock. Let’s start with those eight hits, no, make that seven unless you think Matt Chapman’s homerun was of the seeing-eye variety. On second thought, the A’s also hit two doubles and a triple, so that leaves four possible seeing-eye ground balls. For those, all the Oakland batters had to do was hit the pitch where Keuchel threw it. That’s called a disciplined approach. Now, if I’m wrong and the A’s are a bunch of free swingers, heaven help Keuchel when he does face a lineup of disciplined hitters. The score could approach infinity. I don’t want to forget La Russa in any of this, especially given how he could have minimized the damage by pulling Keuchel after four innings with his team down, 2-1. But games in September don’t seem to mean all that much to our HOF skipper, who let Keuchel go out in the fifth. The score was 3-1 when the inning ended, 4-1 when he was pulled in the sixth. La Russa’s idea of going to a clutch pitcher is to bring in Jose Ruiz, whose idea of clutch hitting is to give up an RBI single to Elvis Andrus on a 0-2 pitch. We’re carrying fourteen pitchers why, again? Fingers crossed that Reynaldo Lopez, today’s starter, doesn’t lay an egg. I guess you could say I’m in a fowl mood.