Stupid Is as Stupid Does

I hope there’s a special place down below for the genius who came up with the idea of an “opener.” It’s gibber-analytics at its worst, especially when employed by a talent-challenged team like the White Sox. New-Mickey Venable ”opened” with Jared Shuster last night. Not a good idea, given that Shuster gave up four first-inning runs. Venable then compounded the error in the eighth inning by calling on Jordan Leasure to keep the go-ahead run at second base. Nope. Tigers 5 Sox 4. In the first game of the series, Venable decided not to burn a reliever in a blowout loss, so he used utilityman Vinny Capra to pitch the ninth, and Capra junked his way through a scoreless inning. Better that than that.