Coming Down

The beginning of this baseball season, Michele and I were running around Los Angeles, leaving me to catch up on the White Sox through MLB.com. Last week, Clare and I were at The Rate for game four of the ALDS against the Guardians. And now my baseball season is over. On the plus side, no more anxiety or frustration. Colson Montgomery and Munetaka Murakami are done striking out, manager Vibes Venable has made his last head-scratching move of the year. Only, it’ll be another six months—or more, given the owners’ intention to lock out the players in December—before I get to see Sam Antonacci do his thing or before I can gauge Antonacci’s growth. Or Chase Meidroth’s or Miguel Vargas’s. This winter, the only hot-stove league may be in my imagination.

Eek! Eek! A Mouse!

The baseball establishment moved one step closer to full-out panic last night as the team with the 19th highest payroll per USA Today took a 2-0 series lead in the NLCS over the team with the second highest payroll. Brewers 7 Dodgers 4. The big-market team hoping for a three-peat—thereby justifying the need for a salary cap, to protect the little guys, who may or may not be worth a billion dollars—looked, how to put it, old as they got outhit 12-3 in Milwaukee. Maybe things will swing the Dodgers’ way with a change of venue starting tomorrow, or maybe not. But right now, Shohei Ohtani looks every bit the injury-ridden 32-year old. Not that Mookie Betts or Freddie Freeman or Will Smith is performing any better. Pity poor Rob Manfred. If the Brewers go up three games to none tomorrow, he’ll have to start looking at new talking points to justify an owners’ lockout in December. Oh, I’m sure he’ll find them. But I can’t help but enjoy the squirm.

Bad Start

I doubt any baseball team owner outside of Milwaukee is rooting for a Dodgers’ loss in the NLCS. If LA doesn’t get its three-peat, the owners can’t argue for a salary cap when they lock out the players—you can bet on that happening—come December. Big-market, small-market disparities and all that. But lose the Dodgers did, 2-1, The home-team Brewers used fourteen position players and pitcher in total, the only recognizable name belonging to starter Jacob Misiorowski. That’s because MLB and the networks dig the fastball. Only Misiorowski didn’t get the win, D.L, Hall—who he?—did. But Tarik Skubal picked up the loss because his teammates hit like, well, the White Sox. I mean, Ohtani, Betts and company are supposed to do better than one run on seven hits, right? And being the recipients of six walks should lead to more than one run in the second inning, yes? Forgive me if I forgot to mention the three double plays the visitors hit into. The Brewers against the world? In a corporate-boardroom sort of way, yes.

Clueless in Cleveland

The White Sox embarrassed themselves in front of a national television audience last night, losing game five of the ALDS to the Guardians, 2-0. And I don’t mean the pitchers did anything wrong. No, starter Sean Burke along with relievers Sean Newcomb and Grant Taylor pretty much held Cleveland hitters in check all night, except for that two-run shot Jose Ramirez golfed just over the right-field wall in the fourth inning. Here’s the thing, though. If not Ramirez, then someone else would’ve delivered the knockout blow, on a sacrifice fly or a slide under the tag at the plate, or something would’ve done it, a balk or a wild pitch in the bottom of the ninth, maybe. Whatever, because when you strike out 21 times in a game the way the Sox did last night, you don’t win games. As embarrassing as that feat was, Sox manager Vibes Venable matched and then-some in his postgame comments, which started with congratulations to the Guardians and praise for the Cleveland pitchers. As for the 21 strikeouts, an MLB record breaking a two-day old record held by you know who, Venable said this: “I thought it was less about chase and more about being attacked in the zone and swing and miss in the zone.” [quote from story today on team website] I must’ve been watching a different game. By my count, Sox hitters generated 72 strikes, nineteen of which were outside the strike zone. That’s 26 percent. In addition, ten of the strikeouts were on balls outside the zone. Seems to me there was plenty of chase, Coach. What I want to know is, what kind of adjustments were attempted? I mean, after the tenth strikeout or so, the coaching staff recognized the problem, right? If not, GM Chris Getz needs to question the team’s approach to hitting. And, if the coaches were trying to get hitters to pull out of nothing short of a death spiral, why didn’t it work? Andrew Benintendi and Munetaka Murakami need to explain their thought processes as they struck four time apiece. Ditto for Kyle Teel and Chase Meidroth for getting punched out three times apiece. Next season will be a bust if the Sox fail to cut down on strikeouts. An Opening Day lineup featuring Murakami and Colson Montgomery, who totaled whiffs between them, gives one pause, and me a queasy stomach. That is not a foundation to build upon. The Sox used ten batters last night, including pinch-hitter Randal Grichuk. The only one who didn’t go down swinging was Sam Antonacci, who also managed one of the team’s three hits. What was Antonacci’s approach, and why didn’t his teammates copy it? Fans deserve to know.

Mike Ditka

Mike Ditka, who died yesterday at the age of 86, lived a life marked by contradiction and paradox: The Catholic boy who found Jesus through his second wife. The player who stood up to George Halas and the coach who ripped his players when they went out on strike. The adopted son of Chicago who regretted not running for the U.S. Senate, thereby keeping another adopted son of Chicago out of the White House. A little bit of Ditka went a long way, and Ditka did not believe in small portions of anything, including himself. Oh, but for just a tiny bit of Da Coach showing up tonight in White Sox manager Vibes Venable, who was quoted in today’s Tribune that you have to give “some credit” to Guardians’ pitchers for getting his hitters to strike out 56 times in four games of their ALDS. Ditka would call out his hitting coach and his players, challenging to come through with the season on the line. Will Venable do that?

Ready or Not

Erick Fedde; Miguel Vargas; Munetaka Murakami; Colson Montgomery; and Sam Antonacci all came ready to play last night in the White Sox 9-5 loss to the Guardians. Alas, Hagen Smith; Jordan Hicks; Anthony Kay; Grant Taylor; Randal Grichuk; and Braden Montgomery didn’t. Compounding matters, Sox manager Vibes Venable made any number of bonehead moves that helped guarantee a game five of the ALDS in Cleveland tomorrow night. Smith started and lasted only .2 innings before getting lifted for Fedde. Why? Because the rookie lefthander walked the bases loaded, that’s why. Of the 27 pitches he threw, only thirteen were strikes. There are three possible reasons for the lack of performance here—fatigue from the day before; fear; and the failure of the coaching staff to note fatigue and/or address said fear in their opener. Fedde relieved Smith in the first and pitched until out in the fifth. Technically, he gave up two runs in 3.2 innings of work, but one of those run came home courtesy of a gopher ball Jordan Hicks served up to Jose Ramirez. A packed house of nearly 40,000 crazed Sox fans—Clare and me included—broke into chants of “Fedde! Fedde!” throughout one of the gutsiest performance I’ve seen by a Sox pitcher. The Sox led 4-3 going into the sixth inning, when the wheels fell off the wagon. Anthony Kay hit a batter with one out and then gave up a line drive to Travis Bazzana that bounced off the glove of a diving Braden Montogomery in right field; it was a tough but by no means impossible play. I have to wonder if the rookie didn’t take out his batting woes to the field with him. Montgomery ended the fifth striking out with the bases loaded, part of an 0-for-5 night. Taylor replaced Kay with one out, a runner on second and the score tied at four. The 24-year old righthander proceeded to give up four runs of his own and the inherited runner from Kay on four hits and two walks without recording an out. Where to begin? Let’s start with an absolutely asinine postgame comment by Venable that, “You’ve got to credit the Guardians. I think they had a really good approach against [Taylor] all year.” [quote from online story in today’s Trib] Then, why use him, and, if you are going to use him, what countermove(s) are you going to employ? Speaking of asinine, consider the Sox lineup that started the game, with Tommy Pham penciled in as dh and Grichuk playing left field. With lefthander Parker Messick starting, Antonacci watched from the bench. When he did come into the game as a pinch-hitter for Pham in the third, what did the South Side pepper-pot do? Oh, he hit a sacrifice fly. Then, in the fifth he drove in another run on a hit-by-pitch (like I said, pepper-pot). Antonacci also singled in an attempted ninth-inning rally that, obviously, fell short. The question here is, why didn’t Venable start Antonacci, lefty-lefty matchup be damned? And why isn’t he the permanent leadoff batter with Meidroth second? Apparently, Venable is too busy praising the opposition to offer a valid reason. With two on and nobody out in the third, Grichuk struck out on a ball shoulder-high. Murakami followed with a walk that set up Antonacci’s sacrifice fly. Some players came ready to play, others didn’t.

Cluck

This is not how you reward a packed house of raucous fans, by laying a big, fat, ugly egg, but that’s exactly what the White Sox did yesterday in their 9-3 loss to the Guardians. Sox pitchers walked ten; Sox batters struck out nineteen—let me repeat, nineteen—times; and manager Vibes Venable provided his share of head-scratching moments. As for the hitting and pitching coaches, I have a question. Per “the plan,” Venable went with an opener, and Sean Newcomb pitched lights-out for two innings, retiring all six Guardians he faced, thanks to a double play, on just 22 pitches. Why not let the onetime starter go another inning or two? Why? Because of “the plan,” per Venable’s postgame comments. Well, Skipper, good leaders adjust their plans as condition warrant. Just because you wanted Bryan Hudson to follow Newcomb, that doesn’t mean you had to stick with him for the four batters you did. Hudson walked his first batter, Travis Bazzanna, on five pitches before going to a full count on Patrick Bailey, who lined out to short. Next up, Brayan Rocchio, who singled on a 1-2 count. That’s two on, one out, fourteen pitches thrown. How much more do you need to see that Hudson didn’t have it? Apparently, not until the run-scoring single by Steven Kwan. While I’m at it, let me ask a question about the lineup composition. Both Sam Antonacci and Randal Grichuk played, with Antonacci the dh. Say what? Antonacci is the better fielder and would’ve had a far better chance at catching Jose Ramirez’s two-run, opposite-field triple with two out in the eighth inning. A 5-3 game suddenly turned into a four-run deficit as Grichuk started his dive for the ball a good half-step too soon. Now, a question for both pitching Zach Bove and hitting coach Derek Shomon—how do you stop a bad tendency from turning a close game into a sure loss? Bove challenged his pitchers to throw strikes, yes? After the first inning, when the Sox left runners on second and third with one out and a run in, Shomon addressed the two strikeouts, by Chase Meidroth and Tristan Peters, that ended the inning, right? And, again, after Peters doubled in a run with nobody out and Braden Montgomery failed to advance him, swinging and missing three pitches high and inside? That one hurt because Randal Grichuk’s subsequent flyball would’ve meant another run. Kyle Teel said after the game, “Today is over with. All that matters is tomorrow now, so throw this one out and get ready to go.” [quote from story today on team website] From Teel’s lips to God’s ears.