Crushing Bookends

Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge are your NL and AL MVPs, respectively. Nellie Fox need not apply, or Jose Altuve. Or Andrew McCutcheon or Mookie Betts. Or Dustin Pedroia. Players under 6’ tall can and do win the MVP, just not often. Betts (5’10”) was the last to do that, in 2018 for the Red Sox (and they traded him why, again?). Basically, though, MVP voters dig the long ball, and, odds are, the taller/bigger you are, the better your chance of being named MVP. Even small guys have to muscle up. Altuve (5’6”) hit 24 homers during his MVP year for the Astros in 2017 while Pedroia managed seventeen when he won the honors for the Red Sox in 2008. Now, take a step back in the time machine to look at two other short guys who won the award. Nellie Fox (5’10”) won MVP honors for the White Sox in 1959, with all of two longballs. A year later, Dick Groat (5’11”) of the Pirates had himself an MVP season with, yup, two homeruns. Judge hit 53 this season, in case you’re wondering, and Ohtani 55. Long story short, the baseball played by the likes of Fox and Groat has fallen into disfavor, abandoned in the name of launch angle and exit velo. There’s a lot of baseball talent residing in players south of 6’. Good luck in having teams notice. Which will make the chances of a woman breaking the grass ceiling that much harder.

Fleas

First, the NBA was hit with a betting scandal, and now it’s baseball’s turn—again—with Guardians’ pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz under federal indictment they were part of a betting scheme centering around what pitches they threw and where, as in fast or slow or out of the strike zone. Somewhere, the Black Sox are having a good laugh. All pro sports in the U.S. happily went to bed with legal betting, only to wake up scratching from fleas. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred thinks limiting “prop bets,” that center on game minutiae, e.g., whether or not a ball rolled out to the mound between innings stays there, a batter getting a hit, a pitcher throwing a ball, that sort of thing. Manfred thinks that getting sports’ books to set a $200 maximum on these types of bets will somehow fix the problem. Yeah, right. Not that anybody would use a “legacy” bookie or one of those folks would try to influence the outcome of a game—or prop—because, well, the Commissioner thinks that would be bad for baseball. With Clase in particular, it would seem that the Guardians should’ve known something was up. I mean, how exactly did the parties involved figure out to place their bets? According to The Athletic, Clase used his phone to message and speak with conspirators. If true, then where was the coaching staff? The Athletic noted that MLB prohibits players from using their phones during a game. So, everyone thought Clase was a cool cat shooting the breeze before an appearance and let things slide? I won’t hold my breath until the Guardians are hit with a hefty fine.

Nothing to See Here

Last night in Detroit, the Bulls were down two starters, Coby White and Josh Giddey, only the Pistons were down four. The math says Chicago should’ve won, right? Pistons 124 Bulls 113. Center Nikola Vucevic (six points and six rebounds) got eaten up by his Detroit counterpart Paul Reed (28 points and thirteen rebounds). Bulls’ backup center Jalen Smith played thirteen minutes to Vucevic’s 25 and still outscored him, nine to six. Forward-center Zach Collins is expected to be ready to play soon after suffering a broken wrist in the preseason. As soon as Collins returns, it’s time for a change. Vucevic is 35, Smith 25 and Collins 27. If the Bulls want to do anything this season, they need to transition away from the skating tree toward the two youngish centers. That, or be ready to absorb more beatings like last night.

Looking Ahead

The calendar says November, but I’m thinking next March already. Thank you, Sam Antonacci. The onetime D-II player has done nothing but hit since the White Sox selected him in the fifth round of the 2024 draft, starting with a .333 BA in 81 at-bats in A ball. This year, the 22-year old hit .279 in high-A Winston-Salem and, better yet, .292 for AA Birmingham, with 25 RBIs and 27 runs scored. Antonacci also stole 48 bases between both levels. Did I mention the Arizona Fall League? The Sox eleventh-ranked prospect hit .379 with thirteen RBIs and 20 runs in just seventeen games. More of this come spring, please. Because then, things could get interesting. A lefthanded hitter, Antonacci can play second and third and has also appeared at short. If he puts up comparable numbers in the spring, he could set in motion a series of moves—Colson Montgomery to third base or center field, which would signal a trade of Luis Robert Jr., and Miguel Vargas to switch from third to first, which could mean a trade of Lenyn Sosa, or even Chase Meidroth. I don’t need sportswriters to stoke my own hot stove.

Good News, Bad News

This is how deep the Bulls are at guard—last night, the second-string backcourt totaled 43 points and twelve assists. Oh, and they still lost. Tre Jones and Kevin Huerter played in place of Coby White—yet to play this season due to a calf injury—and Josh Giddey, who sprained his right ankle Sunday against the Cavs. In their place, Jones/Huerter helped build a 114-111 lead over the visiting Spurs with just over a minute left in the game. Enter three-point giant Victor Wembanyama. Over the next 33 seconds, that incredibly long drink of water (7’4”) sank two three-pointers and down went the Bulls 121-117. It was a game they could’ve won, even shorthanded had everyone done their job. Instead, Nikola Vucevic reverted to his 35-year old self, managing a sad eleven points while trying to guard Wembanyama; backup center Jalen Smith played 21 minutes to Vucevic’s 28 while managing the same number of points (eleven) and four more rebounds (twelve to four). Wembanyama poured in 38 points with six three-pointers out of nine attempted. The less said about the play of Isaac Okoro and Patrick Williams, the better. Let’s go with the glass half-full here. White is due back any game now, and Giddey’s injury looks to be minor. Next up is the Pistons tomorrow. In a lot of ways, it qualifies as the most important game of the young seasons for this young team.

More Lucky Than Good

For the best part of three quarters yesterday, Giants’ rookie quaterback Jaxson Dart had the Soldier Field faithful on edge. A raw, damp Sunday—Bears’ weather, or so we like to think—had no discernible effect on the 22-year old, who ran for two touchdowns and looked well on his way to handing the 5-3 Bears their fourth loss of the season, this one to a 2-7 team. Then Dart fumbled away the ball with just over five minutes left in the third quarter. If he didn’t suffer a concussion a few plays before that, he did then, and in came Russell Wilson to replace him. The Bears’ defense looked clueless against Dart, who threw for 242 yards and rushed for another 66. Those stats were food for a 17-7 lead, which eventually grew to 20-7 under Wilson before momentum shifted. Credit the Bears for waking up or blame Wilson for trying to play well beyond his expiration date. Either way, the Munsters scored two touchdown with under four minutes remaining to win, 24-20. And to think ex-GM Ryan Pace was hot for Wilson back in 2021. Bears’ second-year quarterback Caleb Williams threw for one touchdown and scored another to fuel the comeback. What struck me, though, was Williams’ inability to do much against one of the worst defenses in the league. In Williams’ defense, sort of, Dart kept him off the field for long stretches as he frustrated Bears’ defenders. Watch me run, guys. So, everything fell into place and the home team didn’t suffer an embarrassing upset. Yay. And Williams may have been better than his 20 completions and 220 yards gained suggest. For a change of pace, Bears’ receivers came down with a case of the dropsies, letting six catchable passes fall to the ground. Go figure. Basically, I can’t. This is a team that waits to the very end to beat bad teams and has yet to win against a good team. Well, the Eagles; Packers (twice); 49ers; and Lions await. Get back to me at the end of the season. Right now, enjoy.

Like I Said

The Bulls dominated the first half against the Cavaliers last night, and the Cavaliers dominated the second half. Guess who won? The team with the star, as in guard Donovan Mitchell, who scored thirteen of his 29 points in the—wait for it—fourth quarter. Cavs 128 Bulls 122. Matas Buzelis (four points) and Nikola Vucevic (nine points) both had off nights, which can’t happen when you go up against a player like Mitchell. Maybe things will get better when Coby White is cleared to play, but it won’t happen tomorrow. That’s when Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs come to town.

What I Feared

On Tuesday, the Bulls were able to handle Joel Embiid, still recovering from knee surgery. But a healthy Giannis Antetokounmpo? Not when it counted. Last night in Milwaukee, the Bulls made a game of it for three quarters and were only down at the start of the fourth. Enter Antetokounmpo, who scored nineteen of his 41 points in the final frame. If Billy Donovan had a answer to the Bucks’ biggest weapon for 36 minutes, he lost it in the final twelve. Milwaukee 126 Chicago 110. The Bucks may not be a great team, but they have a great player, and in the NBA, great players can elevate the people around them (see Jordan, Michael). The Bulls are a team comprised of good and a few very good players. They’re deep, but they can’t dominate in crunch time the way Antetokounmpo did last night. That, I fear, will be an ongoing problem. Let’s see how Donovan and company respond.

Discussion

How many fathers get a call from their adult daughters to discuss the new White Sox pitching coach? I did, and we talked for a good ten minutes. Neither of us was very excited. Throw in the new hitting coach, and we were even less than that. New pitching coach Zach Bove played first base in college before serving as a hitting coach on the high school and college levels. Oh, let me count the ways this doesn’t impress—no apparent minor-league career even, not a catcher serving as a pitching coach but a former college infielder instructing major-league pitchers how to do their jobs. Somewhere, Johnny Sain spins in his grave. And maybe the late Bill Robinson with the hiring of Derek Shomon as the new Sox hitting coach. According to baseball-reference.com, Shomon had cups of coffee with two independent-league teams. I can just see Shomon telling Sox hitters in spring training, Do as I wish I’d done, guys, not what I did (career .115 BA in 26 at-bats). Bleh. Clare had a nice guy of a hitting coach from eighth grade on and off through college. He wasn’t big on gizmos (though I definitely see the benefit of taping at-bats in order to analyze a hitter’s approach to different types of pitches). Instead, he was big on “envisioning” what a hitter wanted to accomplish in a particular situation. It worked to the extent my daughter still holds a number of hitting records at Elmhurst University. I asked Clare something: “What if Jessica Mendoza had been your hitting coach?” I could practically hear her eyes growing wide at the thought.

Oh, Ye of Little Faith

Usually, I check the score of a Bulls’ game just before the half and again midway through the third quarter. There was nothing I saw last night to suggest the game would go Chicago’s way. A halftime nineteen-point deficit to Joel Embiid and the 76ers usually doesn’t end well, or it hasn’t in recent years. Oh, ye of little faith. Imagine my surprise to find out on the WGN sports’ segment that Nikola Vucevic sank a three-pointer with seventeen seconds left on the clock to give his team its first lead on the night as well as the win, 113-111. Huh? Part of the reason I quit watching was Josh Giddey looked totally out of sync; he kept passing the ball, instead of shooting. Or so it looked during my two peaks. For the game, though, Giddey matched a feat, with back-to-back triple-doubles, last done by a Bull when Michael Jordan managed it back in 1989. On the night, Giddey scored 29 points with fifteen rebounds and twelve assists, the last one setting up Vuvevic for his game winner. Not that I saw it live. The 76ers came in tied with the Bulls for the best record in the Eastern Conference. Sorry, guys, but Philly is now truly second-best. As for the Bulls, they’re 6-1, even though Coby White has yet to take the floor this season and Ayo Dosunmu missed a second straight game with a quad injury. Maybe January won’t be so grim after all.

One and Done

Well, no way were the Bulls going to run the season schedule. Still, it would’ve been nice to beat the Knicks in Manhattan Mecca Sunday night. But with Ayo Dosunmu out nursing a quad injury, Billy Donovan’s crew lost 128-116. Their record now stands at 5-1. This is where it starts to get real. The Bulls’ next three games are with the 76ers, Cavaliers and Bucks. The gauntlet doesn’t end there, not with Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs coming to town next Monday. If they come out of that stretch over .500, we can talk.

Just Beneath the Surface

Caleb Williams hit rookie tight end Colston Loveland for a 58-yard touchdown pass with seventeen seconds left in the game to give the visiting Bears a 47-42 win over the Bengals. In securing their fifth win, the Munsters have many as they managed all of last year, with twelve games to go. Still, I wouldn’t get too excited, not with a pass defense that got riddled by 40-year old QB Joe Flacco, who threw for 470 yards and four touchdowns. Or by a brain trust that thinks Cario Santos can handle kickoffs. Like Charlie Jones running the opening kick back for a touchdown was just luck? If only for a game, decisions by GM Ryan Poles seem to have paid off. Seventh-round draft pick Kyle Monangai rushed for 176 while first rounder Loveland caught six passes—two for touchdowns—for 118 yards. Rumbling down the middle of the field to the end zone with two Bengals bouncing off of him, Loveland looked like the second coming of Mike Ditka. So did head coach Ben Johnson, who used more trick plays in a game than all the coaches between him and Ditka did in their entirety. The best one featured a double reverse with receiver DJ Moore throwing a two-yard touchdown to Williams. Somewhere in St. Adalbert Cemetery, George Halas spun in his grave. Ditka got to be Ditka because he was Halas’ boy, and that only lasted for so long until Michael McCaskey gave him the heave-ho. I can’t help but think Johnson being so outside-the-box rubs has George McCaskey worried. The double reverse is not Chicago Bears’ football; three yards and a cloud of dust is. I’m predicting friction between coach and ownership before long. Until then, enjoy.

World Champions

The Dodgers proved to be the better team by winning games six and seven of the World Series, tying game seven in the ninth with a homerun from number-nine hitter Miguel Rojas and winning it on an eleventh-inning homer by catcher Will Smith. Dodgers 5 Blue Jays 4. The Dodgers survived the vanity project that is Shohei Ohtani the pitcher, who, given the ball to start game seven, left his team in a 3-0 hole after 2.1 innings. But five LA relievers combined for 8.2 innings of one-run ball to set up the Rojas-Smith heroics. A real tip of the cap to Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who pitched 2.2 scoreless innings for his third win of the Series. Not only that, Yamamoto pitched one night after throwing six innings in game six. The Dodgers were also lucky. Ermie Clement hit a ball with two outs and the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth that caused a collision between left fielder Kiké Hernandez and center fielder Andy Pages, who somehow held onto the ball. A foot to the left, and Pages may not have made the play. And if Daulton Varsho had hit a ball like that to the outfield one batter before, the Jays win on a sacrifice fly or hit. Instead, Varsho grounded to second baseman Rojas, who was playing in with the bases loaded and one out. The ball staggered Rojas, who needed a moment to steady himself before throwing to the plate to force Isiah Kiner-Falefa at the plate. To me, it looked like Kiner-Falefa beat the throw, piano on his back and all. That’s the thing. Kiner-Falefa was put into run for Bo Bichette after Bichette had singled with one out. The umps weren’t going to make a call that made up for d Kiner-Falefa failing to get a good lead off of third, and they shouldn’t have. But there was more than luck going on. I’ve never been a particular fan of Dodgers’ manager Dave Roberts. I mean, give me that lineup, and let’s see how I do as skipper. But Roberts definitely brought his A-game last night, e.g., his defensive substitution of Pages, and he definitely took a big risk pitching Yamamoto back-to-back nights. And it worked. In contrast, Toronto’s John Schneider sure looked like an Ontario deer caught in the headlights. It's the World Series, where weird stuff happens (see Rojas and Yamamoto, above). Twice, in the ninth and the eleventh, the Jays had the bases loaded and came away empty. My sixty years of playing Strat-O-Matic Baseball told me the need to roll the dice (pardon the pun or enjoy it) here. And, what would I have done? Suicide squeeze, pure and simple. A bunt in that situation puts all sorts of pressure on the defense. Pitchers typically aren’t great fielders, so, there would’ve been a good chance Yamamoto either would not have fielded the ball cleanly or he would’ve made a bad throw to home. If I kind-of thought Schneider should’ve bunted with Varsho (who went 0-for-5 on the night), I was practically screaming at the TV screen with Alejandro Kirk up in the eleventh. A 5’8” catcher weighing 245 pounds, Kirk could be the poster boy of likely double-play candidates. And what did Kirk do? After fouling off two pitches, he hit into a tailor-made, 6-3 double play. I don’t know for a fact that Kirk has ever bunted in his life; doesn’t matter. It’s the World Series, and you go big or you go home. The only player left on the Toronto bench was backup catcher Tyler Heineman, a switch-hitter, by the way. That would’ve given Heineman an advantage against the righthanded Yamamoto (and put him a step closer out of the box). Nothing ventured, nothing gained. So, the Dodgers in seven. Adieu, Baseball 2025.

Back and Forth, Again

Oh, those Blue Jays, capable of squandering the advantage of a home field filled with over 44,000 screaming fans. The ninth inning looked ever so promising. Runners on second and third, nobody out, two runs down. Then Ernie Clement swings at a pitch high and inside to pop out to first baseman Freddie Freeman. It was the kind of pitch I used to ask Clare, each word dripping with sarcasm, “And where exactly would that pitch go if you’d hit it fair?” Then Andres Gimenez lines out into a double play, from left field to second base. What Toronto baserunner Addison Barger was looking at beats me, and it beat his team. Dodgers 3 Jays 1, seventh game tonight. Whoopee. November baseball. At least flipping over to the Bulls proved more fun. Billy Donovan’s crew beat the visitors from New York—where they perfected the game of roundball, you know—by a score of 135 to 125. Josh Giddey outscored Jalen Brunson 32 to 29, and that’s all you need to know. Plus the fact this is a home-and-away series with the Bulls visiting “The Gah-den” Sunday night. My bad. Did I mention this is the best start by a Bulls’ team since the Michael Jordan era, 1996-97, to be exact?

How Nice of Them

I'm supposed to root for a team that would dare do this? Let’s just say it’s hard. The Bears want a state law that will allow them to negotiate their tax bill with the relevant public bodies in and around their hoped-for new Arlington Heights Stadium. To move things along, the team offered to make a one-time,$25 million payment to the city of Chicago. Why? Because in McCaskeyland, that qualifies as a principled act. The Munsters think that the $534 million in outstanding bonds from the 2003 renovation of Soldier Field isn’t their concern; they’re just tenants. But, out of the goodness of their hearts, they offered the money “to rebuild or improve public parks and playing fields each year in under resourced Chicago neighborhoods,” according to a letter the Bears circulated to Chicago Democrats in the General Assembly. [story in today’s Sunb-Times] The mind boggles here. The team says that costs go up every month the project is delayed, yet they have $25 million on hand to buy votes. And they still want close to $1 billion in infrastructure assistance. How will they sweeten that ask?

Back and Forth

I watched enough of game five of the World Series to come away impressed by rookie starter Trey Yesavage. The 22-year old righthander had the Dodgers eating out of his hand for seven innings last night at Dodger Stadium. The pride of East Carolina University scattered two singles and a solo shot while striking out twelve and giving up zero walks. No one in World Series history has recorded that many strikeouts to go with no walks. Yesavage is now 3-1 in the postseason, which is two more career wins than he has in the regular season. He went twentieth in the first round of the 2024 draft. The White Sox skipped over Yesavage for Hagen Smith. Here’s hoping Smith performs at the same level once he gets to the majors. I also switched over to the Bulls-Kings game between World Series commercials, the frequency of which assured me of watching a lot of basketball. How nice to see another team for a change trying to figure out how to balance scoring between Zach LaVine and DeMar DeRozan. Bulls 126 Kings 113. Four starters in double figures, along with two players off the bench plus another three people scoring nine apiece. Interesting. The win pushes Chicago to 4-0 on the season, with their next game in “The Gahden.” Please, oh please…

GOAT, Asterisk

Shohei Ohtani had a very nice game for himself Monday night. No, a really nice game. OK, an incredible game with two solo-shot homeruns and two doubles along with five walks plus three runs scored and three RBIs in the Dodgers’ 6-5, eighteen-inning marathon win. Let the superlatives rain down, which they are. And, like an idiot, I unmuted some of the broadcast on FOX last night. One of the announcers—they all sound alike to me, except for the fingernails-on-blackboard tones of John Smoltz—very gently dissed Babe Ruth by saying he “only” pitched two full seasons. They must’ve had a bad internet connection up in the booth at Dodger Stadium. Baseball-reference.com has the Sultan of Swat pitching anywhere between 166.1 and 326.1 innings for the four seasons 1915 to 1918 and another 133.1 innings in 1919. That’s the period when he picked up 89 of his 94 wins to go with a 2.28 ERA. I’ll just note in passing the 107 complete games. Ohtani has never pitched over 166 innings in a season. In the regular season this year, he threw 47. I keep looking at his stats and come away with the same conclusion—pitching is his vanity project. A 39-20 record, 3.00 ERA and one complete game. Oh, and every time he goes out to the mound, he risks injury. He’s already had Tommy John surgery and another procedure on his UCL. Smoltz inadvertently called out Ohtani when he suggested the 31-year old needs to learn to vary the speed of his pitches. John, the guy’s 31. He should’ve learned that a long time ago. This may be pushing things a bit, but I’d argue the GOAT does what he did on Monday and then tops himself Tuesday, not at the plate but on the mound. Instead, what happened is that Ohtani pitched a nice game into the seventh inning, when he ran out of gas, trailing 2-1. Reliever Anthony Banda couldn’t keep the two Jays Ohtani put on from scoring, before letting in two runs of his own. Toronto 6 Los Angeles 2 not even a day after losing what’s being ballyhooed as the greatest World Series game of all time. One other reason to pull back on all this GOAT talk. Sorry, but the greatest ballplayer can’t be a DH, at least not until he hits 100 homers a season. Ohtani has played eight years in the major leagues, and, in all that time, he’s played the outfield seven times, none since 2021. In comparison, Ruth started 2222 times in the outfield over his 22-year career. Did I mention the Ohtani Rule, where he gets to switch to DH after being relieved as a pitcher? What exactly am I saying here? That Ohtani belongs on the short list of greatest hitters of all time and that he’s less of a pitcher than the folks on FOX care to admit. Shohei, meet Frank Thomas, another player whose hitting prowess made up for a bad glove. Big Hurt, this is Shohei. You two have a lot in common.

Late Night

Clare went upstairs to put Maeve to bed last night, leaving Michele and me with Leo. Did our four-year old grandson want to watch the World Series? Not really. But throw a mini-football to and at his grandparents? Oh, yeah. After twenty minutes or so of throwing and catching, Clare returned, and we got back to watching the game. The grandparents got tired just about the time Alejandro Kirk hit a three-run homer in the fourth inning. I caught my second wind once we were back home and lasted through the visitors’ half of the thirteenth inning. Note to Blue Jays: If you don’t want to lose in eighteen, figure out how to run the bases and bunt runners along. Between innings, I caught the end of the Hawks-Bulls game. Three games—and wins—into the season, Billy Donovan’s squad looks just like I said last week, with players six through ten nearly as good as numbers one through five. Last night, eight Bulls scored in double figures while Nikola Vucevic fell one assist short of a triple-double in a 128-123 win. Trae Young of the Hawks dished out seventeen assists to go with 21 points. Anytime you can overcome a performance like that, you’ve had a good game. A 3-0 start. Who’d have thought it?

Comedy of Errors

Here are your Chicago Bears, a team trying to shake down the General Assembly for close to $1 billion to fund infrastructure needs related to their planned stadium in Arlington Heights. Ravens 30 Bears 16. Caleb Williams, the first pick in the 2024 draft, couldn’t move his team against a mediocre Ravens’ defense. Williams also continued the disturbing habit of getting lost in the red zone. Two early forays there led to six points; good teams would’ve generated fourteen. And a good quarterback would avoid throwing an interception deep in his zone with his team trailing by three points with just over nine minutes left in the game. The defense, which had excelled at takeaways, came up with none against a 1-5 team led by a backup quarterback. But they did pick up penalties. Then again, so did the offense. The Munsters managed eleven—let me repeat, eleven—penalties on the afternoon. Guys, figure out how to line up on the right side of the line of scrimmage and when to move, as in with the snap and not before. As for coaching, you have to wonder. Ben Johnson said in the postgame that team leaders need to deal with the penalty problem. Funny, I thought the coaching staff handled that. And who decided to have Cairo Santos handle kickoff duties? Baltimore gained good field position on Santos’s kicks all afternoon. Sure looks like Santos is suffering from a thigh injury, but what do I know? Poor McCaskeys. Well, not poor in any financial sense. No, more poor as in pitiful. Here’s a family that sees their pot of gold from a new stadium, yet they can’t make their team play well enough to excite the fan base. How do you expect folks to pony up for personal seat licenses, again, when the product on the field doesn’t look a whole lot better than it did last year? Beats me.

Playing to Strength

The Dodgers like to hit homeruns, and they like to spend money on pitchers. Last night, that formula worked to perfection, with the boys of Tinseltown topping the Blue Jays, 5-1, behind seventh-inning homeruns from Will Smith and Max Muncy along with a complete game by Yoshinobu Yamamoto. The 27-year old righthander gave up four hits (three singles and a double) and no walks while fanning eight. Yamamoto signed a twelve-year, $325 million contract back in December of 2023. Has he been worth it? That depends. He’s gone 19-10 over the course of two seasons. Not overwhelming numbers—affected by injuries, especially in 2024—and not nearly as impressive as 5-1 over two postseasons, including 3-1 this year, including a 1.57 ERA. In comparison, the White Sox are barely on the same planet, let alone the same sport, as the Dodgers. Contact vs. power, both hitting and pitching. Series tied at one game apiece. Onto Los Angeles, with Grandpa and grandson Leo slated to watch game three Monday night while at least one of us eats pizza.

Warming Up

As good parents, grandparents and in-laws, we went to the last game of the season for the Lake Park Lancers, coached by our son-in-law Chris. And, because we are parents, grandparents and in-laws of a certain age, we left in the third quarter. Something about the temperature dipping into the forties makes a body feel its age, and then some. We listened to the World Series on the way home. Michele loves baseball on the radio; it feels like summer, she says. Me, I think of the time driving in Colorado, an Oakland A’s game fading in and out. I was too preoccupied with not driving off the side of a mountain road at a time of night when all sane people were asleep in bed. I don’t listen on the radio now as much with Ed Farmer gone. Anyway, we heard Daulton Varsho go deep against Blake Snell to tie the game at two. And we got home in plenty of time to see the Blue Jays score nine runs in the sixth against Snell and the Dodgers’ bullpen. Final Score, Toronto 11 Los Angles 4. What really stuck out is how the Dodgers struck out, thirteen times in all to four whiffs by the Jays. Toronto hitters are geared to contact, which shows in the stats—best team batting average (.265) and on-base percentage (.333) in all of baseball. The Dodgers hit twelve points lower and had an OBP six points lower than the Jays. However, the boys of Tinseltown did lead the majors in striking out, 1627 as compared to 1099 for the Jays. That’s the second lowest in baseball. Game two, who can say? All I know is, you can’t win unless you hit the ball (or walk a lot). That, and dress like it’s winter even if it’s only late October.

Ice Berg Tips and Coal Mine Canaries

The NBA has been hit by a betting scandal, again, only now it involves HOFer and current Portland Trailblazers’ coach Chauncey Billups along with Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and former player and former assistant coach Damon Jones. What the various charges do is raise questions, again, about the honesty of NBA games, of their outcomes. (A second scandal involving Billups concerns high-stakes’ card games, rigged by the Mafia.) It also raises questions about the integrity of broadcast networks that show games and push betting. I’m talking about you, ESPN, Marquee and CHSN. Right now, it’s the NBA. How long until a scandal rocks the NFL or MLB? Is tonight’s game one of the World Series on the legit? You have to wonder.

A Sleeper, or Not

The Bulls kicked off their season last night, beating the Pistons 115-114 before a packed house at the United Center. They almost snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, only to think better of it. This is an odd team, one where the second unit looks nearly as talented as the starting five. That’s either a good thing, or bad; only time will tell. But nobody seemed to miss guard Coby White, expected to be out another two weeks with a calf strain. In which case, thank goodness Arturas Karnisovas decided to keep Tre Jones around for another three seasons. The 25-year old scored twelve points while dishing out eight assists, the sort of performance he gave on a regular basis last season after being acquired from the Spurs. A smart move by Karnisovas—who knew? Sort of like Nikola Vucevic, the human tree on skates, scoring 28 points to go with fourteen rebounds. Now, if the big tree can do that in March and April, there may be cause for hope. I’d also trade some of the 50 or so guards Karnisovas has collected, but that’s just me.

Do the Math

I wonder what Jerry Reinsdorf and Tom Ricketts are going to do during the World Series. Wag their fingers and say, “Tsk-tsk,” maybe, or lay the groundwork for a work stoppage after the CBA expires at the end of next season? A hard salary cap for the good of the game, anyone? At the very least, they should both be rooting for the “small-er” market Blue Jays, who have a $255.2 million payroll vs. $350 million for the top-spending Dodgers, per spotrac.com. Number seven payroll vs. number one. Go, seven. What I’d love to ask these two whiny billionaires is this—why are you team owners if you don’t want to spend money? By all means, be smart in spending the cash (think Blue Jays), but spend it or get out of the business. Instead, the odds are we’re talking about two owners who are going to spearhead the drive for a hard cap. What a bunch of cry babies.

Two Jays

Say this for the White Sox under GMs Kenny Williams and Rick Hahn. When they made a dumb trade (and they made lots), you could count on it being a doozy. Take this one from December 2014. Hahn—or maybe Williams, the former was GM by then, but that never stopped the latter as team president from interfering—engineered a trade of four prospects for ex-Cub Jeff Samardzija and a minor leaguer. Three of the ex-Sox—pitcher Chris Bassitt, catcher Josh Phegley and infielder Marcus Semien—all have had pretty decent (or better) major-league careers. In fact, Bassitt and Semien are both still playing, and come Friday, both can say they’ve been on World Series teams. Samardzija? He pitched one year on the South Side before having five pretty-blah seasons with the Giants. I was reminded of all this last night when Bassitt came out of the bullpen to pitch a scoreless eighth inning while protecting a one-run lead for the Blue Jays. Jeff Hoffman did the same in the ninth, and the Jays beat the Mariners 4-3 in game seven of the ALCS to advance to a date with the Dodgers in the World Series. Three of the runs came courtesy of a George Springer homerun to erase a two-run Seattle lead in the seventh. Ah, George Springer. I’ve never been a fan, at least of his contract, six years at $150 million. At the time of signing, Springer was already 31 years old. I wondered what would happen the last two years of the contract. Well, what I thought would happen, sort of. Springer started 80 games as a DH, which suggests he won’t be seeing much of the field either in the World Series (honesty forces me to admit he took a fastball off the knee in game five of the ALCS) or next season. But, right now, I doubt Blue Jays’ fans care much about that, and I can’t say I blame them.

Walking Around

Michele calls what we did on Saturday part of the “best day of the year” for her. With Open House Chicago, you have access to places you wouldn’t get into the other 365 days, like the rooftop garden at McCormick Place. Trust me, it offers views of Chicago you can’t get anywhere else. We walked through an area generally referred to as the “South Loop,” an area once marked by abandoned buildings, old warehouse and vacant lots, along with a few Prairie Avenue mansion hanging on for dear existence. Well, the mansions are thriving now, and you’d be hard-pressed to find an empty lot. The place has been transformed to the point that, if you told me this was a new residential development in lower Manhattan, I’d believe it. Between an iffy weather forecast and the uncertainties attached to the “No Kings” march downtown, we didn’t know if we could do Saturday; Open House is a two-day affair. But everything worked out, so that we didn’t have to go on Sunday. Not that we could have, not really. As it was, I had a hard time finding street parking; let’s just say if you don’t live in the area and have a sticker on the windshield to prove it, you’ll be in trouble. But I found a spot that allowed us to walk around to three places, and all was good. But Sunday, the odds are somebody going to the Bears-Saints’ game at Soldier Field likely would’ve snagged it ahead of me. No doubt they’d have had a happy walk back to the car after the Munsters dominated the visitors, 26-14. Or they might’ve stopped in to celebrate at any of the restaurants and bars we passed. That’s the thing. The Bears right now generate all sorts of economic activity centered in the South Loop. The resulting tax revenue goes to the city. If the Munsters move to Arlington Heights, that economic activity will tag along. The team basically will be generating the same amount of business wherever it plays. It won’t matter to the state of Illinois where the McCaskeys pitch their flag, just to the communities within walking distance of wherever the Bears play. The Bears are already bad neighbors (What? We’re not responsible for that $534 million in construction bonds still outstanding for the 2003 Soldier Field renovation. We’re just tenants.) If the Munsters move out of the city, Arlington Heights and surrounding communities will learn just how bad.

Smart Money

Poor Tom Ricketts (relatively speaking). He must’ve drawn solace from the fact that his Cubs lost the NLDS to the kind of team he wishes his Cubs were. In other words, underpaid overachievers. According to sportac.com, the Cubs’ payroll this season is $211.9 million, as opposed to $121.7 million for the Brewers. And then the Dodgers had to go and ruin things by sweeping Milwaukee in the NLCS. Nobody spent more on salary this year than Los Angeles, at $350.3 million. Call it smart money, especially when compared to the Mets spending $342.4 and not even making the postseason. You can draft; develop; trade; and hope or draft; develop; trade; and spend smart. That’s what the Dodgers do. Oh, and gamble smart. They signed Blake Snell this year and Tyler Glasnow last year. Both have a history of arm problems, and neither pitched much in the regular season. But both were ready for the postseason, as evidenced by Snell’s eight shutout innings in game one of the NLCS. The same goes for Shohei Ohtani, who pitched all of 47 innings during the regular season. As if that kept him from throwing six shutout innings as he scattered two and three walks against strikeouts against the Brewers last night in the series clincher. We won’t even mention the three homeruns he hit in the game. This is the player Jerry Reinsdorf publicly stated the White Sox wouldn’t be pursuing when Ohtani was a free agent in 2023. Yes, by all means draft; develop; and trade. Just don’t expect to win unless you spend smart, which is not the same as spending less.

An Embarrassment of Choices

You want baseball? NLCS or ALCS? Hockey? Check the Hawks’ schedule this week? Basketball? The Bulls start next week. Football? NU or the Bears? Truly, this is the one time of year where Americans sports overlap. I hope to live long enough to see an October where the Cubs and White Sox are in their respective championship series, TV schedule be damned; the Hawks and Bull are looking to defend championships; ditto the Wildcats and Munsters. I’m pretty sure that never happened over the course of Sister Jean’s 106 years on the planet. I can wait.

Freeze Frame

My latest purchase arrived in the mail on Monday, an 8”x10” photo of Tommie Agee sliding under the tag of Lee Elia during spring training, 1966. Oh, the memories. Agee was part of a three-way trade with the Indians and A’s. We sent Fred Talbot, Mike Hershberger and Jim Landis to Kansas City for Rocky Colavito and then shipped Colavito and Cam Carreon to Cleveland for Agee, Tommy John and John Romano. Nice deal, that. Elia was already a baseball lifer when he debuted with the Sox as a 28-year old rookie in ’66. A .205 BA in 195 at-bats didn’t win him a second season on the South Side, just a cup of coffee with the Cubs in 1968. But his career in baseball was hardly over. Dallas Green named him Cubs’ manager in 1982. Elia gained notoriety for speaking truth to conceit in April of 1983. His team had just lost a close game to the Dodgers and gotten off to a terrible start at 5-14. Let’s just say Elia wasn’t a fan of the fans who showed up back then, saying that, “Eighty-five percent of the f****n’ world is working. The other fifteen come out here.” Unfortunately for Elia, his words were caught on tape. Not that he was wrong. This was the era of “Bleacher Bums,” which offered a fanciful take on that fifteen percent. Bums they were, and unemployed Elia became late in the ’83 season when the Cubs fired him. I see those full houses at Wrigley Field, and I can still hear Elia cursing, good White Sox that he was.

Now, That's What I'm Talking About

So, if Blake Snell was doing Sandy Koufax Monday night, then Yoshinobu Yamamoto stepped into the role of Don Drysdale last night. The 27-year old righthander threw a 118-pitch complete game helping the Dodgers beat the Brewers 5-1 win in Milwaukee. It’s the first postseason complete game since Justin Verlander in 2017. Eight innings from Snell, nine from Yamamoto—the analytics’ world must be reeling. What about batting average third time around the order? What about starter fatigue? What about leveraging power arms out of the bullpen? Who cares?

Stop the Presses!

How old school was that? Dodgers’ manager Dave Roberts let starter Blake Snell go eight innings last night in game one of the NLCS in Milwaukee. It didn’t hurt that Snell gave up all of one baserunner enroute to a 2-1 LA win over the Brewers. That’s the good news for those of us who remember going to ballgames on our brontosauruses. The game still took 2:53 to play. Yes, Brewers’ pitchers—and there were six of them—issued eight free passes, but the Dodgers helped things along by hitting into two double plays. And the Brewers chipped in, so to speak, when Caleb Durbin was picked off of first in the third inning. Gosh, I wonder if an onslaught of TV commercials had anything to do with an excruciating pace? Nah. Commissioner Rob Manfred cares too much about the future of the game to let anything like that happen. Right?

Done

With the Cubs’ loss to the Brewers in the NLDS Saturday night, the Chicago baseball season is officially over. It’s liberating, in a way. Now, I don’t have to listen to White Sox manager New-Mickey Venable—and I’ll call him by his given name the day he gets his team ten games over .500, I promise—start every answer to a question with “Yeah” or wonder why the lineup features the likes of Jacob Amaya or Josh Rojas or Will Robertson or why a hot hitter sits for one of the above. I miss reading box scores, but only for the 60 wins on the season. On a possibly related note, the 1967 team-autographed ball I bought arrived over the weekend. Talk about a stroll down memory lane—Wayne Causey, Don McMahon, Don Buford and, oh, so many more. Best of all, the autographs are clear, which makes it easy to spot Ken Boyer and Rocky Colavito (acquiring aging talent, always the White Sox way). The only tough signature to decipher belongs to coach Kerby Farrell, born two weeks after my dad and died 25 years before he did. Gary Peter, Joel Horlen, Walt Williams. Perfection, or almost. There’s no Cisco Carlos, who amassed an eyepopping 0.86 ERA in 41.2 innings. The 26-year old rookie got his first start August 25th (Bukowski father and son were in the stands, I distinctly recall), and Colavito was acquired July 29th. My guess is the autographs were amassed sometime between July 30-August 24. I lived and died with this team, the last gasp of a “Go-Go” Sox iteration dating to 1951, before my birth. With five games left in the ’67 season and one game out of first place, the Sox finished out the schedule against the tenth-place A’s and seventh-place Senators. Easy-peasey, right? No, a five-game losing streak brought me to tears and ushered in three miserable seasons of losing culminating in the 56-106 debacle of 1970. Hope returned in the following season with the hiring of Chuck Tanner. I already have the 1971 team ball: Bart Johnson, Jay Johnstone, Carlos May…Venable as the new Tanner? Sox fans should be so lucky.

Finis

The Brewers sent the Cubs packing with a 3-1 win last night at a rocking American Family Field to clinch the NLDS. Put another way, the team that finished 22nd in homeruns during the regular season bested the team that finished with the sixth most longballs by outhomering them, three taters to one. Best of all, ex-White Sox Andrew Vaughn hit the deciding go-ahead homer for his new team in the fourth inning. Oh, where to start? The emperor’s new clothes seems the best bet, the emperor here being Cubs’ team chair and de facto owner Tom Ricketts. This is the man who claims his cash cow is but a small or medium market franchise. Hence, only the tenth highest team payroll this year, per sportrac.com. Up until around 9:30 or so last night, Ricketts was probably feeling downright proud of himself. Why, his team with a $211.9 million payroll had a good shot at advancing to the NLCS. Not like the Mets, who didn’t even make the postseason despite spending $342.4 million on player salaries. Too bad the real small-to-medium market team, the one with the eighth-lowest payroll ($121.7 million), won when it counted. The other team? Oh, they played the analytics-driven game of longball and launch angle all season while their opponents opted for on-base percentage. The team that had the sixth most homers in the regular season lost the division, let alone the NLDS, to the team that finished with the second-highest on-base percentage. And that really mattered because the home team won every game in the series. Would the Brewers have won game five if it were played at Wrigley Field? I really, really doubt it. But we’ll never know, courtesy of front-office decisions made by Jed Hoyer and company, at the behest of their emperor. Which leads me to my last point, that Emperor Ricketts also subscribed to the Jerry Krause dictum that players and coaches alone don’t win championships, organizations do. That’s were willing to spend $40 million in the 2023 offseason to make Craig Counsell the highest paid manager in baseball. (The Dodgers’ Dave Roberts signed an extension at the beginning of 2025 that gives him $8.1 million a season to Counsell’s $8 million.) The Cubs thought Counsell provided more value than any potential free-agent signing. In other words, they spent money to save money, however imaginary the savings might be. Great philosophy, only it didn’t work for the Krause’s Bulls after Michael Jordan and Phil Jackson left, and it’s not working for the cash cow on Addison. Let’s see if the postseason changes anything.

Not My Cup of Tea

I bailed on the Tigers-Mariners’ ALDS game five after thirteen innings. Where FOX announcer Adam Amin saw baseball poetry in motion which he described in hyperbolic flourishes, I saw two teams incapable of bunting the ball or stealing a base. Heaven forbid someone try a hit-and-run. The Tigers struck out seventeen times in fifteen innings, the Mariners twenty (!) times in 14.1. Somebody had to win, and it was the Mariners 3-2 on a walk-off single by Jorge Polanco. Yea. They still lose to the Blue Jays in the ALCS.

Sister Jean

Sister Jean Schmidt died yesterday at the age of 106. She was an actual person turned into a media star. If you’re Catholic and of a certain age, the odds are you knew someone like Sister Jean, a teacher probably along the way from kindergarten through twelfth grade, although it’s worth noting Sister Jean also taught on the college level. If you’re looking for a “the nun(s) beat me every day for x-years” story here, sorry, I don’t have one. Members of the Sister Servants of the Holy Heart of Mary taught me as best they could at St. Gall. In many ways, I was a challenging case. Sister Jerome Marie, my teacher in fourth grade, gave me batting tips, which was very nice of her considering how I tried to forge my mother’s name on my report card in the spring. Like I said, no “she beat me silly” stories here. To me, Sister Jean and Sister Jerome Marie are interchangeable; nuns were jacks—and maybe Jills—of all trades who helped the students entrusted in their care. Because she was the team chaplain for the Loyola Ramblers men’s basketball team and Loyola went deep in the NCAA tournament in 2018, a national audience learned all about Sister Jean, or some cute version of her. Make it to 106, and you outlive just about everyone you’ve ever cared about. Age brings sorrow as well as wisdom. That Sister Jean chose to smile for the cameras diminished neither her wisdom nor her sorrow. We’re diminished, or should be, by her passing.

Minority Report

According to today’s Tribune via the AP, viewership was way up for MLB’s Wild Card Series, especially among the young folks. There were big gains registered for both the under-35 and under-17 demographics. Something about trotting out relief pitchers, maybe, in which case I don’t get it. What’s so exciting about watching a parade of pitchers following the starter, e.g., seven relievers for the Guardians in their October 2nd loss to the Tigers? And who gets a kick out of watching batters fan time after time, e.g., the first Tigers-Guardians’ game that featured 28 strikeouts? I can’t wait to see the numbers for the ALDS and NLDS. I mean, the Yankees struck out fifteen times against eight Toronto pitchers on October 5th. Talk about exciting.

Like I Said

Pardon my crude analytics, but I said the other day the Blue Jays should’ve kept Trey Yesavage in for more than 5.1 innings of no-hit ball on 78 pitches. Here’s why. Last night in the Bronx, four of the relievers who appeared in Sunday’s game came out again in what at one time was a 6-3 Toronto lead. Three of those four were scored on, this after they posted scoreless outings on Sunday. So, it does in fact look like the Yankees gained momentum scoring those seven runs in a 13-7 loss. Final score of Yankees 9 Blue Jays 6. But what do I know?

The Ex- Factor

Oh, my Cub-loving hardware guy must’ve been in seventh heaven last night after Seiya Suzuki hit a three-run homerun in the top of the first inning. Cubs 3 Brewers 0. Oh, to have seen his reaction when ex-White Sox Andrew Vaughn tied the game with a three-run homer of his own in the bottom half of the inning. Final score: Brewers 7 Cubs 3. After the game, Vaughn said all the right things while his teammates and manager said all the nice things. All White Sox fans can do is note that Vaughn was hitting .189 when he was shipped off as opposed to the .308 BA he put up just north of the border. Nothing says “good trade” for a team better than the player you acquired having 46 RBIs in a mere 221 at-bats. How did the 27-year old, former first-round pick do it? In part, he credits working “my butt off” at Triple-A Nashville and then taking advantage of the opportunity when the Brewers called him up. [quote in story today on team website] And nothing more than that? Vaughn never struck me as a prima donna in any sense of the term applied to sports. After he homered, Clare texted, “That’s the first time I ever saw Andrew Vaughn smile,” which is probably little if any exaggeration. The guy was always serious, always looking to do his part. But it didn’t work. If the trade shook him and showed him he had to change, good for Andrew Vaughn. If the Milwaukee minor- and major-league coaching staff was able to reach him unlike anyone with his former team, shame on the White Sox. I checked, and none of the five hitting coaches in the Milwaukee system Vaughn has encountered since the trade got beyond Triple-A. It's not enough to go all-in on analytics, if that had anything to do with Andrew Vaughn’s resurgence. You have to have the right people doing the analyzing. The proof’s in the homerun that denied the Cubs any momentum.

Two Questions

First question: Why did Blue Jays’ manager John Schneider pull his starter? I ask because 22-year old Trey Yesavage had thrown 5.1 HITLESS innings, striking out eleven Yankees along the way. Yes, the Jays won 13-7, but why not let Yesavage at least go six innings? I mean, he’d thrown all of 78 pitches. If he goes six or seven, the Yankees may not have scored the seven runs they did off of Toronto relievers, giving them the tiniest bit of momentum. No doubt Schneider went by the analytics’ book. God forbid the home-team fans or those watching the game on television get a chance to see some no-hit history. In any event, the Yankees are now down two games to none, which leads to my second question. If Aaron Judge and company stink the way they did the previous two games, how will Yankee fans react? Class has never been a strong suit in the Bronx.

A Dream Come True

This is every White Sox fan’s dream come true: The Cubs are in the postseason, and manager Craig Counsell’s first call to the bullpen is for ex-Sox Micheal Sorka…in the first inning! Yes, it happened, with results any Sox fan could’ve predicted. Soroka entered with his team already down 4-1 with two runners on and two out. A walk and a single led to two more runs. Wait, there’s more. The 28-year old righthander, who was not a happy camper on the South Side last season, gave up three consecutive singles to start the second inning. Before long, another two runs had crossed the plate, and Counsell called the bullpen for another ex-Sox pitcher, Aaron Civale, and Civale promptly gave up a run-scoring single. Final score, Brewers 9 Cubs 3. Now, far be it from me to gloat, at least not until another two Cub losses. I can almost tolerate the North Siders. The older I get, the less any one Cubbie player bothers me. Not so the fans, like the one I ran into at a hardware store Friday night in the northern suburbs. I was there to have two screens fixed for my soon-to-be 94-year old mother-in-law. Silly me was wearing his Sox cap, which apparently offended the employee in question. He started in on what a terrible team the White Sox are, blah, blah, blah. All in good fun, of course. Maybe I get the last laugh.

Show Me the Money

The Bears released updated renderings of their stadium project this week, the better to extort money—along the lines of $855 million—from local and state government for infrastructure. Wait, there’s more. The accompanying buildings to the site are featureless geometric patterns, not that the stadium itself is anything to get excited about, unless your fancy runs to classic hubcaps. The team website offers all kinds of reasons why the project makes sense, up to and including better household water pressure for surrounding homes. The team claims the McCaskey clan needs a new stadium “[t]o remain competitive in the NFL today.” Funny, but I thought a hard salary cap allowed them to do exactly that.

New Screen Readers

On Monday the White Sox gave four coaches—including pitching coach Ethan Katz and hitting coach Marcus Thames—their walking papers. I won’t hold my breath that their replacements will be any better. Just different guys reading a computer screen. Katz was a minor leaguer who never rose above A-ball (but did coach Lucas Giolito in high school) while Thames collected 450 hits over a ten-year career with the Dodger, Tigers and Yankees. My guess is that their replacements will have similar backgrounds. I keep hearing on broadcasts how it’s the postseason and everything is different. If so, wouldn’t you want people who’d been there coaching players who want to get there? At least Thames appeared in five postseason series and even collected nine hits. Too bad he never articulated a hitting philosophy. It’s worth noting the assistant pitching and hitting coaches, were kept on. Joel McKeithan never hit a major-league pitch while Matt Wise went 17-22 with a 4.23 ERA in his eight years with the Angels, Brewers and Mets. Big-league success doesn’t matter to the White Sox or any other team these days. They want coaches who can break down data and facilitate tweaks in mechanics per the data Mark my words—the White Sox will hire people who have never been there to coach players who want to get there. Good luck with that.

Ex-Sox Starters

The wild card has been very good for ex-White Sox starters, beginning with Garrett Crochet. Pitching Tuesday night in the lion’s den known as Yankee Stadium, the 26-year old lefthander went 7.2 innings, during which time he allowed one run on four hits, with eleven strikeouts making the zero walks all the sweeter in a 3-1 Red Sox win. Crochet told manager Alex Cora he would only need to make one call to the bullpen, and he was right. Last night, Cora called down to the pen six times, but it didn’t work. Yankees 4 Red Sox 3. For better or worse, now-32-year old Carlos Rodon made the Yankee win possible with a pretty good six-inning performance—three runs; four hits; three walks; and six strikeouts. I never doubted Rodon’s grit when he pitched on the South Side. With him it was—and always will be—a question of health. Well, he was healthy enough last night. Did I mention Dylan Cease? Lo and behold, the great enigma threw goose eggs through 3.1 innings, after which San Diego manager Mike Shildt went into analytics’ mode and went to his bullpen. Unlike Cora, Shildt was able to get by on three relievers in a 3-0 Padres’ win. No doubt Cease’s agent Scott Boras will have something to say about the quick hook. Lest I forget, the Cubs called on ex-Sox Michael Soroka, who responded with .2 innings of scoreless relief. So, former Sox pitchers have acquitted themselves well. Now, we’ll se what ex-Cub Yu Darvish does against his old team in the third and deciding game at Wrigley Field late this afternoon.

Venue

The thing about Wrigley Field is, you know it’s Wrigley Field. No other ballpark has that outfield or walls down the line. The area around home plate used to be unique, so much so other teams copied the brick-and-limestone design for their new parks. Oh, and it’s loud because the upper deck is right on top of the lower deck rather than terraced up and away like in all new stadiums, baseball or football. When those members of the great Cubbie Cult start to screaming, the opposition has to hear it. If they say otherwise, fine, in which case, they can feel it. And when the Cubbie Cult starts to cheering at full lung capacity, the home team can’t help but feel the energy projected. All of the above came into play yesterday during the North Siders’ 3-1 win over the Padres in their Wild Card matchup. Players felt what fans were channeling their way, viewers knew exactly where the game was being played. I wonder, how much of this does Jerry Reinsdorf understand? He once had a ballpark just as unique as Wrigley, only bigger, and he walked away from it for a ball-mall. Stupid is as stupid does, I guess.

Rooting Interests

The Padres play the Cubs this afternoon in the NL Wild Card Series. I’ll be rooting for Gavin Sheets. Dylan Cease? Probably not. And while I certainly don’t want the Yankees to prevail over the Red Sox, I will be rooting for Carlos Rodon. If Cease had a little bit of Rodon in him, his record would be a lot better than 8-12 with a 4.55 ERA. A beard can’t hide that, Dylan. Speaking of the BoSox, too bad Lucas Giolito won’t be pitching in the Wild Card; he has some sort of elbow issue. With luck, it won’t be anything too serious. But I’m sure Giolito will be a good teammate cheering for Romy Gonzalez. The ex-White Sox infielder hit a career-best .305 this year with 53 RBIs in just 315 at-bats. Somebody on the South Side knew Gonzalez was worth an eighteenth-round draft pick back in 2018. Gonzalez was the 528th player chosen. A year later, Andrew Vaughn went third in the draft to the White Sox. If anything, his draft status cast Vaughn as a considerably bigger disappointment on the South Side than Gonzalez. Which makes his revival with the Brewers all the more notable. I mean, going from hitting .189 in 185 at-bats with just nineteen RBIs to .308 in 221 with 46 RBIs sure says something. You can decide what exactly. I’m not saying the Sox should’ve kept all of the above players. But is interesting how this group with the possible exception of Cease has flourished once they escaped Jerry Reinsdorf’s employ. Glass half-full: The Sox can identify talent, whether at the top of the draft or towards the bottom. Glass half-empty: They just can’t develop it.

Bookends

The White Sox bookended their seasons with wins, 8-1 against the Angels on March 27 and 8-0 over the Nationals yesterday. It was all the games in between that were a problem. But at least Shane Smith righted his ship and once again looks like he can thrive as a top-of-the-roatation starter. Five days after limiting the Yankees to one run in five innings, the 25-year old Rule 5 acquisition did even better against the Nats, retiring the first sixteen batters until giving up a single to Brady House, who was the only National to reach base. Smith went six innings, and three relievers didn’t screw anything up. Did I mention Brooks Baldwin? If not, I should. Baldwin went 2-for-4 with a homerun and double good for three RBIs. The former twelfth-round pick finished with eleven homers and fifteen doubles in 300 at-bats, numbers that move him back into the “Maybe” category. As I’ve said on occasion, Baldwin intrigues with his ability to play multiple positions. He played everywhere this year except first and behind the plate (and was listed as the team’s emergency catcher). If the 25-year old switch-hitter can add 25 to his BA, he’s a keeper. The Sox under New-Mickey Venable finished the season at 60-102. According to Chris Getz, I should be impressed. Funny, but baseball-reference.com gives them a Pythagorean won-loss breakdown of 71-91. That was attainable, and getting there next season won’t be cause for celebration.

Picking and Choosing

For the White Sox to go anywhere next season, they have to be able to evaluate talent. If only for argument’s sake, let’s say they can. Yeah, I know it’s a stretch, but what else is there to do on the last day of the regular season? Off of yesterday, it’s a definite “Yes” with Colson Montgomery, plus a couple of “Maybes.” Montgomery hit his 21st homerun of the year to give the Sox a 2-0 that eventually turned into a 6-5 defeat. Oh, that bullpen. Grant Taylor, Mike Vasil, maybe Jordan Leasure. After them, a whole lot of “No’s,” especially if they’re lefties. Sean Burke, a starter who was relieving because that’s the silliness of a “bullpen” day, struck out ten in 4.1 innings of work. I want to say “Yes” about Burke, but that 4.29 ERA forces me back to “Maybe.” Ditto Brooks Baldwin. He joined Montgomery in hitting a two-run homer in the fourth inning. That gives him ten along with 35 RBIs in 296 at-bats. The “Maybe” comes in due to a .236 BA and 85 strikeouts. Yes, No, Maybe—let the evaluations begin.

Just Desserts

The White Sox jumped ahead against the Nationals 8-1 after 4-1/2 innings; they deserved to win. Then Jordan Leasure gave up four runs to put Washington up, 9-8, and the Sox truly deserved to lose. No doubt they would have and should have. You shouldn’t win a game after blowing a big lead and letting the other team hit six—I repeat, six—homeruns. But the other team also committed four—I repeat, four—errors. The last one brought up rookie shortstop Colson Montgomery with one out and one on in the top of the ninth. Montgomery put an 0-1 pitch into the rightfield stands for a 10-9 lead that Grant Taylor did not give up. Sox win, 10-9. At this time of year, you look for the little things to keep going. Montgomery provided some last night. He’d gone 0-for-4 to that point, with three strikeouts. Oh, and he connected off Jose Ferrer, a lefty who’d held lefthanded hitters to a batting average in the .180s. It was Montgomery’s fourth homer against lefties in 73 at-bats; he also has four doubles. It’s enough to keep me going.

We'll See

Chris Getz doesn’t want White Sox fans to focus on a third 100+ loss season. No, he sees the future, and it will be full of players from Double-A Birmingham, which repeated this week as Southern League champs. Maybe, but I wonder. The easy part will be, or should be, pitching. The Barons led the league with a ridiculous—by modern-day standards—2.99 ERA and fifteen shutouts; the 1237 strikeouts ranked second in the league. If Shane Murphy doesn’t get an invite to spring training after posting a 9-4 record for the Barons with a 1.38 ERA in 110.2 innings, there’s something wrong with the Sox front office. There are plenty of other Birmingham pitchers I’ve mentioned periodically who should also get a serious look-see, unless Getz thinks Jonathan Cannon and Sean Burke are a tinker or two away from rebounding. In which case, he’d be in the marked minority. Now, for the hard part, the position players. Oh, the Barons have them, but are the Sox willing to bring them up anytime soon? Like 20-year old middle-infielder William Bergolla, who hit .286 and stole 40 bases? Or 24-year old infielder/outfielder Rikuu Nishida, who batted .273 with 40 stolen bases? Or 22-year old Sam Antonacci, who hit .292 with 21 stolen bases? Throw in what he did at High-A Winston-Salem, and Antonacci hit .284 with 48 stolen bases and 75 runs scored. Last and not least is 24-year old infielder Jordan Sprinkle, who played at the A- and High A-levels before being promoted to Birmingham. For the season, Sprinkle stole 80 bases in total. How are you going to keep them down on the farm if they keep stealing everything in sight? A more pertinent question is, what do you do with your major-league infield if the kids keep producing? Sox fans may rebel or boycott if subjected to another season that sees the likes of Jacob Amaya and Josh Rojas getting significant playing time. And they may not want to see Triple-A Charlotte being the team that gets an infusion of talent. Long story short, I can see people moving to the outfield, and it could include Colson Montgomery. I may even hope it includes Montgomery.

A Modest Proposal

Last night at Yankee Stadium, the White Sox recorded loss #100 by an 8-1 score. I expect loss #101 to happen tonight. Here’s an idea for when the current collective bargaining agreement expires at the end of next season—instead of focusing on a nonstarter like a salary cap, why don’t owners discipline their own ranks with a form of receivership/trusteeship or a compulsory-sale formula? Oh, I know why they won’t, but the idea would be wildly popular with fans and players. In terms of receivership/trusteeship, it used to happen all the time with clubs in financial difficulty; think Brooklyn Dodgers. How fitting if the team of Jerry Reinsdorf, more a Dodgers’ fan than he ever has been a Sox fan, should be placed into the same status. Or just forcing the team to sell off 10-25 percent of its stock for every season of 100+ losses after, let’s say, three straight seasons of such misery also makes sense. If not to MLB ownership, then everyone else who consider themselves fans of the game.

Meet the New Boss

White Sox GM Chris Getz keeps talking about building a new, winning culture for the organization, but I don’t see it. His manager proved, yet again, a déjà vu ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. This new Mickey is pretty much the same as the old Mickey. Last night at Yankee Stadium, starter Shane Smith threw five innings of one-run ball; he left after 93 pitches. Why? Lefthanded reliever Tyler Gilbert followed with a scoreless inning. Why not stretch him to four outs against a lineup with five lefthanded batters? Jordan Leasure followed Gilbert with a scoreless inning, and Grant Taylor followed Leasure with one of his own. Why didn’t each of them stay in for an extra out or, perish the thought, allow Taylor to go for a two-inning save? Instead, New-Mickey Venable brought in Brandon Eisert, who responded with a wild pitch and two-strike single—both with two out, no less—to give the Yankees a walk-off 3-2 win. Colson Montgomery hit a monster two-run homerun off Luis Gil in the sixth inning. Venable turned what could’ve been a big deal into a so-what moment. Same as the old Mickey.

Take a Walk

The last two Mondays, Michele and I have walked the lakefront. Yesterday, we did nine miles, give or take. Catch us, if you can. Over the last ten months, we’ve been to NYC, London and Paris; each city has a unique claim to world status. Chicago? Maybe the architecture—don’t get me started on the visual sameness of Paris—if only they didn’t keep tearing down landmark buildings. Definitely the lakefront. On the one side, sand and water. On the other, a never-ending variety of apartment buildings (for contrast, see Paris, above, while contrasting “polychromatic” with “monochromatic,” variety with uniformity). When I bike the lakefront, everything tends to zoom by; walking it, I get a sense of nature. Grass; trees; sand; waves. These are the elements of reverie, or can be until some idiot zooms by on an e-bike or scooter. Did I mention food? There’s actually a nice variety to be had, and it’s no more expensive than what you get at the ballpark, cheaper, probably. Both Mondays, we’ve ended our walk at a place familiar to anyone who’s watched enough Cubs’ broadcasts. Directors love that shot of the lake with the clock tower off of Addison, sailboats gliding along in the distance. (Sure beats Jim Blushi singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”) Well, there’s a dive bar next to the clock tower. You can eat inside or out. There’s a great view of the public golf course that abuts. Don’t worry. Protective screening keeps out any errant golf shots. My recommendation—the Wisconsin brat; that, and good walking shoes. Both are well worth it.

Ninety-Eight and Counting

Another game, another loss for the White Sox, this one 3-2 against the Padres in the last home game of the season. Nothing says defeat like a team going 0-for-11 with runners in scoring position. If the Sox have but four position players worth keeping (Chase Meidroth, Colson Montgomery, Edgar Quero and Kyle Teel), they have four-plus pitchers: starters Davis Martin and Shane Smith, relievers Grant Taylor—who wants to start—and Mike Vasil. Both relievers pitched yesterday. Vasil went three scoreless innings to lower his ERA to 2.37 in 98.2 innings (!). You have to love those numbers, along with the ones put up by Taylor in his last seven games—twelve strikeouts in six innings with a 0.00 ERA and 2-0 record, plus a save. Wikelman Gonzalez (2.66 ERA and 25 strikeouts in 20.1 innings) probably is a keeper, as is—and trust me, I never thought I’d be saying this—Jordan Leasure. God-awful April through July, the 27-year old righthander seems to have finally figured things out. The 3.09 ERA in August was nice, but nothing in comparison with what he’s done this past month: nine game; eleven innings; two hits; zero runs; ten strikeouts. Pinch me, I must be dreaming. A major-league roster consists of 26 players. By my reckoning, the Sox have fourteen, tops, and that’s if you include Andrew Benintendi; Luis Robert Jr.; Lenyn Sosa; and Miguel Vargas. The remaining twelve will be the difference between progress and a fourth straight season of 100+ losses.

Back on Track

The White Sox are back on track to losing 100+ games for three seasons in a row with last night’s 7-3 loss to the Orioles. Maybe someday the front office will find a lefthanded reliever or two who can get lefthanded batters out with the bases loaded and two out in a tied game. Or not. Core-wise, Kyle Teel had an RBI double against Yu Darvish while Chase Meidroth had a hit and a run scored; ditto Colson Montgomery, who also managed a walk (!). Those who would be part of the core also continued to press their case. Miguel Vargas went 2-for-4 with a double and RBI, and Lenyn Sosa hit his 21st homerun of the season, to go with 71 RBIs. Do you keep them or trade them? Vargas has 32 doubles in 478 at-bats with 56 RBIs; his defense at third and first hasn’t been atrocious. Sosa is Sosa. He’ll hit wherever you put him. Field? Well… A week to go, three games coming up with the Yankees in the Bronx after today’s last home game against the Padres. I think loss-100 comes before the Sox end their season against the Nationals. Let’s see if they can prove me wrong.

Same Old Same Old

The enigma that is ex-White Sox pitcher Dylan Cease started against his old team last night. That would be the second-worst team in all of baseball. Did I mention that Cease and the Padres lost, 4-3? I caught Cease talking to San Diego reporters after the game, and he came off as he always did on the South Side, laid back to the point of total detachment; he didn’t seem too upset with his performance of four earned runs over six innings. Those two Sox batters he hit in the fourth, both of whom scored? Stuff happens, he all but said. At the risk of sounding like Jerry Reinsdorf, the Padres aren’t getting their money’s worth from Cease, not with him going 8-12 with a 4.64 ERA. Cease is earning $13.75 million this year, and God knows how much next season when he signs with somebody—my guess the Yankees or Dodgers—as a free agent. The 29-year old, whose beard and hair make him look like he plays for the House of David, lost to Davis Martin, who now has a record of 7-10 with a 4.03 ERA. Martin is pulling down a shade over $765,000. I can’t wait to see how super-agent Scott Boras spins his client’s stats into a windfall contract. Unless he can’t.

Making Memories

Well, that certainly changed fast. The past few times I’ve pitched to my four-year old grandson, his bat was allergic to contact; tennis, anyone?. Then yesterday, he put nine balls over the fence, with one nearly clearing a second fence. Joy, except for the Packers’ t-shirt he was wearing. Leo will probably grow up a Cheesehead because his mom doesn’t really care about the Bears-Packers’ rivalry. If her boy wants to make a pilgrimage to Green Bay, that’ll be fine with her, provided he knows where his baseball allegiances lay. Amen to that, my daughter and grandson. If all goes right, seventy years from now, Leo will be looking at the latest iteration of the JumboTron I was watching Wednesday, and he’ll have the same reaction. Luke Appling retired before I was born, and I only remember Nellie Fox in his last season on the South Side. But there I was, holding back tears while Appling and Fox were brought back to life on the screen. No doubt, every team has the same sort of video clip to play at the start of a game. “Innovation” and “Jerry Reinsdorf” don’t usually appear in the same sentence, unless maybe you throw in “salary cap.” Whatever, the clip works in ways the Sox marketing department couldn’t begin to imagine. If those folks did, they might worry. Because watching reminds me there’s a connection to this team that extends generations, back and forward. My father cheered Appling, and my father-in-law, too. I lived and died with each at-bat Walt Williams took. Clare did the same with the Big Hurt. For Leo, Colson Montgomery could be his Nellie Fox or Walt Williams. Whomever his hero(s) turn out to be, it’ll be four generations of Sox fans and counting. At some point, the latest generation will demand accountability, and there’ll be no satisfying them until it’s had. Just saying.

The God’s Honest Truth, per Pinocchio

I’m tired of all this talk coming from White Sox GM Chris Getz and his favorite New-Mickey of a manager about how important it is for the team to finish strong. Here’s why. Tuesday night, Andrew Benintendi and Kyle Teel hit homeruns. Neither of them started yesterday in a 3-1 loss (their sixth in a row, but who’s counting? Certainly not Getz and New-Mickey.), even though the Orioles starting Tyler Wells would’ve meant a lefty-right advantage for both Benintendi and Keel. Wait, there’s more. The starting outfield yesterday consisted of Will Robertson (batting .143 at the start of the game, .135 at the end); Michael A. Taylor (.206/.204); and Dominic Fletcher (.231/.188). The trio went 0-for-8 on the day. I was there, section 145, row seven. I saw a bunch of young players sleepwalking over the course of nine innings; I also saw Oriole baserunners steal seven bases. Getz and New-Mickey can spin things all they want. That won’t change the fact this team is three losses short of 100 and next year could be a fourth straight season of 100+ losses

Getting Real

The White Sox had a chance to pull out a game last night against the Orioles. Up until the eighth inning, it was another pathetic effort, with Shane Smith setting the tone in a bad way, giving up six runs on nine hits in 4.1 innings of work. But five runs in the bottom of the eighth pulled the Sox to within a run at 8-7. The bottom of the ninth offered the “core” a chance to show what it could do. With one out, Chase Meidroth collected his second single of the game, bringing up Kyle Teel. The rookie catcher hit his eighth homerun of the season in the first and worked the count to 3-1. Then he struck out on a pitch in his eyes. Up next was Colson Montgomery, who’d struck out twice already. Make that three times, number three on a fastball Montgomery swung through. The 23-year old has now struck out 75 times in 216 at-bats. He’s hitting .095 (2-for-21) over his last seven games, .196 over his last fifteen (10-for-51). Where’s hitting coach Marcus Thames? Teel I’m not too worried about; he admitted after the game to trying to do too much. Everything so far, a .281 BA with 33 RBIs in 224 at-bats suggests he will in fact learn from his failures. That said, I hope Thames or some other coach is there to point out he left a walk on the table with the game on the line. As for Montgomery, I worry all the time. I see the Angels just sent down onetime phenom Scott Kingery. That could be Montgomery in the not-too-distant future if he doesn’t fix his swing. But not to worry. It’s all rainbows and unicorns, or as Sox manager New-Mickey Venable put it in his postgame comments, “Another great example of these guys continuing to battle. Got off to a great start there offensively [the two-run homer by Teel]. Shane did, too. Just as the game went on and they continued to score runs [!!#@!!], our guys continued to battle and it was nice to see us make it interesting.” [quote from today’s Tribune online] They still lost their fifth straight, Skipper.

More...Pathetic

Last night with the score tied at one in the top of the sixth inning with two out and a runner on first base, White Sox manager New-Mickey Venable made a move straight out of the Old-Mickey playbook—he brought in reliever Tyler Alexander. Consider that Alexander sported a 5-14 record with a 5.01 ERA and that he had been scored on in his previous six appearances. No matter. In he went and out went a three-run homerun by Colton Cowser, preceded by a Samuel Basallo single. Basallo went into that at-bat hitting .177, Cowser .197. Both are lefthanded batters. White is a lefthanded pitcher. Orioles 4 Sox 1. I looked for a postgame comment from Venable but couldn’t find one. Maybe words failed him, too.

Pathetic

Guardians’ catcher Bo Naylor entered yesterday’s game against the White Sox batting .183 with 32 RBIs in 326 at-bats. You know what that means, right? In the bottom of the fourth inning with the Sox up 1-0, Naylor hit a two-out, two-run double off starter Yoendrys Gomez. Wait, there’s more. With one out in the seventh and the game tied at two, Naylor homered against reliever Brandon Eisert, who made sure the lefty-lefty matchup didn’t work to his advantage. Final score, Cleveland 3 Chicago 2. The Sox were the most accommodating of visitors, dropping all six games this year at Progressive Field. After the game, Sox manager New-Mickey Venable offered that, “The guys continued to fight and grind. It felt like really all series we had good at-bats where we were making good decisions. Just didn’t really have anything to show for it.” [quote from today’s Tribune story] Words to rebut fail me.

Not Ready for Prime Time

Last night in the bottom of the second inning against the Guardains, White Sox starter Davis Martin gave up a two-run homerun to C.J. Kayfus, who came into the game batting an even .200. Wait, there’s more. In the bottom of the eighth with the Sox down 2-1, Sox reliever Fraser Ellard grooved a pitch to pinch-hitter Jhonkensy Noel. And Noel’s batting average at the time? A less-than-robust .146. That, my friends, is how you lose a game 3-1 and the kind of game you lose on the road to accumulating 92 losses on the season, and counting.

Energy, Talent

This morning, I watched my grandson run around a soccer field. He scored three goals plus an assist (unintended, I think, unless four-year olds really want to pass the ball), showing more energy than the White Sox did last night in Cleveland. Guardians 4 Sox 0. They managed two singles against Tanner Bibee, who came into the game with a 4.69 ERA and came out of it with his first career shutout and second complete game. The Sox won’t beat this kind of pitcher until their lineup stops featuring four starters batting under .240. I include Colson Montgomery (.228) and Miguel Vargas (.233) in that category. Maybe next year they’ll capture some Leo’s energy.

Good News

Four White Sox rookies stepped up yesterday to help take the three-game series against the Rays with a 5-1 win heavy on the contribution of starter Shane Smith. What a story Smith is, the Rule 5 player who made the All-Star team and then looked ready to flame out only to come back strong. Smith had an ERA of 4.26 going into the break. After 5.1 shutout innings yesterday, he’s lowered it to 3.78. The 25-year old righthander has been pretty much lights-out since the start of August. This returns him to “keeper” status in my books. Chase Meidroth? Maybe, maybe not, but he has been on a tear lately, going 13-for-24 over his last seven games. To be truly effective, Meidroth has to get on base and score, as he did yesterday, going 2-for-2 with two walks and a run scored. He’s now hitting .269 on the year with a .348 on-base percentage. The problem here concerns durability and defense. The 24-year old has gotten dinged up a lot over the season, which may or may not affect his play in the field. He’s good on groundballs and double plays, has good range at both second and short but looks to be below-average on anything flared over his head. Did I mention the Sox have a ton of intriguing middle infielders in their system? So many in fact it may affect Colson Montgomery’s future. I’d say our young shortstop is a keeper, but I’m not sure where, exactly. He could stay at short, and that’d be fine. Or he could slide over or try center field in the not-too-distant future; we’ll see. What I can say with certainty is Montgomery delivered yesterday when it counted, with a two-run single in the first inning. He now has a ridiculous 49 RBIs in just 202 at-bats. The .228 BA is nothing to write home about and the 65 strikeouts are a cause for concern, but, still. The 23-year lefthanded hitter old has shown a knack for coming through in the clutch. And his hit yesterday came off a lefty, Ian Seymour, who entered the game with a 2.89 ERA. There is, I think, cause for hope. Ditto with Kyle Teel, whose two-run pinch-hit single in the seventh inning gives him a fairly ridiculous 31 RBIs in 207 at-bats. Oh, and the batting average is an impressive .290. As ever with this rebuild, the question becomes where does Teel play? Somehow, the Sox have ended up with two talented starting catchers, the other being switch-hitting Edgar Quero, and they haven’t shown a willingness to play either Teel or Quero anywhere but catcher and DH. That is less a solution than putting off an inevitable decision. But that’s for another season. Right now, the Sox have some good young players who make the upcoming offseason both tolerable and a little irritating. Why so long until Opening Day, 2026?

Shaky

The White Sox recalled starter Sean Burke from Triple-A yesterday to see if he’s worked out his walk-happiness. Nope. The 25-year old righthander walked four Rays in 4.1 innings of work and was lucky to be charged with only three runs, given that he also coughed up to homeruns. Final score, Sox 6 Rays 5. Which represents good news and troubling news. The good consisted of Lenyn Sosa, him, hitting a two-run double as part of a five-run second inning. The troubling news concerned pitching, and not just Burke. Rookie Grant Taylor entered the ninth in a save situation, only to walk the leadoff batter and leave after one more pitch to the next hitter. Right now, they’re thinking strained right groin. As for prized minor-league starter Noah Schultz, the 22-year old leftie is being shut down to address “continued [right] knee soreness.” No Arizona Fall League for Schultz. And come spring training, who knows? Pitching’s the name of the game. I just wish the Sox had enough of it.

Unhealthy

Tyler Alexander’s pitch to the Rays’ Tristan Gray in the top of the seventh inning last night wasn’t so much fat as obese. Never mind lefty on lefty. The 29-year old Gray smashed a 92.2 mph “blah” fastball into the right field stands for the difference maker last night. Rays 5 White Sox 4. For Christmas, I’d like to have a bullpen that’s actually good. But there were positives, like Kyle Teel clearing the fence in dead center field for his seventh homerun of the season and Colson Montgomery driving in a run with a double instead of a homer, for a change. And Lenyn Sosa, my favorite problem, went 2-for-4 with a run scored. Maybe I should get my eyes checked. The glass almost looks half-full.

All in a Row

The Bears had all their ducks lined up in a row—stories about the Arlington Heights stadium flooded local media; new head coach Ben Johnson had generated plenty of buzz; the team pulled on all available heat strings with a pregame tribute to the late Virginia McCaskey and the ’85 Bears (yet again and again until they’re all gone, and then some more, I’m sure). The one thing Kevin Warren and Ryan Poles didn’t attend to was preventing a fourth-quarter collapse to the Vikings, who scored three late touchdowns to win, 27-24. Not that man-in-the-street interviews are in any way accurate, but, still, I was struck by the number of fans who expressed misgivings about a move out of the city. Probably the best way to address that would’ve been for the team to announce how much personal seat licenses will cost in the best stadium ever designed for a loyal fan base. Just kidding.

Repeat

Let me repeat: What do you do with a problem like Lenyn (Sosa)? The answer matters. Yesterday in Detroit, Sosa hit a 451-foot, game-tying homerun in the third inning before singling in two go-ahead runs in the eighth, giving the White Sox a 6-4 win and the series against the Tigers. In their last seven wins, six on the road, the Sox have come from behind in all seven games. Back to Sosa. In a postgame interview, the 25-year old admitted he was most comfortable at second base but added he was getting accustomed to playing first. Second would seem to belong to Chase Meidroth or one of the talented middle infielders presently at High-A and Double-A. If Sosa moves to first, what happens to Miguel Vargas? Is he the answer at third? GM Chris Getz and manager New-Mickey Venable are going to have to make a decision. Me, I like Sosa’s offense; as the saying goes, he’s clutch. And he does seem to be getting better at first base. Why not leave him there for the rest of the season? If he cracks 70 RBIs (right now he’s at 65), it will show just how good an offensive player he is and indicate what he can be. After that, decide. But if they do trade the righthanded-hitting Sosa, try to get equal value in return, unlike, say, Gavin Sheets or Andrew Vaughn.

Two Questions Worth Asking

The game was over as soon as White Sox starter Martin Perez threw his second pitch in the bottom of the first, which Jahmai Jones promptly hit over the left-field wall. Tigers 6 Sox 0. To say that Tigers’ starter Tarik Skubal dominated would be a gross understatement. The 28-year old lefty went seven innings, giving up two hits and a walk while fanning six. The win gives Skubal a 13-4 record with a 2.10 ERA, stats that could earn him a second consecutive Cy Young Award. Which got me wondering. Would the White Sox consider going after Skubal, a free agent after next season? Would they pay to keep one of their own pitchers with Skubal-level talent? Holy Mark Buehrle, I don’t think so.

Streakin'

The White Sox made it six straight wins, all come from behind, by beating the Tigers 7-5 last night at Comerica Park. Talk about a change in fortune. The Sox lost ta one-run lead in the fourth inning, when two runs scored on a Shane Smith wild pitch. Smith bounced a pitch a good ten feet in front of the plate that catcher Kyle Teel deflected up with his glove. Pitcher and catcher collided trying to field the ball in the air. Pitcher and catcher both looked to be down for the count. But, no. Smith finished the inning and one more after that. Last season, both players would be headed for the IL, and the Sox would’ve lost, either 4-3 or 100-3, whichever struck the Almighty’s fancy. Something’s changed. Did I mention Colson Montgomery? I do all the time, usually with a note of concern attached. None of that off the rookie’s most recent performance, 2-for-4 with two runs scored and four RBIs, two on a seventh-inning line-drive homerun that gave the Sox a 7-4 cushion. Montgomery now has 46 RBIs in 185 at-bats. Not bad. Maybe he can get more and the Sox a seventh straight win.

Another Painful Admission

As much as it pains me to admit (and trust me, it pains me a whole lot), new White Sox manager New-Mickey Venable is not an entirely hopeless case. He has a knack for the unexpected, like last night when he batted his two rookie catchers at the top of the order. How did that work out? Well, Edgar Quero went 3-for-5 DH’ing in the leadoff spot with a double and two runs scored while Kyle Teel followed with a 3-for-5 night of his own with four RBIs, three coming on a game-tying homerun in the seventh inning. Sox 11 Twins 8. The two rookies I’m most concerned about also chipped in, Colson Montgomery with a monster 454-foot shot good for two runs in the ninth and Chase Meidroth with four hits. Montgomery needs to make regular contact and Meidroth, contact that eludes the opposition. Montgomery can’t be hitting .227 this time next year or Meidroth .258. But you take the hopeful signs and see what happens in the offseason. Right now, I’d have to say there’s not much good Jonathan Cannon will be taking from this year. Called up to pitch as long as he could in the series finale, Cannon struggled to last 2.1 inning, yielding five earned runs on five hits and two walks. I think it’s a head thing with the 25-year old righthander. Either he figures things out, or one of those talented starters in the minors will take his spot in the rotation come spring. The Sox have now won five in a row, all come from behind. Who’ve thought it? And sweeping the Twins four games on the road. That, my friends, has never been done since Harmon Killebrew and company decamped from D.C. in 1961. So, if that feat is possible, why not a Friday-night win in Detroit? A guy can dream.

Painful to Admit

It pains me to admit that the White Sox won their fourth straight game last night, 4-3 over the Twins at Target Field, in large part due to the effort of two of my least favorite players, Michael A. Taylor and Jordan Leasure. But that’s what happened. With two on and two out in the top of the ninth, Brooks Baldwin blooped a broken-bat single to right, good for a run. That put runners on the corners, until Baldwin stole second with Taylor up. Twins’ reliever Justin Topa made Taylor look sad swinging at two straight sweepers that broke well out of the strike zone. Too bad for Topa he couldn’t do it a third time. Somehow, Taylor laid off the next two sweepers, both pretty much where the earlier two were. Then came sweeper #5, right over the plate. Taylor, who at that point was 0-for-3 on the night with two strikeouts, turned on the pitch, lining it down the left-field line, on the line in fact, a double plating two runs. Wait, there’s more. That was in the person of Leasure, who gave up a leadoff double to Byron Buxton followed by a walk to Trevor Larnach. Leasure induced the next two batters to hit shallow flyouts to left, requiring Andrew Benintendi to run in for the catch both times. That made it two out and two on for catcher Ryan Jeffers, 3-for-4 on the night with a run scored. Lo and behold, Jeffers grounded out to third. Sox win, Sox win. They hadn’t come back to win a game when trailing in the ninth since August 6, 2023, in Cleveland. That’s a span of 205 games. My problem with the two players who broke that streak is purely performance-related. Taylor is hitting .205 on the season and hadn‘t driven in a run since August 9. Leasure can either be very good or very bad out of the pen. Average it out, and he has a 4.08 ERA. At 34, Taylor may not be back for a second year with the Sox. He’s a plus-outfielder and a very good interview; I can still remember him from the 2019 postseason, when he helped the Nationals win their first and so far only World Series; Leasure is less articulate but just as sincere. So, hats off to both. Now, do it again.

Hitting on All Six

Hitting, pitching and defense, oh, my. White Sox 12 Twins 3 The last time he started, Martin Davis pitched scared, or so I thought. Last night, he did OK+, allowing three runs in six innings for the win, his sixth this season. Two more, please. If Martin keeps getting a 7-5 double play in support, it just may happen. As to hitting, where to start? Probably best to go with Andrew Benintendi, who hit two homeruns, collected four hits and drove in five. Youngsters Kyle Teel and Lenyn Sosa also homered, going back-to-back in the seventh inning. Now, for two other kids. With the Sox down 3-1 and two on nobody out in the fifth, Bryan Ramos doubled in both runners. Definitely more, please. In addition to Ramos delighting, Brooks Baldwin went 3-for-4 with a walk, run scored and RBI. That’s what I’m talking about, Brooks. Nothing says commitment like going 16-for-48 over your last fifteen games. Next, the near-impossible—three straight at Target Field.

When

One of the few intelligent comments ever spoken by “Hawk” Harrelson went along the lines of: It’s not only who you play but when you play ’em. From there it’s a short distance to: It’s not only what you hit but when you hit it. Take yesterday’s 6-5 White Sox win over the Twins. Colson Montgomery homered, again, so, Yea! But it was a solo shot in the second inning. With two on and two out in the seventh, Montgomery struck out. A three-run homer beats a solo job in my book. Montgomery is going to get the benefit of the doubt given his production so far and his standing as a, if not the, cornerstone in this latest Sox rebuild. And, yes, he deserves it. But also consider Brooks Baldwin, on the periphery of the rebuild unless and until he’s gets his batting average in the vicinity of .280. After his two doubles yesterday, Baldwin has 42 points to go. But consider that his leadoff double in the fifth led to a run and his two-out double in the eighth scored the tying run; Baldwin then scored the go-ahead run on Mike Tauchman’s double. The 25-year old utility player was at least a little bit clutch, I’d say. With Luis Robert Jr. on the IL and Michael A. Taylor batting a mere .204, Baldwin has a chance to make a case for himself in this last month of the season. That works for me.

The Two that Count

The White Sox managed five hits against the Yankees yesterday; the back-to-back doubles by Curtis Mead and Will Robertson qualify as unlikely-to-be-repeated flukes. And forget the first-inning single by Lenyn Sosa. What counted were the solo shots by Colson Montgomery in the sixth and Sosa in the eighth. White Sox 3 Yankees 2. Montgomery has fifteen homeruns to go with a .224 BA. All you can do is wonder and hope, that he stays healthy; that he learns plate discipline; that he can hit singles and doubles as well as homers. With Sosa , it’s more about wondering. Two years older than the 23-year old Montgomery, Sosa is a more mature hitter, which isn’t to say that his sixteen homers, 61 RBIs and .269 BA represent a ceiling. I can see 25 homers and a .275 BA within reach if he gets hot in September. Sosa could easily knock in 80 or more runs on a good team. Where does he play? First, second, third? Who does he play for, given the preponderance of middle infielders among top Sox prospects? Something to ponder come the offseason.

This is What Happens

What happens when a baseball team can‘t do any better than promote a retread like Will Robertson from its minor-league system and inserts him in the lineup against the Yankees? He goes 0-for-5, which puts him at 1-for-23 on the season, 0-for-13 with the White Sox. Oh, and the Sox lose for a third straight time to the Yankees, 5-3 in eleven innings. What happens when you bring in a retread like Tyler Alexander to pitch the eleventh inning? He gives up three runs to take the loss and put his record at 4-13 with a 4.88 ERA. But, hey, Alexander is 1-8 with a 3.88 ERA in 23 games for the Sox. What happens when you hire someone like New-Mickey Venable to manage a major-league team? He guides them to a 48-88 record after 136 games—hey, that’s seventeen games better than last season!—and says after the latest loss, “It’s a tough one, no doubt about it. These guys battle and put themselves in a really good spot to win that ballgame and just came up short.” As in going 2-for-15 with runners in scoring position. What happens when you hire someone like Venable? He looks at yet another example of offensive ineptitude and says something like, “We just have to make good swing decision and use the middle of the field. Each guy in different situations is going to attack differently. At the end of the day, you have to shorten up, put the ball in play and use the whole field.” [both quotes in today’s Tribune story online] Move over, Casey Stengel. There’s a new “perfessor” in town. With the reincarnation of those early Mets’ teams now playing on the South Side, nothing could be more fitting.

Look Away

There was no ballgame at the Rate last night, not in any real sense. But it definitely was an embarrassment, Yankees 10 Hapless Sox 2. How embarrassing? How about the nine walks issued by Sox pitchers, five of which scored, or a call of catcher’s interference, also which scored? Or the regression of rookies like Tim Elko (0-for-4 with two strikeouts subbing for an injured Miguel Vargas) and Grant Taylor (four batters faced; two walks; two singles; three runs allowed)? Or the continued inanity of a manager who praises the other team? I don’t care if the Yankees “make really good swing decisions.” [online story today on Tribune website] For some unknown reason, though, I do care about this team. And with each loss, it’s becoming painfully obvious the leader in the dugout this season is just as clueless as the leader in the dugout last season was.

When It Rains...

For reasons that escape me, the White Sox are enamored of infielder Curtis Mead, acquired in the trade for pitcher Adrian Houser. Mead is 14-for-56 with his new team, thirteen of those hits being singles. And yet he plays over the likes of Tim Elko and Bryan Ramos. In the fifth inning last night, Mead airmailed a throw from third base that took his first baseman into the path of runner Aaron Judge trying to beat out a grounder Mead’s way. The first baseman happened to be Miguel Vargas, who’d hit his first career grand slam in the second inning. Maybe Vargas doesn’t have a broken wrist or even a sprained one. And maybe Luis Robert Jr. will come back from his hamstring injury before the end of the season, and maybe Colson Montgomery’s aching left side will allow him to play tonight. And maybe the bullpen won’t give up six runs like it did last night in a 10-4 Yankees’ win. And maybe New-Mickey Venable will stop managing scared. But I have my doubts.