Hits and Misses

It’s official—the White Sox are playing the contract, not the player, with Andrew Benintendi. You’d think manager Mickey Mouse would sit his left fielder in game two of yesterday’s doubleheader with the Nationals after Benintendi went 1-for-4 (a meaningless single) and hit into two double plays, but you’d be wrong. Out he went for game two, and out he went with his bat, 0-for-3 with another double play. Sox split. I guess it could be worse, and Martin Maldonado could’ve started both games behind the plate. That way he could’ve gone 0-for-6 with six strikeouts instead of 0-for-3 with three. But ask Mouse and no doubt he’d say that Erick Fedde threw seven shutout innings for his fourth victory of the season because Maldonado was catching him. Yeah, right. Speaking of the manager with a career .361 win/loss percentage, he actually came out and criticized a player in public, two actually, Bryan Ramos for missing a hit-and-run sign and Gavin Sheets for sleepwalking in right field. Will wonders never cease? Oh, and Andrew Vaughn hit two homeruns to drive in all four runs in that game-two win for Fedde. So, they’re not ceasing yet.

Waiting and Wondering

No soup for you, Korey Lee, not when you let Michael Soroka give up four earned run in 5.1 innings. And no five-game win streak. Guardians 7 Sox 0. But enough of that. How about this? As a parting gift to his team (not that he knew he was going), ex-GM Rick Hahn drafted three shortstops for the organization. Two of them are doing really well, to the point of meriting a promotion. And the third? That would be Colson Montgomery, the Sox top prospect. The good news is, Montgomery’s in Triple A at the age of 22. The bad new is, he’s hitting .225, with six homeruns and 46 strikeouts in 129 at-bats. The longer Montgomery takes to figure out his hitting, the longer Brooks Baldwin stays at Double-A Birmingham, where he’s leading the Southern Association with a .360 BA. Baldwin has eighteen RBIs in 114 at-bats to Montgomery’s fifteen in 129. Interesting. The longer Baldwin stays in Double A, the longer Jacob Gonzalez stays at High-A Winston-Salem, where he’s hitting .289, with three homers and twelve RBIs in 121 at-bats. Something’s got to give. Ideally, it would involve Montgomery going on a hot streak and getting promoted to the Sox, allowing for some piggy-move-up action with Baldwin and Gonzalez. Or the Sox could get creative (perish the thought) and try the other two at new positions, like second base and centerfield. It’s something to keep an eye on. Along with waiting for Soroka to get sent to the pen, if he’s lucky.

Double-dumbing

Yea, the White Sox won their fourth in a row last night, beating the Guardians behind Mike Clevinger and three relievers. But leave it to manager Mickey Mouse to put a damper on things. In answer to my question from the day before—would he start Korey Lee behind the plate?—the answer was both obvious and depressing: No. More of Martin Maldonado doing his thing, striking out once in three at-bats, although I admit Maldonado did chip in with an RBI single. Mouse also talked gibber before the game about rookie Bryan Ramos, who made two nice plays at third base. The manager with the tiny .361 career win/loss percentage said it’s “not obvious” Ramos will be staying around after Danny Mendick comes off the IL. As God is my witness, Mouse’s logic was more twisted than a bag of pretzels. Please, oh please, Bryan, hit two homeruns today. I can’t imagine what you manager would say to that.

Nitpicking

White Sox starter Garrett Crochet invites cliché adjectives: electric, dominating, knee-buckling, etc. I’ll stop as soon as he does, which better not be anytime soon. Last night, Crochet shut out the Guardians over six innings, giving up five hits while striking out eleven. He’s gone two starts without a walk and has given up one free pass over his last seventeen innings. Sox win, 6-3. Now, for the nitpicking. I heard Crochet say how much he likes talking with Erick Fedde. OK, then imagine what he could learn from Dylan Cease. Oh, wait. We couldn’t sign Cease to an extension, so we traded him for three prospects. And in the bizzarro world of manager Mickey Mouse, Korey Lee got to catch Crochet last night. I can only hope Mouse didn’t blame Lee for any of those five hits Cleveland got. Better yet, maybe Mouse read the box score and saw that Lee went 2-for-4 with his fourth homerun of the year. Most places, that would be enough to merit starting the next game. But this is the White Sox. We’ll see.

Grab Hair, Pull Hard

With the White Sox, you don’t take anything for granted. Other teams go full-in on a rebuild and play their prospects, but that’s not how they do things at 35th and Shields, not all the time. So, I’m nothing short of ecstatic that rookie third baseman Bryan Ramos has started five straight game. Better yet, Ramos is producing, another two hits last night, including his second double, in a 3-2 win over the visiting Guardians. Now, guess who caught and went 0-for-2? Yup, Martin Maldonado, now batting a meager .095. Pretty soon, you’re going to read a microscope to see his stats, except for the 25 strikeouts in 63 at-bats. Another start or two, and Maldonado should be cracking the 40-percent mark there. Why, oh, why, is he playing? The Sox are in a rebuild, not a pennant race. In 183 innings behind the plate, Maldonado has been charged with two passed balls while throwing out two of 22 would-be base stealers. Sox pitchers have also thrown 20 wild pitches with Maldonado catching. In 147 innings, Korey Lee also has been charged with two passed balls while throwing out six of 24 would-be base stealers; that’s 25 percent, above the league average of 22 percent. Did I mention wild pitches? Sox pitchers have only uncorked nine when Lee’s behind the plate. That might say something about his mobility, and Maldonado’s lack thereof. Did I mention Lee’s hitting? To me, a .273 BA with eight RBIs sure beats .095—.095!—with three RBIs. I must be missing something. Oh, right, the veteran presence behind the plate. If you say so. Again, this is a rebuild. How is Lee going to earn the trust of his pitchers, assuming that’s even an issue, if he doesn’t catch more? Give him what he needs. And why not promote a catcher from Triple A, while you’re at it?

Random Stuff

Ex-White Sox pitcher Chris Sale is having a nice bounce-back season with the Braves. Sale is 5-1 with a 2.95 ERA. But, hey, Yoan Moncada and Michael Kopech could still pan out. Ex-Sox pitcher Dylan Cease is having a nice bounce-back season with the Padres. Yesterday at Wrigley Field, Cease threw seven shutout innings, striking out 12 while walking two and giving up but one hit. Cease is now 5-2 with a 2.19 ERA. But, hey, we can always sign him when he becomes a free agent after next season. The Sox beat the Rays 5-1 last night, with rookie third baseman Bryan Ramos going 2-for-4 with a double and an RBI. Ramos is 5-for-14 in four starts since taking over for the injured Danny Mendick, who was taking over for the perpetually injured Moncada. I wonder who gets sent down and who sits once Moncada comes back. It doesn’t matter in a way because Moncada will get injured again within three weeks of coming back. You can bank on it. Just like you can Sox manager Mickey Mouse doing and saying something profoundly dumb. A day after rookie catcher Korey Lee went 2-for-4 and threw out a another baserunner, Mouse sat him for, yup, Martin Maldonado, and Maldonado, yup, went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts. For anyone keeping track, Maldonado has struck out 24 times in 61 at-bats, or 39 percent of the time. I guess he doesn’t have much knowledge of the strike zone, unlike the recently traded Robbie Grossman. Now there was a guy with "incredible knowledge of the strike zone,” according to Mouse in today’s Tribune. I guess that’s why Grossman was hitting .211 for the Sox and .243 over his career. GM Chris Getz sent Grossman to the Rangers for a 23-year old minor-league pitcher. Apparently, no broken bats were included in the deal.

Denial

The White Sox are in denial, and I don’t mean the river. Take last night, please. A 5-1 loss to the Rays puts the Sox record at an atrocious 8-28. Not that you would know it from listening to losing pitcher Mike Soroka or manager Mickey Mouse. “I think we’ve all gotten to a point where we want to be the group that turns this around,” Soroka was quoted on the team website today. “We want to be the guys who say, you know, ‘Enough’s enough.’ We just have to start putting together full games.’’ Did I mention Soroka is 0-4 in eight starts with a 6.34 ERA? Or that Mickey Mouse is Mickey Mouse, someone incapable of uttering a single critical word about a player? I don’t care Soroka “ended up strong” by retiring eight of the last nine batters he faced. He gave up four runs (three earned) in five innings. And before anyone tells me only one of the four walks Soroka issued scored, know that it took him 102 pitches to struggle to fifteen outs. And I really, really don’t care that Rays’ starter Zach Elfin “made the perfect pitch” on Gavin Sheets in the fifth inning. Bases loaded, two out, 3-0 count. They call that a “hitter’s count” because the hitter doesn’t have to swing. Sheets did and hit a sad little flyball to right field. Blah-blah-blah “Sheets has been clutch for us all year long” blah. Sheets swung at a pitcher’s pitch, and it cost the team. Part of managing, I would think, involves admitting to the obvious. But not when it comes to the White Sox.