All Aboard

The Sun-Times ran Bob Nightengale’s USA Today column today. Talk about jumping on the bandwagon. You see, the Dodgers have an “embarrassment of riches” with their starting pitching, so much so “The excitement has permeated the entire organization,” all the way down to ex-White Sox closer Micheal Kopech, who says, “The talent in here is just incredible.” Did I mention Kopech may not be ready until early April because of right-forearm inflammation? Or Clayton Kershaw until May? Or that Shohei Ohtani won zero games for the Dodgers last year, the same number of career wins Roki Sasaki has? Or that Yoshinobu Yamamoto suffered a strained rotator cuff last season? Or that newly-acquired Blake Snell is 32 and had an injury-marred 2024? Or that fellow starters Tanner Scott and Tyler Glasnow are 30-plus? Nightengale seems to have missed all that. Must be the rose-colored glasses.

What's the Point?

“South Siders unveil their vaunted southpaws/Sox give’em the old 1-2,” read the headlines on the White Sox team website today, to which any living, breathing, thinking fan should respond, so what? Sox rookie starters Noah Schultz and Hagen Smith both threw scoreless innings in yesterday’s 3-1 loss to the Padres (that’ 0-5 in you’re keeping count). Schultz needed eight pitches, Smith recorded three strikeouts. Again, so what? First off, there’s next to no chance either of them sees Chicago for any extended amount of time until September, if then. Next, let’s say they’re both as good as advertised. You know what that means, right? A low-ball extension offer followed by a refusal followed by a trade. It’s the Reinsdorf way. And what’s the Chris Getz/Will Venable plan here, make it like t-ball where everybody plays? Yesterday, Kyle Teel got two at-bats but didn’t catch; today, Omar Narvaez catches. Yesterday, Jacob Gonzalez and Jacob Amaya split time at short; one’s going to be in the minors while the other is a career .182 hitter whose presence on an MLB roster indicates a team short on talent. Where was Colson Montgomery? Oh, he plays today. Things need to change, or all those empty seats I saw on TV—courtesy of the antenna I bought because the new Sox/Bulls/Hawks sports’ channel still doesn’t have a deal with major cable companies—is going to translate to empty seats on Opening Day and every other home date in 2025.

Same Old Same Old

I hope new White Sox manager Will Venable likes losing because his team sure is off to a losing start, 0-4 in Cactus League play. The Sox have been outscored 36-12 by the opposition along the way. Hitting coach Marcus Thames continues to work his magic with hitters, who’ve put up a .177 team BA. (Amazingly, the Twins are worse at .165. They must be bummed Justin Ishbia took a pass on buying the team.) Wait, there’s more. Pitching coach Ethan Katz continues to work his magic with pitchers, who’ve put up a 9.55 team ERA. Nobody in baseball is worse. Advantage, Sox hitters. Not to worry, right, because it’s only spring training? Then why should I care about Sox rookie catcher Kyle Teel homering off of Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki? If spring training games don’t count for anything, the Teel-Sasaki matchup in a simulated game counts for even less. Which brings me to another question—why does Teel, a big part of the trade that sent Garrett Crochet to the Red Sox, have one at-bat in four games? Shouldn’t Venable and general manager Chris Getz want to see what Teel has to offer right out of the gate? Is there any reason for Korey Lee, Omar Narvaez and Matt Thaiss to be playing ahead of Teel? None that I can see. The White Sox have some 70 players in camp, which means they’re lucky to have 30 worthy of making an MLB roster. Giving everyone an at-bat and touting simulated-game homeruns is both cruel and stupid.

Oops

According to all those armchair general managers out there, the Red Sox shook baseball to its core, all by signing one free agent. “In Alex Bregman, Red Sox get swagger they desperately need,” reads the USA Today headline. “The Red Sox are serious players in the AL East,” if you believe Will Leitch on mlb.com. Only the geniuses forgot to ask Rafael Devers what he thought. Devers could be the reincarnation of long-ago Red Sox thumper Dick Stuart, who was nicknamed “Dr. Strangeglove” for a reason. Boston’s starting third baseman since 2018, Devers has a .944 career fielding average, with 141 errors over 951 games. In comparison, Bregman has a .968 career fielding average with 81 errors over 995 games at the hot corner. So, Bregman would be a bigtime defensive upgrade. Only Devers doesn’t want to play another position, and Bregman volunteering to switch to second base hardly resolves the matter. The Red Sox don’t get better playing him out of position (Bregman last played second back in 2018) to satisfy Devers. And no matter how this gets resolved, Bregman’s contract allows him to walk after one season, if he wants. Then what, Dever’s back at third? It seems to me somebody’s front office didn’t do their homework. In fact, the Red Sox look to have created a problem where there was none (outside of a bad-fielding third baseman who may have to be traded). I can’t wait to read what the armchair GMs have to say about things.

Priorities, Contd.

Say this for the Tribune—at least they mentioned the passing of ex-White Sox pitcher Eddie Fisher yesterday, something the team hasn’t bothered to do yet on their website. And, yes, it matters. First off, Fisher was the “big catch” in the deal that sent Sox great Billy Pierce to the Giants. In four full seasons with the Sox and parts of three others, Fisher made 286 appearances, all but 49 in relief. His best season was 1965, when he went 15-7 with a 2.40 ERA in 82 appearances, all in relief. Guess who threw a knuckleball, and guess who compared notes with teammate Hoyt Wilhelm? Yup, Fisher. Wilhelm came to the Sox at age 40 in 1963. Here are his ERAs in six years on the South Side: 2.64; 1.99; 1.81; 1.66; 1.31; and 1.73. Fisher and Wilhelm pitched together for 3-1/2 seasons, until Fisher was traded to the Orioles in June of 1966. The next year, the Sox went out and acquired another knuckleballer to pair with Wilhelm. Wilbur Wood seemed to do pretty well for himself. The White Sox front office is finally catching up in the analytics’ department. It’s all about drop, spin rate, and speed, which is why prospect Grant Taylor throwing a pitch yesterday at 101.2 mph was mentioned in both papers today. The knuckleball is so 20th century. Apparently, so is Eddie Fisher.

Priorities

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, the saying goes, or failing newspapers, for that matter. Just look at the Tribune. Check that, look at social media first. White Sox fans may be—are—weighing in on the chances of Justin Ishbia buying the team. The Sun-Times may be—is—mentioning it today, but not the Tribune, where “it’s all the [sports] news that fit to print,” as long as it fits onto one of six pages. Which wasn’t the case today. And the Trib online didn’t have anything on Ishbia, either. More likely than not, the Sunday sports’ section was dummied late Friday or early Saturday, with space left for spring training and Bulls’ games. Oh, and a half-page color photo of Bears’ GM Ryan Poles with new hire Ben Johnson, along with a big story on how the Munsters could approach free agency. What matters more, looking into rumors of a new owner for one of the more storied franchises in sports or a think-piece on how a 5-12 football team will navigate free agency? With the Chicago Tribune, you don’t even have to ask.

Billionaire Swap?

I have to hand it to my daughter. Despite caring for two kids, 3-1/2 and five months, Clare can still provide breaking White Sox news, as in a possible new owner for the team. Ladies and gentlemen, meet plutocrat Justin Ishbia. According to a story by Jon Greenberg in yesterday’s The Athletic, the 47-year old, Chicago-area head of a private-equity investment firm is intent on buying up shares from Sox minority investors, with the idea of then buying out owner Jerry Reinsdorf. The mind boggles, for both Twins’ and Sox fans. First off, Ishbia was negotiating with the Pohlad family to buy the Twins, and all was going well until this story broke. Why would Ishbia turn from an easy situation—the Pohlads want out, and the fans want them out, too—for one where he has to deal with Reinsdorf, a person who has to come out on top of every activity from owning things to flushing toilets? Maybe the soon-to-be 89-year old is finally ready to move on. Compared to the Twins, Ishbia would have a shorter commute to the South Side. And, if he could turn the Sox around, the payoff would be ever so much greater than in the Twin Cities. Chicago’s a bigger market, which means nice earnings, plus the Sox offer Ishbia the chance to show either Coast what the Midwest can pull off. It’s the kind of challenge to stoke a billionaire’s ego. The good news for Sox fans is that Ishbia is local-ish. On the other hand, his plans to build a mega-estate in Winnetka on the tony North Shore leave something to be desired. In true plutocrat fashion, Ishbia wanted the village park district to give him property on the lakefront in exchange for land elsewhere so he could have himself have a nice “little” compound without free of public land encroaching on it. A lawsuit settled last month put a stop to the attempted land swap. So, Ishbia is the kind of guy not afraid to push people around to get his way, a trait that Reinsdorf has always held dear. But maybe there’s more here. Maybe the devil we don’t know has virtues sorely lacking in the devil we’ve known for way too long. And maybe we’ll find out before long.