Who is coming to make this more watchable?
The White Sox have lost six games in a row, and have the sixth-worst run differential and baseball. We knew they would be bad this year...and they're bad! So, what's next? Rosters are expanding, there's still no left-hander on the roster and Dayan Viciedo made a somewhat justified start on Sunday. Let's see what we can do here.
Read MoreAfter a 10-8 victory over the Twins on August 1st, the White Sox pulled their record to 54-56. Since then they have gone 5-13 while scoring 3.17 runs per game during that time. Take out an 11-run outburst against the Toronto Blue Jays and they have managed 2.71 runs on average in the other 17 games. Offense is certainly down league-wide this year, but that kind of production just isn't good enough. For reference, the 99-loss 2013 White Sox averaged 3.69 runs per game. So what's going on? Isn't the cliché that bats heat up in the hotter summer months?
Read MoreThings have not been looking good for Dayan Viciedo since Avisail Garcia returned. That's been all of seven games, so small sample size and all that, but this isn't about performance. And it's not an arbitrary endpoint, either.
Read MoreI bought on Gordon Beckham. Hard. In 2008, the White Sox had their highest draft pick since Alex Fernandez in 1990 on the heels of their awful 2007 season. I was as invested in the draft as I'd ever been, and I was really, really excited. I was even more excited when they got the player I hoped they would, and the pundits felt the same way. His first year of pro ball he annihilated the minors and less than one year after being drafted, he changed positions, burst into the majors and just kept hitting. Beckham had a short, quick, simple swing that generated tons of opposite field power. In the back of your head you were thinking, "This is a guy who will hit 50 doubles and could play shortstop." Then everything went wrong.
Read MoreSome narratives turn like the Titanic.
Conor Gillaspie, who we mostly hoped could play well enough to be traded for someone playable by mid-June, is garnering articles of praise. Not effusive praise, but more acknowledgement that he's earned his keep and should probably enter the next season as a presumed starter.
Read MoreIt wouldn't be great for the online user experience and probably not foster much "brand satisfaction," but a fair analysis of Avisail Garcia's return could be "he's healthy, so who cares?"
Avisail Garcia thirstily tried to stretch an eighth inning double into a triple Sunday. In the immediate wake of him being thrown out by several feet and slapped with a tag so casual and relaxed it actually drew a replay, there was a myriad of things to assess. He had hit the ball with extra-base authority to right field again, and the effort to third showed no hesitance from Garcia, even if it was inconclusive about whether his sluggish April speed was a permanent new condition or a week of being cold in the Midwest.
Read MoreIt's been announced that Carlos Rodon has been promoted to the Charlotte Knights of AAA and that he will be the starting pitcher for Tuesday's game. Parallels to Chris Sale will inevitably be drawn. The reasons why are obvious, generally superficial, and often misleading - but in the end it is up to Rodon to determine how accurate they are.
Read MoreThe White Sox's 2014 season, for all intents and purposes, is over. You don't need me to tell you that.
Read MoreIf I can even try to care about something related to baseball after the day's events, it's the measure of sympathy I feel for the MLB umpires in San Francisco on Wednesday afternoon, waiting for Robin Ventura to stop kicking dirt on the plate, or realizing it's the only respite from bouts of screaming and spitting at them and wishing he'd kick for longer, or thinking about which one of his veins they'd focus on to keep from bursting out laughing.
Read MoreI like eating my own words. It's a fun exercise. No special interest group ever writes huffy emails about the severity with which I went in on my previous self, It's an excuse to make the post even more about myself, and since everyone on the baseball internet is the aggrieved representative of the cruddy player they were personally excited for, usually I only have to eat my words for happy reasons. Someone was vaguely more productive than I though they would be--I must commit hari-kiri.
Read MoreEric Surkamp was demoted Sunday night after a month and a half of dreadful performances. His being optioned is ostensibly to clear the way for recovered bullpen regular Matt Lindstrom, but giving the boot to the relief corps' only left-hander always has its own special level of rebuke. Robin Ventura's words were not very complimentary, which is appropriate but somewhat disappointing, because I wanted to see if The King of Magnanimity could come up with a kind word about someone with an ERA that matched the name of a national convenience store chain
Read MorePrepare yourselves for my controversial, hard-hitting analysis: The White Sox bullpen is bad and ineffective. Obviously, the past offseason they dealt heavily from this area of the roster, sending Addison Reed and Hector Santiago out to the West Coast for badly needed help in the form of position players. One of them has worked out beautifully - Adam Eaton has played good center field, provided another left-handed bat, and getting on base at a .371 clip heading into Friday night. Matt Davidson is struggling to stay above the Mendoza line in AAA. So it goes...
Read MoreWhile I was spying on his Twitter account a while back, Jon Bernhardt, formerly of the sadly gutted Sports on Earth masthead, pontificated that the problem of homerism was not explicitly because fans are intrinsically poor analysts, but because they watch their favorite team too much.
Not only does this give them a lack of perspective of how players on the team they watch compare to the rest of the league, but they simply have too many details. We become so well-versed in such a wide breadth of details that it's hard to see the forest for the trees. We could provide a detailed account of Alejandro De Aza's miserable start and mid-season recovery at the plate, his plus-speed but inability to use it properly to man center field or steal bases, his suicide slides, his vulnerability for breaking balls at his feet and love for yanking his hands in to rip singles through 3-4 hole, when others would leave the summary of him at "left-handed fourth outfielder" and move on. Would they be better or worse off?
Read MoreThe non-waiver trade deadline came and went and the White Sox didn't do anything. I suppose it wasn't that surprising, given how little rumbling there had been about pending moves, and given how hard it was to think of movable pieces on the roster. Players like Gordon Beckham, Dayan Viciedo, Alejandro de Aza and Matt Lindstrom, who are fungible at this point, unfortunately have been bad or injured, killing their market value. So - what exactly is this offense that they've kept intact for now?
Read MoreWhile working on Monday's post looking at the status of some of the White Sox's top prospects, I got to thinking about about last winter's trade that sent closer Addison Reed to the Arizona Diamondbacks for prospect Matt Davidson.
Read MoreTyler Flowers is hitting .345/.406/.517 over his last nine games. That's something, even if it comes with the same luck of doinked singles and grounders finding holes that his helium-infused month of April was full of.
Flowers own words on the matter are rather vague, discussing feeling better and more comfortable, as people tend to be during a hot streak.
Read MoreIt's a tremendous testament to what phenomenal teases Dayan Viciedo and Gordon Beckham are that they have both have had streaks this season that led to wide speculation that they had made real improvements to their game, and now, streaks that have led to wider speculation that they have exhausted all reasonable hope of developing into worthwhile players.
Read MoreI will almost certainly write several more articles on this topic before next season starts. But, with the All Star Game come and gone, the Amateur Draft Deadline in our rearview mirror, and teams having played between 95-100 games this season, it seems as good a time as any to take stock of the White Sox' competition for the near future.
Read MoreSo far in the second half, the White Sox are undefeated, Dayan Viciedo is a stud and the bullpen is perfect. There is a lot of confidence that this is how things will continue to play out. Starting the second half with a fun 3-2 comeback win over the Astros was nice, but the implications were more interesting.
Read MoreWay later than originally promised, we will look into the progress of the White Sox core. With Chris Sale and Jose Quintana being the only established, young, above-average contributors on long-term contracts, they were pretty much it for this category, and their main responsibility was not getting hurt or do something to indicate that long-term investment in them was a huge mistake.
Read MoreThe Catbird Seat is a White Sox blog by White Sox fans that focuses on intelligent and humorous baseball commentary. Brought to you by ESPN's SweetSpot Network.
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