State of the Offense: Still A Tire Fire

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I last addressed this issue on May 2nd. At the time the White Sox had played 20 games and they were sitting at 8-12.  The offense was vying with the comical tragedy that is the 2015 Philadelphia Phillies for the title of Worst Offense in MLB. At the time they were hitting .242/.292/.345 as a team. It's been another 20 games since then, and we've seen a streak that included the best baseball they played this year, Carlos Sanchez has replaced Micah Johnson, and well...let's check it out.

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Why can't Melky Cabrera hit right-handed anymore?

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The selling point for bringing Melky Cabrera on board over the off-season was simply that he was a left fielder with a pulse, but a fringe benefit was that his switch-hitting abilities provided the Sox with a reliable everyday solution. Instead, they have gotten this rarefied craziness (Through Thursday).

Vs. RHP: 127 PA, .307/.362/.351

Vs. LHP: 40 PA, .081/.103/.081

That's uh, a little skewed. Is this sort of thing normal?

CAREER Vs. RHP: 3549 PA, .291/.341/.416

CAREER vs. LHP: 1475 PA, .271/.329/.398

No, it's not normal. If a switch-hitter regularly OPS'd under .200 from one side of the plate, you would take it upon yourself to calmly and courteously inform him that he is not, in fact, a switch-hitter. And it's a measure that isn't out place even this early in the season, if someone is coming this close to literally giving at-bats away.

The problem with this, as with Adam LaRoche's intense platoon struggles, is that the White Sox roster is ill-prepared to make this sort of adjustment or accommodation for Melky. We don't know how good he would be hitting left-handed all the time, and the bench is almost entirely composed of guys just trusted to field the position well. J.B. Shuck, a lefty, had reverse splits that one moment in time he was a decent regular, which is looking particularly far off at the moment. Trayce Thompson is the presumptive next outfielder up in the farm system, and is right-handed, but is also Trayce Thompson, and might never actually be ready to produce in any way against MLB pitching. There is no lefty-killer waiting in the wings.

And all this is coming without any real understanding of the why. Again, as with LaRoche, while Cabrera is still a worthy starter with the platoon advantage due to on-base ability, but he's been struck with the same baffling power outage affecting the entire roster. This is a guy who hit 18 home runs while playing Kauffman Stadium four years ago, who is now currently sitting on three extra-base hits on the season. Dodgy batted-ball data that I don't trust and certainly don't have enough familiarity enough to determine what is a fluke, has 10% of Cabrera's hard hit balls becoming medium hit. What this means for his long-term prospects, is a more hard to pin down concept.

Injury would be a fun all-encompassing explanation--he played like a ghost of himself in 2013 too before a tumor was discovered--but there's been no hint of rumor on something like that. Age is likely why LaRoche can't hit lefties anymore, and it would make sense that Cabrera's non-dominant hand is what would slip as he begins to decline in his 30's, but "decline" typically does not equate to "instantly disappears."

Bad luck has been a specter on all of the Sox early-season offensive struggles and there's a risk to overreacting to everything that's going in, but a problem so specific and extreme can be a test case for how Robin Ventura, Todd Steverson and Co. are addressing and responding to things they have a power to change. With a veteran with a baseline for performance is wildly failing to meet expectations, is he replaced or aided in recovery, or does he languish as a lesser value than what the Sox front office paid for? The question has a lot of applications beyond this one.

The White Sox can go back to being dependent on home runs anytime now

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This is the offense that baseball purist White Sox fans long craved for. They put a bat on a ball (sixth-lowest strikeout rate in the AL is a great leap forward for them, and it's combined with the fourth-lowest walk rate) and they don't swing for the fences hardly at all (AL-worst 23 home runs). In fact, with a .109 ISO (worst in baseball, despite half the league having to put pitchers in their lineup) they make a point of never getting close.

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AL Central: Best Division?

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For the majority of the life of the AL Central it has been a bit of a punching bag for the AL West and AL East. The Red Sox and Yankees were dominant for years, leveraging their massive resources and cagey front offices into 90+ win seasons like clockwork. The Angels, too, gradually morphed into a perennial contender shaped by massive payrolls. Then all it took was particularly savvy front offices for teams like Texas, Oakland, and Tampa Bay and all of a sudden you had 40-50% of the AL as strong teams, none of which were in the Central. As many observed coming into this season, however, the landscape of the American League looks very different - in the preseason, there weren't any readily identifiable "dominant" teams. Uncertainty about which .500-ish looking teams would hit their upsides or disappoint made it unclear as to whether any division would stand out as good or bad. So far, though, the AL Central has been the best division in the league.

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Avisail Garcia is so hot right now

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With 24 hits in his last 16 games, a .340 batting average in May, and some actual honest-to-goodness extra-base hits in the past week, Garcia is the hottest hitter on the team, and an easy choice to fill in the cleanup spot while Abreu got a night off.

He's also not that hot right now, since his magical run hasn't taken him very far away from a possibly still frizzly fate. He's ridden a rather absurd nearly .400 BABIP to all of a 121 wRC+, or a .322/.355/.441 batting line.

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Is this what a turnaround looks like?

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Make sure it's strongly on the record that objective indicators for the Sox are still extremely bad. They have the worst run differential in the league, they dug themselves such a hole offensively that there's no point in looking at that figure for another month, and Samardzija is the only regular starter with an ERA under 5.00. They look more like a team that HAS to normalize than one that is in the process of doing so.

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Rodon shows flashes of brilliance, earns first victory

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After Carlos Rodon struck out Marlon Byrd to end the fifth inning of his debut as a starter with the White Sox on Saturday night, the TV broadcast showed a brief exchange between the young lefty and pitching coach Don Cooper that appeared to be as simple as Cooper saying "how are you feeling?"

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Takeaways From The Tigers Series

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After an absolute nightmare 0-5 week, the White Sox entered this week's Detroit series staring down the possibility of a crippling early deficit in the AL Central. They managed to look much more professional and competent in taking 2/3 from one of their recent nemeses. One victory was just a solid, standard win, backing a strong Samardzija start with a credible amount of runs, while another was a glorious comeback-walkoff variety. Very heartening. Here's a few thoughts based on the series - obvious caveat that we are only talking about three games here:

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A very serious list of candidates to be the next White Sox manager

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Maybe I'm jumping the gun with this post. Robin Ventura, after all, is still gainfully employed. And the season is still young, with hope for a turnaround still alive.

Nonetheless, the White Sox's rough start has had many thinking Ventura's days are numbered. And if he's gone, who will be next?

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State of the Offense: Tire Fire

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The White Sox are 8-12. Disappointing, but not a disaster, especially given how many things seem to have gone wrong already. And while Samardzija and Sale getting absolutely rocked got most of the attention - sharpened into extra focus given the circumstances of the Baltimore "Series" - the undisputed story of the season thus far must be how terrible the offense has been.

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Where is Chris Sale's slider?

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Chris Sale is great enough that he gets the benefit of the doubt. When he emerged from the minors absent the changeup that got him drafted in the first round, there was a plenty good reason to hide it away for a while (hint: a wipeout slider). When his velocity waned at the end of 2012, his first year as a starter, his slider usage ramped to 30% of his pitches in the final month. It didn't work very well, but you knew why. He has maximum accountability for his day-to-day performance, such that health preservation efforts to reign his aggression can seem like punching the tide.

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Struggling Sox hitters--what to do?

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The White Sox won two series this past week, but are still dead-last in the American League in runs scored thanks to several black holes (I just watched INTERSTELLAR on a plane and just one seems like a kick in the pants) in their lineups. The people--might--demand solutions! Are there any?

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Getting suspended for fighting is bad

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Chris Sale and Jeff Samardzija have both been suspended five games for their pretty obvious roles in escalating Thursday night's brouhaha with the Kansas City Royals. Chris Sale was even reported to have attempted to get into the Royals locker room after the game to confront Yordano Venturea, and Jeff Samardzija was...well, here's a picture.

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Gordon Beckham is helping the White Sox win

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Gordon Beckham has the ideal qualifications for a utility infielder, in that he was a below-average starting infielder for several years. More specifically, he was good glove, bad bat guy who was drafted as a shortstop, and spent his MLB career getting reps at second and third base. The concern was that he would be misused. Then there was some mild Spring Training concern that he was completely washed up, but mostly it was concern that he would be misused.

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This year, April results matter more than you might realize

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One of the most common refrains whenever we start to get worked up over something that happens this time of year is "it's only April."

While that, as well as everything you can say about the small sample size these results are a product of remain true, the wins and losses, as you very well know, count just as much as the wins and losses in August and September.

I bring this up because the White Sox are in the midst of a season-opening stretch that sees them play 25 of their first 28 games against AL Central opponents.

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And a Happy Chris Sale Day was had by all — Important stuff from a series win

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That's more like it.

A day after breaking their season opening four-game skid, the White Sox welcomed Chris Sale back with open arms and he pitched them to a 6-2 win over the Minnesota Twins, the Sox's second in a row against the presumptive AL Central bottom feeders.

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The Twins, too? Notes from 0-4

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Short of injuries, this has been about as frustrating a start to the season as you can get. Losing to the Royals brings its own frustration, but coming off the World Series appearance you can at least understand how they beat you. The Twins were coming off of a humiliating opening set against Detroit wherein they didn't score a run until late in the third game. Tommy Milone was on the mound, and the Royals' terrifying bullpen wasn't lying in wait. And the White Sox got shut out anyway.

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So Long, And Danks For All The Hits

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Is there any hope for John Danks at this point? I’ve written about why I'm skeptical that Danks can even be usable on a team that has playoff aspirations.  And while we only have one start in 2015 - and I think it's fair to say pitchers aren't always fully up to speed on their first outing of the year - we have about 340 innings and 2.5 years between now and the shoulder injury that changed his trajectory from solid #2-3 starter to liability.

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No one can command a thing

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As someone who once knocked the sunglasses off the face of their junior high crush with a football by airmailing my best friend (the tallest kid in the eighth grade) by nearly 20 yards, I cannot in good conscious impugn anyone for a misfired throw in even the lowest-intensity situations. However, if the Sox want to snap out of their open to the season that's seen them cough up 16 runs and four homers to the no-hit, small ball Royals in their no-hit, small ball ballpark, they might want to stop hanging meat over the heart of the plate.

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