If 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 MoreThat was something. And then it wasn't! And then it was something else entirely, and it became that new thing with an intensity entirely ill-fitting of a Wednesday afternoon game. After around 10 minutes of review of a new rule that no one has a clue how to interpret, Jose Quintana went from one out away from seven shutout frames in San Francisco--kinda as impressive as kicking over an empty trash can, but still an important task--to watching Ronald Belisario lay waste to rational disorder. Again.
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 MoreRick Hahn's 2013 draft is, if nothing else, shaping up to be an interesting one. He lead off with Tim Anderson, who many considered a reach or a risky pick in the first round, but injury aside, Anderson's brief pro career has moved him up in the estimation of many evaluators. Hahn followed up with Tyler Danish in the 2nd round. Although Baseball America had him as the top high school arm from Florida in the draft, they also had him pegged as somewhere "in the first five rounds." But he has done nothing but excel in pro ball, and he's doing his best to erode my healthy skepticism.
Read MoreIf you were making a list of depressing things that could happen to the White Sox roster, Chris Sale and Jose Abreu going down with injury would easily rank No. 1 and No. 2, respectively.
Ranking third would more than likely be an injury to Adam Eaton, and that's exactly what happened — yet again.
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 MoreBoy, this is getting fun, isn't it?
Friday's 13-3 loss at the hands of the Seattle Mariners was yet another showing — the third in recent memory — in which the White Sox's pitching woes somehow managed to overshadow the offensive dry spell that is getting more and more pathetic by day.
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 MoreAs far as fatal flaws ago, at least Chris Sale being unable to retire Adam Rosales, or the White Sox as a franchise's inability to retire Adam Rosales, at least it's full of fun and whimsy. Rosales pulled into the MLB lead for most career home runs off Sale with three after bombing an opposite-field two-run shot to right in the second, and gave himself five home runs off the Sox total for his career with a seventh inning solo shot off Daniel Webb.
Read MoreThis one's not going up on the Danks' family mantle, not with the room that needs to be cleared for Jordan Danks' Charlotte Knights All-Time Hits Leader plaque. Danks had held off a night of nonexistent command, wayward 89 mph fastballs and hanging changeups for a longer stretch than we thought him capable of in this post-surgery life, but ohhhhhhh did he pay the piper Tuesday night. He might have paid ahead for the next couple weeks if we're lucky.
Read MoreJose Abreu, a fully-formed Lord of Dingers who first set foot on our shores in 2013, began cutting a terrifying path of carnage and ruination across the American countryside some few months afterward. He greeted the people of this nation in a shiny suit, but now tours major cities offering only the blinding flash of unearthly home run power. He has recently undertaken a campaign of rifling singles to all fields, but it is a lark. He shall return to the kill, soon.
Read MoreApparently quieting compiling monster stats on an unworldly hot streak wasn't enough for Flowers to fully launch the narrative of switching to glasses--FROM CONTACTS HE ALREADY WORE--unlocking some offensive monster, he had to go and beat the Texas Rangers all by himself. The Rangers are a pretty sad major league product these days, but still, one man. Flowers got a two-run third inning started with a one-out triple that bounced on the edge of the right field wall, slammed out a game-tying home run to lead off the fifth, threw out Jim Adduci trying to steal second to end the sixth, and poked the go-ahead two-run single in the bottom half of the inning, saving a scoring opportunity the Sox looked primed to blow after Gordon Beckham and Alejandro struck out.
Read MoreWhat was important about Sunday's game? Probably extremely little, since 15 of the astounding 16 runs the Sox allowed were coughed up by a bullpen filled with guys who don't figure to play a major role, if any role at all, next season. Hell, after walking three batters and allowing three runs in a single inning of work, Taylor Thompson didn't even make it through the day.
Read MoreThat was a fun game. Full of offense, multiple comebacks, offensive virtuosity, doinked singles and odd hijinks looming large, a decent and loud crowd, and Moises Sierra. The combination of a Chris Sale off-night, the Sox bad bullpen and Twins pitching made for the kind of fun-bad scoring fest that the April of this season promised for the Sox. No one even noticed that Gordon Beckham and Dayan Viciedo are still around.
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 MoreFor a while there, the sheer madness of the 2014 MLB trade deadline was like watching a heart-pounding segment of international news. It was gripping and compelling, but it would surely never actually affect you. The local news reminded you that your existence was a mundane one. The local news was the Twins debating whether to renew a millage tax, and the Royals announcing that the summer carnival was being postponed to next summer due to unforeseen permit issues.
Then the Tigers got David Price.
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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