Injuries always play a role in determining the success or failure of a team in a given season. Even a team like the White Sox that has a solid history of keeping their players healthy is affected in one way or another by players lost to injury.
Read MoreIt's finally here. Well, kind of.
White Sox pitchers and catchers officially report to Spring Training in Glendale, Ariz., Thursday, and an offseason that seemed to last three lifetimes officially comes to a close.
Read MoreThe new-look White Sox will be without ace Chris Sale for the first week, so they'll need new arms Jeff Samardzija and David Robertson to come out with sharp command after getting bombed all Spring (28 IP, 26 ER, 11 HR combined)
Read MoreAs a message and principle, peaceful resolution and avoiding hostilities is a fine message. As the conclusion to weeks of battle in a presumed winner-takes-all duel, it is terrible. Terrible.
Carlos Sanchez vs. Micah Johnson wasn't just a battle between similar prospects (relatively) for supremacy, but had remarkable stakes: a starting job on a possible contender, or back to the minors and blocked from promotion. For Sanchez, it could even mean getting DFA'd. It almost certainly wouldn't, but it technically could!
Read MoreReporter/mensch Dan Hayes broke the tiny rumor this weekend that the Sox are shopping Eric Surkamp as a means to clear space on the 40-man roster. The Sox originally acquired Surkamp off waivers, then lowered his stock--not that they should have done anything else--by using him as a LOOGY rather than a spot starter, and even in that role he was cannon fodder for four-fifths of the season. He probably is going to have to wind up leaving the way he came.
Read MoreCourtney Hawkins, the White Sox strikeout-prone 2012 first-round pick, was both a raw power prospect coming out of high school and such a multi-layered disaster in 2013 that a disciplined approach was to just forget about him. Even though he's young--still just 21--and his struggles came after a hyper-aggressive over-promotion to High-A, the hurdles Hawkins had to clear were too daunting and numerous to start contemplating his major league role anytime soon. It's probably not something we will ever have to do, so why get an early start?
Read MoreAs far as PROSPECTS go, the White Sox sent shortstop Tim Anderson down to minor league camp Wednesday, along with right-hander Tyler Danish.
White Sox "prospects" got sent down from major league camp in the sense that many of the guys they sent down appear on organizational prospect lists, their status as employees of the White Sox is "prospects," because if it wasn't, management would have to consider why they're employing these guys.
Read MoreAt this point, following the machinations of public discussion of Gordon Beckham is like finishing the final seasons of Dexter. It's long since stopped being a compelling pursuit for answers, or even a foolishly idealist search for a long-term solution of what's clearly a fatal flaw. To be honest, it's just a disjointed mess at this point and has contradicted its own constructs numerous times.
Read MoreIn Spring Training, no one is doing anything, so someone doing anything of note is worthy of a blog post. Someone doing something with actual stakes involved, well, why have we not already novelized Micah Johnson's first 28 plate appearances?
Read MoreJesse Crain is no different from any other scrap heap reliever at this point in the Spring. There are some distant reasons to be interested in him, but his red flags are such that there's likely no performance that can put him on the Opening Day roster. He's around because everyone needs to call up a bunch of relievers during the season so you might as well collect as many interesting ones as you can, and really, with his injury history, his recovery is optimistic and hopeful until there's a setback and he's not anymore.
Read MoreI've titled a Spring Training post this way before, it was after Jake Peavy giddily recapped a March shelling by revealing that he had just been grooving 89 mph fastballs to different quadrants of the strike zone all afternoon, while a few thousands diehards who paid for tickets and airfare under the guise that they would be seeing baseball, eagerly watched. "Is Jake Peavy broken/dead/in permanent decline/masking a grievous injury" thinkpieces evidentally had a lot of merit at any given time, but Spring was always a weird place to start.
Read MoreJeff Samardzija is scheduled to pitch for the White Sox Tuesday, against the White Sox, after Monday's White Sox vs. White Sox competition got rained out in the middle of the desert. Since the proper Cactus League Opener is on Wednesday with Jose Quintana, a preview of freaking out about actual, fake baseball could have waited a day, but I'm out of ideas now.
Read MoreI'm typing these words on Feb. 25. If my math is correct, there are 40 days until the White Sox play a game that counts in the regular season standings.
Read MoreSince the events of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, scorpions have been derided as a national menace. Now, they serve as the initial test for a White Sox team eager to prove themselves as contenders. If they survive the Spring with a casualty rate under 30%, they're playoff-bound. That's how it works, and we're already seeing how weaker organizations are being felled.
Read MoreSpring Training is finally here. What this means is we can all get excited about the sight of actual major league baseball players on an actual baseball field, and then cry over the realization that we're still six weeks away from meaningful games being played.
Still, the season of optimism is upon us, so let's take a look at some of the important things to monitor during the White Sox's time in Arizona.
Read MoreWhite Sox position players are not contractually required to be in Glendale until next week, and the pitchers aren't required to be in until Friday. And yet, at least a third of the players invited to camp were reported to have already arrived by Monday. Dan Hayes even reported that Adam Eaton and Jeff Samardzija were ahead of the game and live in Arizona and have been in and out of team facilities for the last few months. Actually living in that state; now that's true sacrifice, something that layabouts like Jose Abreu--showing up less than three weeks early--can only dream about.
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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