We shouldn't be talking about this. I certainly don't try to shoehorn Robin Ventura into everything. Hindsight sniping at a manager who's job and motivations are mostly invisible is not fun or compelling writing. Melky is alive again, Adam Eaton is a star, the Sox offense touched up David Price with Jose Abreu hitting out of the No. 2 hole and were all about to take two out of three from the Tigers in convincing fashion.
Read MoreNick and Matt get together following another deflating White Sox loss to talk about trade potential, the problem with White Sox position players, and do some old fashion complaining about the Manager.
Read MoreThe White Sox reacted to poor play with a benching, mashed on offense, and sealed the Thursday's game in Detroit after a cagey managerial decision. Were they kidnapped? Are we dead?
Read MoreHow is the main story with the 31-40 White Sox--possibly the owners of the worst offense and defense in baseball, and the team starring the owner of an insane strikeout streak--just your garden-variety griping about hustling, effort and focus?
Read MoreJames, Nick and Collin get together to discuss the Sox future in the aftermath of a disastrous eight-game losing streak. It likely includes trades, but the TCS crew dismisses the proposals for a reckless teardown that are making the rounds.
Read MoreThe Sox are bad again, so let's begin a discussion of trade options in a familiar place of the most unrealistic and extreme point of debate: trading the most valuable member of the franchise!
Read MoreWith the Sox hitting as it is, their pitching staff only needed to throw for 2.17 ERA over 29 innings to eke out two victories out of three one-run games with the likely overachieving Texas Rangers. Pretty reasonable standard going forward!
Read MoreChris Sale is the best pitcher in baseball right now.
Yes, this is hardly an irrefutable fact. Yes, Sale’s numbers this season in totality don’t quite matchup with Gerrit Cole, Max Scherzer, or Chris Archer, and yes, if we expand to the last two full seasons, Clayton Kershaw has him beat. For the purpose of this article, I really don’t care. With all the talent at the top of the league, this is hardly a debate with a conclusive answer, and that’s fine.
Read MoreIt's cliche, but the NBA and NHL season wrapping really has thrown the full attention of the Chicago sports media engine toward why the Cubs offseason promise has borne fruit and the White Sox are an even bigger disaster than previously remembered. And oh, wow, just as more attention comes to the Sox, they're on a seven-game skid and hurtling out of even the faintest notion of playoff contention at breathtaking speed.
Read MoreWednesday night, the White Sox went down three runs to the streaking Pirates in the first seven minutes of the game, stretched their scoreless streak to 30 innings, and Robin Ventura got himself ejected in the fourth inning arguing against the ruling that Melky Cabrera staggered over so much after striking out against Jeff Locke that he interfered with Francisco Cervelli trying to throw out Adam Eaton at second.
Read MoreThe White Sox were shutout for the second-straight night, haven't scored since a Carlos Sanchez RBI single in the second inning of Sunday's game in Tampa, and haven't hit for extra bases since the sixth inning of that game.
Read MoreI originally started this State of the Offense "series" thinking that the offense would eventually wind up somewhere close to league average, but that after the first twenty games they were in an underperforming slump. Then after another twenty games...the offense was still terrible. As I write this, 63 games are in the books, and the White Sox just got shut out in back-to-back games, managing fewer than 4 hits in both of them. At this point it's just a matter of marveling at how bad the offense is.
Read MoreIt's remarkable how effortlessly the White Sox pivoted from their first home sweep of the season, and possibly the most encouraging stretches of play of the year, and right into the losing streak that might finally huck this cursed season into the dungeon permanently. They're now stuck in a four-game skid, six games under .500, the proud owners once more of the worst run differential in the AL, and have three more games against the red-hot Pirates team that just thunderkicked them 11-0 Monday night, then three against the Rangers, whose main weakness is pitching and, well...
Read MoreSmall sample size and all that, but I don't know if you've heard anything about Chris Sale's last five starts...they've been pretty good. He has a 1.45 ERA, with 61 strikeouts over 37.1 innings. Opponents have hit .152/.206/.250 against him, while striking out 43.3% of the time. Major league hitters have been twice as likely to strike out as reach base against Sale for the better part of the last month.
Read MoreWhat was your favorite quote from Bob Nightengale's long feature on the connection between Chris Sale and Randy Johnson (major takeaway: they're both tall, lanky, freakish, left-handed strikeout machines and they think one another are cool without having met)?
Read MoreMauricio Rubio from Baseball Prospectus joins James to talk prospects, specifically what few the Sox brought into their organization during the 2015 Draft.
Read MoreJose Quintana may long for the days of the supposed "dingers or nothing" White Sox offenses, since even that would provide more support than he's grown used to this season. His no-decision last week against the Tigers in an eventual 4-3 win was the first time he had received more than a single run of support in four starts.
Read MoreIt was another good night for the 'Hit one big dinger and make it stand up' approach. Thanks to more yeoman work from Carlos Rodon, and Jose Abreu bursting through to subvert an otherwise dominant outing from Astros ace Dallas Keuchel, the Sox pried out a small lead and clung to it even as their defense and relief corps tried to implode in the ninth for a 4-2 victory, sealing the first season series win over the Astros since 2006.
Read MoreAfter grabbing Vanderbilt RHP Carson Fulmer at No. 8 in Monday's first round, the White Sox had to wait all the way until No. 112 to make their next pick, thanks to the signings of David Robertson and Melky Cabrera that forced them to forfeit their picks in rounds 2 and 3.
Read MoreA White Sox starter racking up 10 or more whiffs in four-straight games was an absurd notion before this strikeout-crazed era hit the sport, and it was an absurd notion before this franchise employed someone as good as Chris Sale.
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.
An ESPN SweetSpot blog | Design by ofvoid
