TCS Morning 10: The continued ascension of Trayce

/

Jeff Samardzija's White Sox career likely came to a close Tuesday night with seven confusingly efficient innings against a sleepwalking Royals team, as the Sox cruised to a 4-2 victory. There were back-to-back home runs at one point, there was a startlingly low number of whiffs, but he now has a couple of outings to point to say he figured it out as he hits free agency off a season where he posted a 4.96 ERA over 214 innings with a career-worst 17.9% strikeout rate at age 30.

Read More

TCS Morning 5: Build your new Sox contender

/

Other than psychic relief, there's no huge benefit to making Adam LaRoche sit under the bench for the last week, other than keeping the path clear for Trayce Thompson playing time, but you can give rest to Melky Cabrera, or possibly the hopeless Avisail Garcia for that. Unless the Sox are simply purging LaRoche, eating all the money, and not trying anything else, they have reasons for trying to see if he can do something remotely positive.

Read More

TCS Morning: What a weekend for the tank

/

1. A sleepless offensive effort in New York is just what the Sox would need to lose a whole bunch of games to the still hard-charging Yankees, while not providing traumatic results during a weekend where Chris Sale, Carlos Rodon and Erik Johnson started. In other words, we knew the offense was terrible, so this weekend didn't provide any new, disturbing information. The Sox scored nine runs in four games, lost three of them dropped 10 games under .500, and are now tied for the ninth-worst record in baseball. 

Read More

TCS Morning 10: A worthwhile Frankie Montas disaster

/

 Well, shoot, that didn't work.

Frankie Montas got his big, compromised chance to start a big league game Wednesday afternoon and for the most part got blow'd up over three disastrous, defensively challenged innings. He had absolutely no favors done for him by management or defense, but ultimately he's the only one who got tuned up for 3 IP, 6 H, 6 ER, 2 BB, 3 K, HR in a 7-4 loss.

Read More

TCS Morning 10: At least they didn't get no-hit by garbage relievers

/

Zach Duke is more committed to the tank than I am to waking up every morning. Brought in with two outs in the bottom of the 10th, just so he could go lefty-lefty against No. 9 hitter Anthony Gose, Duke promptly walked Gose, and then started 3-0 on Rajai Davis before handing him a walk-off double into the right-field corner to lose the game 2-1 in extras.

Read More

TCS Morning 10: Double the ridiculous triumph

/

My heart is not too cold and frozen over to not enjoy the delicious irony of Jeff Samardzija capping his ultimate opus in fan torture last week, only to turn around and twirl a one-hit shutout in his very next start, during a 12:08pm CT Monday afternoon start that no one got to watch. That's poetry. That's the dramatic sweep worthy of the great cinema epics of 70's auteurs. That's fine villainry, and I am satisfied that I have spent my summer being tormented by a master.

Read More

TCS Morning 10: Bored in Cleveland

/

The White Sox played a sleepy bad series in Cleveland against sleepy bad AL Wild Card contender, keeping the Indians on the periphery of a sleepy bad AL Wild Card race, whose sole source of drama is the Astros falling into the void. They capped things off Sunday with a 6-3 loss featuring a fairly rough John Danks start, a characteristically high-strikeout outing against soft-tosser Josh Tomlin

Read More

The Catbird Speaks 9.21.15 - The dog days of September

/

The season's almost over and the White Sox are wasting away their final days, so Nick and James got together to discuss, well, mostly the offseason and how to fix this swiss cheese roster, but also what major things there are still to watch.

Read More

TCS Morning 10: Not nearly as bad

/

Life can't stay a ridiculous terror show forever, so the A's held serve and delivered a horrifically garbage performance in response to the White Sox effort Tuesday night. I don't pretend to be deeply invested in A's roster affairs, and can't even guess what brought them to the point of giving recently acquired rookie reliever Cody Martin his second career MLB start. 

Read More

TCS Morning 10: Familiar disgrace

/

It just wouldn't be a White Sox season without the eventual slide toward full-blown humiliation. It just wouldn't have their natural full dramatic sweep from beginning with moderate goals of slipping into the playoffs via some lowered bar for performance, quickly dousing that already jaded optimism with a disappointing start, before capping their demise with some season-ending demolition to confirm that the Sox haven't merely underperformed, but are simply in another class from any team any non-diehard would waste a casual glimpse at.

Read More

Race To The Bottom: Diamondbacks Stand In The Way

/

With the White Sox BASICALLY out of contention, every Monday and Thursday until the end of the regular season, we'll take a quick peek at where the White Sox stand in their 2016 MLB Draft position. The draft position is important for two reasons:

The first, very obvious reason is that the higher you pick, the better the talent pool you have to choose from. The second, slightly less obvious reason is that if the White Sox pick in the Top 10, they can sign free agents who are issued qualifying offers without forfeiting a first round draft pick.

We saw this work in the team's favor last season as they signed premium free agents Melky Cabrera and David Robertson and only had to sacrifice picks in the second and third rounds because their draft position was No. 8 overall.

Read More

Ausmus May Be Gone; What About Ventura?

/

Toward the end of this past week we began hearing rumors that the Tigers had decided to fire manager Brad Ausmus at the end of the season.  The conversation has largely centered around whether the rumor is correct and the rather ugly optics of forcing Ausmus to manage the last few weeks of the season when he knows he’s about to get fired.  I want to discuss how it applies to the White Sox. 

Read More

The Catbird Speaks 9.11.15 - Just half a lineup away

/

It's the dog days of September, and the White Sox are in the middle of their regularly-scheduled playing out the string, which means:

-Only so much Samardzija left!

-Carlos Rodon and Erik Johnson could be the future of the new Sox rotation that is waiting for an offense to back it up.

-How will the Sox upgrade at third, second, right field, DH, etc? Beyond Mike Olt, that is? Is Adam LaRoche ever hitting again?

-Does Avisail have a future in the Sox core?

Join James Fegan, Matt Adams and Ethan Spalding as they update the state of the White Sox.

Read More

TCS Morning 10: Numb to the badness

/

Shouts to Jeff Samardzija for lowering the expectations such that giving up two dingers and four runs to half of a real Cleveland Indians lineup over 6.2 innings doesn't even trigger a twinge of disappointment. Even this snapshot of recent performance--I'm assuming meant to be shocking to the less grizzled and beaten-down of us--just serves to remind: Oh yeah, Jeff Samardzija did win his last start, didn't he?!

Read More

TCS Morning 10: Next year in Oakland!

/

Reunited with his Spring Training battery-mate, Carlos Rodon threw his sixth-straight outing of six innings or more with two or less runs allowed in Tuesday night's 7-4 victory. His seven-inning, one-run gem--spoiled only by whatever spirit has inhabited Michael Martinez's body--gives him a line over that stretch of 41 IP, 27 H, 8 ER, 4 HR, 15 BB, 41 K, 1.76 ERA. He's throwing real good, guys.

Read More