The White Sox hit 12 home runs in April of 2015. That came over 19 games, where they scored 64 runs total, and slugged .352, worst in the AL. They finished last in the AL in slugging for the year, it was not an aberration.
Read MoreDespite the satisfaction of the final moves to shore up a competitive roster never coming along, the White Sox are looking disturbingly like a team that is actually getting ready for the season.
Read MoreThe 2005 White Sox were an absolute death machine from the moment the season opened. They won their first four series of the year, and then ripped off an eight-game winning streak. After April 29, they were never less than 10 games over .500 again, and were wire-to-wire division champs. Every galvanizing indicator of "THIS TEAM IS REALLY GOOD" burned bright all season, which wound up being a strong contender for the best season in franchise history.
Read MoreAnyone who knows anything about me knows that my favorite baseball article on the internet Monday was Jack Moore's chronicle of Minnesota owner Carl Pohlad's prolonged efforts to cry poor, mischaracterize the Twins as a small market club, and with the assistance of MLB Commissioner Bud Selig--who tried to use their phony crisis to compete as a means to conjure a cost-reducing salary cap--eventually got a spanking new Minnesota taxpayer-funded stadium in exchange for all their public showings of grief.
Read MoreAnother baseball season is closer than the frigid, loveless Midwestern landscape would currently indicate. With its impending arrival comes the knowledge that all the assorted cruelties--physical, mental, spiritual--of a high stakes six-month major league campaign are coming with it.
Read MoreThe dark shadow hanging over Jose Abreu's first in-depth interview with Chicago Magazine before the 2015 season, was the revelation that he had been unable to bring his two-year-old son with him from Cuba when he defected
Read MoreWhite Sox news mostly stayed in a holding pattern all weekend, as did pretty much any and all updates on the corner outfield market. The Sox left the Winter Meetings with Rick Hahn saying he wasn't done improving the offense, and explicitly stating "There's still room in the payroll to improve the club."
Read MoreThe White Sox didn't actually get anything done on Thursday, but the buzz of acquiring average (or better!) infielder for spare minor league arms has them talking like, well, the way they probably should have been talking the entire time.
Read MoreThe encouraging part of the Dan Hayes' report that the White Sox are open to trading Avisail Garcia is that it shows the White Sox are aware of what we are seeing on a daily basis, that Garcia is: currently awful, showing no progress, and an increasingly poor bet to put things together offensively to a degree that will overcome his mounting shortcomings elsewhere.
Read MoreOn Wednesday, MLB Trade Rumors published a list of the largest contracts in each MLB team's history. As could probably be assumed, the list was full of face-of-franchise studs- Giancarlo Stanton, Clayton Kershaw, Troy Tulowitzki, Alex Rodriguez (twice!)- as well as a fair share of major albatross contracts- Albert Pujols' Angels deal, Vernon Wells' Blue Jays disaster, and the Twins' extension of Joe Mauer. One thing that stands out is most franchises have by now given out a mega deal, with 22 of 30 teams (including financial lightweights like the Rays and Marlins) having inked a player to a deal of at least $100 million.
Read MoreA hanging curveball left up to Mike Moustakas in the sixth kept Jose Quintana from setting a new career-best mark for season ERA Wednesday night. Instead, he wound up allowing three earned runs over nine relatively smooth frames to the Royals and will have to settle for a career-high in single-season innings, and his third-straight 200-inning, 3.51 ERA or under (weird cutoff, I know) campaign.
Read MoreThe 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 MoreI'm wondering how much time I should give to this 14-inning marathon when interest seems like it's...waning.
Read MoreReunited 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 MoreThose 1976 uniforms sure were fun to look at. Coupled with CSN's compilation of file video from the late-70's Sox and full commitment with disco segue music and cheesy graphics, the Sox mixed a fun callback to rather ridiculous uniforms with a genuine examination of their own history. Let's do something like this every year
Read MoreI do not covet watching this man pitch anymore. The rippling thrills of watching Jeff Samardzija vaporize the first two hitters of an inning with electric stuff in the mid-90s that wiggles in every direction, and follow it up by drilling some dude in the ribs, then backing up a couple sliders and giving up three runs in a matter of minutes, well, it has dissipated over the last few months, I must say. All it takes is a few pitches to see the enormous potential sitting on Samardzija's broad shoulders. But it's the end of August, the team is bad, and he's 30. Who cares what he can do? How many more of these almost-good starts do I have to watch?
Read MoreCovering the developments of John Danks' stuff doesn't feel like the most purposeful beat in the world. He tools around with different things. Some days his changeup flashes dominant, the rest of the time it is merely good and over-relied upon. One time he had his old velocity back. Then it went away again. Through it all, he is kinda bad, but remarkably healthy! This is like blogging about Sisyphus. "He showed really good knee bend and drive today." "Today he just whacked the boulder with the stick." "Today he just sat and wept." "The boulder is still at the bottom of the hill."
Read MoreThe White Sox lost 2-1 in Los Angeles Monday night because they put nine guys on base all night, hit one extra-base hit, hit into a double play, went 0-6 with runners in scoring position, and only scored because Johnny Giavotella is so bad at second that Ned Yost was probably right to play Chris Getz over him all those years. You never remember the command-change lefties your team crushes, but Andrew Heaney snaking his way around damage twice in a week tends to stick with you.
Read MoreThis was not a good nor sharp weekend of White Sox baseball. Defensive and baserunning blunders marked two ugly losses to the Cubs and served as a stark counterbalance to how they out-executed a superior team in Wrigley last month. Avisail Garcia just keeps running into outs until someone takes him up on it, routine throws to first are somehow still an adventure even with Conor Gillaspie off the team and no starting pitchers seem particularly invested in backing up their catcher...but White Sox still employ Chris Sale.
Read MoreChris Sale wasn't at his peak wrath of God best Monday night, but that's such a lofty placement that it's an unfair comparison. He leaned on improved, but still far from steady fastball command while touching the upper 90's with regularity, and an all-purpose changeup that worked as his finishing option as his slider remained slurvy all night. After some early difficulties dragged out by a 13-pitch war with Mike Trout, he got brutally efficient and breezed through six innings at under 80 pitches before some hanging slurves lent themselves to a two-run double by Johnny Giavotella.
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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