Alex Gordon was never the ideal target for the White Sox. He's far older than the rest of their core, more of an immediate boost to the 2016 team than a long-term solution, more of an all-around stud than the pure offensive injection the lineup desperately needed, and more than anything, just plain-old more essential to the Royals than to anyone else.
Read MoreBlue Jays vs. Rangers was a real damn game. One of a recent many.
Read MoreA good litmus test of whether a runaway division leader has gone into cruise mode is if they just casually allow themselves to be firebombed for 25 runs over a three-game sweep by a woebegone fourth-place team that averages under four runs per game. Having their ace (Johnny Cueto) shelled and getting beat by a busted prospect restoration project (Erik Johnson) 7-5 was the liveliest and closest effort the Royals managed the entire weekend.
Read MoreThe White Sox got predictably kicked around by the Royals in Kansas City this week. Three one-run losses later, they're 3-10 vs. the division leaders on the season, and have yet to win in Kauffman Stadium in 2015. They're now 2-7 since the non-waiver trade deadline expired, as the absurdly great pitching that propped up their hot streak has fizzled to the point of allowing seven runs per game. Jeff Samardzija in particular, ended his 10-game streak of seven innings or more, and has barely cover more than nine frames in his last two outings with a 15.43 ERA.
Read MoreThe success or failure of teams in the MLB Draft is difficult to determine. The main reason for this is because it takes so long for most draftees to reach the majors, and players shuffle from team to team so often (whether it's by trade or otherwise) that looking at a particular team's draft class for a particular year will often only yield one or two players who actually made an impact on that team's major league roster.
Read MoreThe Royals have dealt the Sox four losses, two suspensions and just a world of insult and embarrassment so far this season, and the Sox need to start getting their revenge in large chunks. They got things started early when Avisail Garcia fisted a walkoff to end the game that was suspended for rain Friday night at a 2-2 tie. David Robertson pitched a clean ninth for a win, then followed it up a few hours later with a save to seal a 5-3 comeback triumph.
Read MoreChris Sale and Jeff Samardzija have both been suspended five games for their pretty obvious roles in escalating Thursday night's brouhaha with the Kansas City Royals. Chris Sale was even reported to have attempted to get into the Royals locker room after the game to confront Yordano Venturea, and Jeff Samardzija was...well, here's a picture.
Read MoreWell that was annoying, as in even more than originally anticipated.
Read MoreOne of the most common refrains whenever we start to get worked up over something that happens this time of year is "it's only April."
While that, as well as everything you can say about the small sample size these results are a product of remain true, the wins and losses, as you very well know, count just as much as the wins and losses in August and September.
I bring this up because the White Sox are in the midst of a season-opening stretch that sees them play 25 of their first 28 games against AL Central opponents.
Read MoreOne of the small comforts of the Royals goofy little run to within one base of a World Series Championship, is that their success without the presumed basic tenants of franchise success--elite starting pitching, above-average hitters--was widely and visibly applied against the league at large. Sustaining themselves solely by eliminating every margin for error from their opponent, turning every small mishap into a major crisis, was not just a statement on the White Sox lack of precision, but an effective MO against every other flawed competitor they churned through.
Read MoreThe Royals are a pain in the White Sox's ass. If it weren't official before, I'm making it official after Wednesday's 7-5 defeat that saw beanballs, gopherballs, and a myriad of other weird stuff.
Read MoreThis is an assumption, but an assumption I'm pretty confident in making after Monday's less-than-inspiring 10-1 loss in the season opener.
Read MoreThe White Sox had a requisite number of clunkers in their supply for this year, so kudos to them for finding a foreign lawn to go drop this on. Very little went right! Until further notice, you have six innings to jump the Royals' starter in an alley, pick them up by the legs and shake all the runs out of their pockets, or you're screwed. Instead, Yordano Ventura kept the ball down, the Royals defense didn't spare any borderline basehits, and a shaky, slider-less Jeff Samardzija couldn't pitch over the Royals typical array of soft singles and Mike Moustakas' inevitable ascent to the MVP award. That the defense imploded and Kyle Drabek was awful was the icing on a cake that was already full of ricin.
Read MoreHeading into the 2015 regular season, it seems that most every American League team fancies themselves as a contender. As I’ve talked about earlier, this center-heavy distribution of talent should have interesting implications on the playoff race. This post is not about that. This post is me being a mean person who sees the flaws in everything. This post is about how every team in the American League will finish below .500, mathematical impossibilities be damned*.
Read MoreThe wise and just ESPN Sweetspot Guru David Schoenfield is going through his pre-Spring rankings of every MLB team and the White Sox have come up...a bit earlier than I would have hoped. David ranks them 23rd in baseball, predicts a 77-85 mark and cites concerns about the back-half of the starting rotation, problems spots in the infield, and does not appear to be a Tyler Flowers’ Glasses Truther. The Sox are behind the Tigers--whom he acknowledges could be division favorites again--the Royals, the Rays, and his surprise team: the Houston Astros.
Read MoreIt's February: the most exciting and thrilling time of the baseball news cycle. Between Gordon Beckham return, Dayan Viciedo leaving, and Spring Training....coming eventually, there's so much White Sox news to t--ah screw it.
James Fegan (@JRFegan), Nick Schaefer (@Nick_TCS) and Ethan Spalding (@spaldingethan) gathered together to dish on Victor Martinez's knee injury, Tigers' depth problems, the Royals' stupid, cheap offseason, how the Indians could be scary, Mookie Betts being overrated, defensive metrics being dumb, and then, then it went off the rails.
Read MoreI always dreamed that a post like this would be written about Justin Verlander, after he had been sent off to slaughter a distant alien race on behalf of all humanity, but the wrath of God Detroit starting pitcher has left the division, and it’s that homer-prone fastball-slider guy with platoon issues from a few years back. Max Scherzer has signed with Washington for all the money in the world. Detroit still boasts David Price, Anibal Sanchez, and a possibly resilient Verlander, but have now lost two of their three-most productive arms from last season with Rick Porcello already off to Boston.
Read MoreI had an extremely cynical idea for a post-World Series post, where I would pretend to have filed before the game started so I could freely watch and enjoy, and write up a list of lessons that the winning team had taught us about how to build a winner...and write up the wrong team.
Get it? The constant affirmation of the Royals approach would suddenly ring hollow as positive results.
Somewhere around the Royals losing in Game 7 with the tying run on third base in the bottom of the ninth, did this start to feel like an unduly cruel treatment for a miracle run that was instructive.
Read MoreBy and large, we want two mutually exclusive things from the playoffs: high-stakes drama, and a process that bears out the best team in the sport. Drama is usually only interpreted as the top teams being threatened and challenged, but if they never truly have an advantage because the process is chaos, the premise of the drama starts to erode. A random team emerging from a chaotic churn is dramatic if a lottery drawing is dramatic.
Read MoreThe Royals are an obviously incredible story. Just what they've actually done.
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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