Maybe I'm jumping the gun with this post. Robin Ventura, after all, is still gainfully employed. And the season is still young, with hope for a turnaround still alive.
Nonetheless, the White Sox's rough start has had many thinking Ventura's days are numbered. And if he's gone, who will be next?
Read MoreOne of the most exciting things about the buildup to a season is anticipating the debut of your favorite team's new acquisitions. This year, White Sox fans can look forward to seeing Jeff Samardzija and Melky Cabrera, among others, in a White Sox uniform for the first time (well, at least in meaningful games).
Read MoreMost of the gang got together--James Fegan (@JRFegan), Nick Schaefer (@Nick_TCS) and Matt Adams (@2015WhiteSox)--to wrap up the last threads of the 2014 White Sox season, talk about Paul Konerko's goodbye, other weird stories about the Sox roster usage, mourn the bullpen, pine for Melky Cabrera in free agency and...
Read MoreLast Wednesday night Mark Buehrle shut down the Mariners and in the process eclipsed 200 innings on the season, the 14th consecutive year that he has done so. In fact, Buehrle has not thrown fewer than 200 innings in any season of his career since a late season call-up in 2000, and has won at least 10 games in every single one of those seasons. Given the recent tributes to Paul Konerko, it seems fitting to give a nod to a guy that I would deem to be his pitching foil for their era of White Sox baseball.
Read MoreI loved the Konerko send-off. Was there any doubt? For anyone?
Konerko's contemplative, accounting-for-everything manner always played better for retrospectives than mid-season rallying cries. Sending him off wasn't just rewarding an above-average first baseman for being above-average, but quickly became an homage to White Sox-dom, 1999-2014, with the unexpected and grand flourish of trainers Herm Schnieder and Brian Ball getting acknowledged for keeping Konerko and the roster upright for the last decade and a half. Konerko is the rare star that allows Chicagoans to celebrate championships and true greatness while lauding noble, tragic try-hards who are loyal to the city just for the hell of it at the same time. There was a cheer for a pre-recorded video clip of Jon Garland with a fuzzy drifter beard, a massive Jose Abreu home run and World Series highlights in a four-hour span. It was a rad affair, all things being equal.
Read MoreWith the 2014 season behind us, I found it apt to take a look back at some of the more significant individual moments of the campaign, for better or worse.
Read MoreUnderstanding and appreciating Paul Konerko was part of the process of approaching baseball as an adult, and he always gave the impression he was doing the same.
Read MoreMuch has been made about this being Paul Konerko's farewell season. I've been a bit of a curmudgeon about it since it was announced that he would be back for 2014. My objections to his return were both for strategic reasons and emotional ones. The roster, particularly the bench, was looking incredibly inflexible, and having a 1B/DH who can only really hit LHP is a player with narrow uses. Emotionally...well, Konerko really looked like he didn't have anything left at the end of 2013. Besides, it felt like there had already been a lot of Farewell/Lifetime Achievement Award type moments that season, and it didn't make sense to do another lap of that, particularly on what looked to be a rebuilding team with its eyes primarily on 2015. But, that doesn't change the fact that I think he's awesome.
Read MorePaul Konerko has only officially been the team captain since 2006, but has been dominating the locker room in non-dominant fashion for at least a year longer. His demure and honest post-game interviews, ceaseless personal accountability, slavish devotion to routine and labor, and perhaps most memorably, public self-flagellation have been such steady elements of White Sox culture, that part of processing his retirement has been imagining a non-Konerko leadership. Compared to the Konerkocracy, every clubhouse seems like Brohio. Should we go to Brohio? It's the question of a generation.
Read MoreI like eating my own words. It's a fun exercise. No special interest group ever writes huffy emails about the severity with which I went in on my previous self, It's an excuse to make the post even more about myself, and since everyone on the baseball internet is the aggrieved representative of the cruddy player they were personally excited for, usually I only have to eat my words for happy reasons. Someone was vaguely more productive than I though they would be--I must commit hari-kiri.
Read MoreWhen the Twins announced they were giving left-hander Logan Darnell on Saturday against the White Sox's Chris Sale, one could reasonably assume they were essentially doing the real-life equivalent of pressing the "sim game" button on this one.
But the games are played for a reason, and Saturday night's showdown went, well, about as one would've expected as Sale and the Sox cruised to a 7-0 victory, their third straight in the Twin Cities.
Read MoreWe are awfully hard on Dayan Viciedo round these parts, and I castigate him as frequently as anybody. It would be cowardly of me, then, to ignore him when he is doing well. Over the past 20 games, Viciedo has hit .290/.338/.609 to raise his OPS on the season from .679 to .738.* Although even after that hot streak he is still only at an OPS+ of 103, and none of this has any bearing on the fact that he is one of the worst defensive outfielders in the majors, it always seemed more realistic that if he was going to succeed he would do it by bashing a ton of home runs, not by becoming a complete player. What has been scary is that his power had been strangely absent while it looked like he tooled around, unsuccessfully, with a more patient approach. Then Monday night saw him crush an 0-2 pitch to right-center for a 3-run dinger, his 5th in 10 games. It's not a perfect approach, but that seems more in line with who he is. Way to play to your strengths, Dayan!
Read MoreJohn Danks could get used to this.
A classic tough-luck loser in his prime, the Danks we know now--who has to scrap his way through every night--has now tied his highest win total (8) since 2010 after the Sox rallied on Brandon Workman and the Red Sox for a 8-3 victory, their third-straight.
Read MoreWhen Lloyd McClendon's lineup for Friday night's tilt between the White Sox and Mariners was posted about four hours before first pitch, one had to assume it would be a rough night for Seattle's offense.
Sending out six left-handed hitters against Chris Sale — who has been borderline untouchable against lefties this season — didn't seem the wisest strategy.
What one couldn't assume is how the White Sox's offense would fare against Seattle starter Roenis Elias.
Well, Sale was as dominant as expected and Jose Abreu & Co. provided the Fourth of July Fireworks show as the White Sox cruised to a 7-1 victory in the first of three games at U.S. Cellular Field.
Read MoreMLB has announced their Home Run Derby captains, who are tasked with selecting the players from their league they’d like to hit homeruns alongside. It’s a relief that the league is sticking with this format if only because it lessens the impact of their oddly constructed ballot. Naturally, there’s been some interest voiced in seeing Jose Abreu be among the participants. Accompanying that interest is a section of folks that feel that Jose Abreu would be ruined immediately afterward, and should therefore steer far clear of anything that asks him to hit dingers as if it is his job to do so.
Read MoreLast week started out in very promising fashion. Monday saw a thriller where the Tigers kept coming back, but the White Sox had an answer every time, holding on to win 6-5. The next night the offense lit up Justin Verlander, pulling the squad back to .500 once again and back to within 2.5 games of the first place Tigers. It prompted James to question whether the team hadn't played their way into thinking that they should be buyers at the deadline in what was supposed to be a rebuilding year. Then the next four games happened.
Read MoreHector Noesi actually looked pretty good to start the game on Saturday. He had a very clear plan the first time through the lineup, getting ahead of hitters on strike one, sitting about 92, and then attacking very aggressively once getting to two strikes, dialing it up to 94-95, going up and in on righties, and sweeping his breaking stuff everywhere. At first he only allowed a few unlucky hits on weak contact that went for no damage. Then the fourth inning was a combination of poor control by Noesi, atrocious defense (a Leury Garcia error and a Dayan Viciedo-it-wasn't-called-an-official-error-but-he-messed-up) meant the Royals would put up a 5-spot. Danny Duffy was on his game and that was far more than he would need.
Read MoreOr as Nick points out, who cares what happens to this point? The damage had already been done to Chris Sale's arm with the 22 high-stress pitches thrown on to the end of his outing, and to that bat, with whatever Sale did to it. The season is a facade for development and maintenance of the Sox best assets, and there's no real use for the facade by October.
Read MoreThere was a month-long period where these appearances weren't popping up 1-2 times per week and lifting us out of the daily trudge of a .500 baseball team. Let us never speak of it again.
Read MoreAndre Rienzo has had worse starts than the outing he put together in Sunday's 7-1 loss to the Yankees, but the numbers might not necessarily show it.
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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