Injuries always play a role in determining the success or failure of a team in a given season. Even a team like the White Sox that has a solid history of keeping their players healthy is affected in one way or another by players lost to injury.
Read MoreAs we prepare for his Spring debut, Carlos Rodon's likelihood for beginning the season in Triple-A is one of the profoundly unfun elements of modern efficiency-obsessed and cost-conscious major sports. The White Sox have the temptation of an extra season of paying Rodon a suppressed salary, all they have to do is stumble for a few months pretending both Hector Noesi and John Danks are better, or good bets to outperform him during the first part of 2015; a year in which they're said to be competing for a championship.
Read MoreSpring Training is finally here. What this means is we can all get excited about the sight of actual major league baseball players on an actual baseball field, and then cry over the realization that we're still six weeks away from meaningful games being played.
Still, the season of optimism is upon us, so let's take a look at some of the important things to monitor during the White Sox's time in Arizona.
Read MoreAt the non-tender deadline, the White Sox had five guys to decide whether to...well, you guessed it...non-tender. And as it turns out, they non-tendered a guy!
It was not Dayan Viciedo.
Read MoreWhy aren't people nice to Lucas Harrell? The 29-year-old former White Sox hurler, who will always have given us those six decent innings vs. the A's on the night right after Daniel Hudson got traded, signed a contract to play in Japan. It's a new opportunity for him but hardly the crowning achievement of any American pitching career.
On May 2, 2013 David Laurila of FanGraphs posted a detailed profile of Harrell, after he had sinkerballed his way to 193 innings of 107 ERA+ ball the previous season. Two days later the Tigers put up eight runs on him and chased him before the fifth inning in a 17-2 romp, and his results have been trash ever since.
Still, this from Brett Anderson is some unexpected shade.
Read MoreNo, the much-anticipated Carlos Rodon promotion isn't here yet, but the White Sox called up a host of players ahead of Tuesday's series opener against Minnesota, promoting seven players from Triple-A Charlotte.
Read MoreThere's an identity that we want to understand the 2014 White Sox under, in which Sunday's 7-5 triumph in the rubber match against a desperate and hungry Blue Jays team fits perfectly. The White Sox flashed dizzying, game-changing offensive potential, had their lack of pitching depth exposed by both starter and reliever performance, and did just enough to keep the watching fun and not sort of tragic. Six games under .500, obviously the prototypical 2014 White Sox game would seem to be a loss, and their offense's season performance does not live up to the ideals their juggernaut April inspired, but the Sox have had less than 10 games where their young offensive core of Adam Eaton, Jose Abreu, Avisail Garcia, and yeah, Conor Gillaspie have been operating at once. They didn't build on that total Sunday, but a seven-run outburst stoked its legend all the same.
Read MoreBoy, this is getting fun, isn't it?
Friday's 13-3 loss at the hands of the Seattle Mariners was yet another showing — the third in recent memory — in which the White Sox's pitching woes somehow managed to overshadow the offensive dry spell that is getting more and more pathetic by day.
Read MoreThe White Sox took the lead while Frank Thomas was reciting his love poem to baseball, so they got the thematic punch down in an otherwise miserable day where they were again mystified by Yohan Pinto and left the tying run at third despite having three cracks to make contact compelling enough to bring Leury Garcia home in the ninth. An entire weekend without getting Twain'd is just too much to ask. This day gave us the Frank Thomas speech, already. Don't be selfish. They lost 4-3, in case you wondered.
Read MoreFive innings worth of a crisply pitched game is lot of innings. It's most of the game, even! It's certainly plenty to ask of Scott Carroll. But as Carroll snuck out of the fifth inning, throwing something that vaguely resembled a wipeout slider but obviously couldn't be, it was obvious that the Sox were not preparing the calvary to rescue Carroll at the first spot of trouble--as they have none--and instead hoping to stretch Carroll out for as long as he could go.
Read MoreJose Abreu hit his 29th home run on Saturday, a 2-run shot that would give the White Sox a lead they would not surrender on their way to victory. Abreu's blast was a laser to opposite field in the fourth inning off a Zach McAllister who had yet to give up a hit to that point. Despite a stint on the 15-day DL with an ankle injury, despite being a rookie, and despite playing through ankle injury for a while before succumbing the DL, Jose Abreu leads the majors in home runs coming into today.
Read MoreScott Carroll and Zach McAllister enter today with a combined ERA of 10.41. Therefore, if my calculations are correct, this should be a day for offenses. At least given that the wheels fell off of Noesi fairly early last night, and that they didn't have to pitch the 9th, the better relievers such as they are had the night off last night. If Scott Carroll can survive Ventura can deploy Putnam and Petricka to try to preserve a lead should one exist.
Read MoreIf we take the last two weeks of play as representative, the White Sox rotation is absolutely aces, and Dayan Viciedo is a power-slugging monster. But I'm still not sure if that provides solace to the Red Sox, who were non-existent in an easy-breezy 4-0 romp in Fenway Park.
Read MoreScott Carroll came out for the seventh inning of Tuesday night's doubleheader nightcap, having gotten steadily hammered throughout the night already, facing his fourth trip through the batting order and trying to keep hold on a one-run deficit.
I can only chuckle at anyone who thinks its wrong to question Robin Ventura's decision-making at this point, but the desperate motivations behind it are also clear: a doubleheader, a horrid bullpen, and other starters who could certainly need a hand this week in games where they stood a better chance. There's so little depth in the Sox pitching staff, Ventura opts for controlled burns.
Read MoreRemember May 28? Besides being yours truly's 27th birthday, it was the night the White Sox wrapped up a three-game sweep of the Cleveland Indians and pushed themselves over .500 by a game. It didn't sound crazy to suggest the Sox could load up and gun for the playoffs.
Read MoreWhite Sox fans expecting a healthy dose of Chris Sale in his second start back from injury saw their dreams cut short on Tuesday night as more than two hours of rain delays forced the ace out after just three innings.
But Scott Carroll, of all people, came to the rescue, scattering five hits over the next three innings and the offense did just enough in a 2-1 win over the Indians in a game that lasted until well after midnight.
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 MoreA mere hours after James depressed us all with his retrospective on Chris Sale's injury spin, the White Sox brought smiles to our faces with this bit of news.
Read MoreThe White Sox starting pitching situation is rough. Monday night, they sent out 29-year-old rookie Scott Carroll to get mollywhopped for the third time in a row, and after a defensive breakdown opened up the floodgates for a five-run first, they counted themselves lucky when he got through three more innings with only one more run. It was an improvement over John Danks' outing on Sunday, after all.
Read MoreImagine a world in which the White Sox did not win the Jose Abreu sweepstakes. A 2014 that never included the exciting young slugger. This is a world in which we instead sit and watch games out of pure routine, wondering when a losing streak long enough to doom the team to another 99 loss season will happen along. We may have just watched Jose Abreu, young Astros slugger manhandle our beloved Pale Hose, making this trip to Kansas City a relief. Respite from watching the opportunity missed make our lives miserable, allowing us to highlight a young pitcher’s (hopefully) triumphant return to his hometown instead of lamenting an offensively questionable immediate future.
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
