Tuesday, May 31, 2005
A New White Sox Fan Is Born
Here is an essentially unedited e-mail sent to me by a good friend, whose young son is developing allegiences to baseball teams. Lots of baseball teams.
To: SuperNoVa
From: Don Money
Last night, during dinner, we were watching the Angels-Sox ninth
inning. Here is a near-verbatim transcript of my conversation with
[my son]:
T: Are the Nationals still playing?
Me: No that's a different game.
T: Who is that, the Yankees?
Me: No, it's the White Sox against the Angels.
T: Where are the White Sox from?
Me: Chicago.
T: You went to Chicago!
Me: Yes I did.
T: Where the Angels from?
Me: California.
T: Are the Angels girls?
Me: Not recently.
T: Are the White Sox girls?
Me: Not recently.
T: Do girls play baseball?
Me: Yes, sometimes, but not in the big leagues.
[Angels score to take the lead]
Me: Wow!
T: What happened?
Me: The Angels are winning 4-3.
T: The Carolina Angels are winning?
Me: Yes.
T: Go Angels!
[Later, the White Sox win]
Me: Unbelievable.
T: What?
Me: The White Sox won that game and they were losing.
T: How many did they have?
Me: They had 5 and the Angels had 4.
T: They won 5 to 4?
Me: Yes.
T: Go White Sox! I like the White Sox. I like the Yankees, the
Nationals, the Pirates, the Blue Jays, the Red Sox and the White Sox.
So, I expect the White Sox will have a new fan for the next 24 to 48
hours, before Thomas learns that there are still 24 or so teams he
doesn't know about.
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
End Of The Streak, Thanks Joe Crede
Much to everyone's dismay, Jon Garland's perfect start to the season ended last night with a 4-0 shutout loss to the Angels. And while the blame can easily be passed around the Sox offense (giving some credit to Ervin Santana), the Sox played poorly enough on defense to lose this game.
The first two Angels runs scored because Joe Crede dropped Timo Perez's perfect throw from centerfield to nail Dallas McPherson at third when Orlando Cabrera singled to center. There are no ifs, ands or buts about it, Crede should have been charged with an error, and the two runs that scored on Kennedy's following double should have been unearned. I don't know why the official scorer did not see it that way - it's a mystery to me.
The third run of the night for the Angels, scored in the bottom of the sixth, was one of those flukes of the way the game is played. Finley doubles to right, then is moved over on a bunt. Garland throws a great pitch to Benji Molina, he gets jammed and hits a blooper just over second base. Were the Sox playing back in normal positions - say if they had a 3 run lead - Uribe catches the ball easily, and the run does not score. But, playing in with a 2 run deficit, the ball falls in, and the Angels take a 3-0 lead.
It's frustrating to see Garland's streak to end that way. Had he had defensive help, he would not have allowed the first two runs. Had he had offensive help, he would not have allowed the third run. Last night was simply one of those examples of how hard it is to win 9 in a row - the ball doesn't always bounce your way, even if you pitch well enough to shut out the other team.
Monday, May 23, 2005
Sox's Power Performance
Well, this started as a reply to this post at Soxtalk.com, but it got long and I figured it was worth a blog post, seeing that I haven't posted in almost three weeks (ugh). Anyway, the poster's thought was that the Sox's power "outage" was just a myth, given that the Sox were tied for 6th in the major leagues with 50 home runs. I'm not sure it isn't a myth.
The Sox, with 50 home runs in 44 games are on a 182 home run pace - that's 60 fewer home runs than last year. That is a huge drop off (about 25%) from the 242 home runs in 2004.
But, if you haven't noticed, home runs are down all over the league. Last year, AL teams hit 1.15 home runs per game, and the Sox hit 1.49 home runs per game. This year, AL teams have hit .99 home runs per game, while the Sox have hit 1.14 home runs per game. So, instead of hitting 30% more homers than average, the Sox have hit 15% more home runs than average. That's a decline, but much less than the 25% decline in absolute terms.
It's unclear whether the Sox will hit more home runs in the remaining 118 games. Here are the career home runs rates per 100 AB of the Sox starters compared to this year:
| Player | 2005 | Career | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Podsednik | 0.00 | 1.61 | -100% |
| Iguchi | 2.76 | 4.69* | -41%* |
| Rowand | 1.92 | 3.59 | -46% |
| Konerko | 7.14 | 5.06 | 41% |
| Dye | 6.29 | 4.29 | 47% |
| Pierzynski | 5.88 | 2.18 | 170% |
| Everett | 3.68 | 4.17 | -12% |
| Crede | 2.86 | 3.92 | -27% |
| Uribe | 3.08 | 2.86 | 8% |
* based on performance in Japan.
As you can tell, Rowand and Crede are decently behind their career home run rates, but Konerko, Dye and Pierzynski (due mostly to the latter two's recent home run streaks) are all well above their career rates. Based on this, unless Frank Thomas comes back and puts up some big home run numbers, I think it's fair to say that this Sox team is hitting as many or more home runs through this point as one would expect.
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
Does Jon Garland's Hot Start Remind You Of Something?
You know what just popped into my head? The White Sox have had another guy with a low strikeout rate like Jon Garland have a great start in the recent past. His name was John Snyder. And you probably felt pretty good about his chances at being a top-of-the-rotation starter on the 15th day of May 1999. I know I did. After that amazing start, Snyder was horrendous, allowing 5 or more runs in 7 of his next 8 starts. He wound up allowing 22 home runs in his last 18 starts, and finished with 6.68 ERA. 6.68!
Do I think Jon Garland is going to wind up like John Snyder - banished to the Brewers in a year's time? No, but it's just another note of caution to take from a very surprisingly good start by Garland. We've been fooled before by his performance. We shouldn't be fooled again if his ERA pops back up over 4.00 and he's strung together a streak of a few stinkers in a row. Like this stretch of games, for instance.
Walking In the Minors (again)
One of the things I like to track is which of the Sox's minor league hitters is showing patience at the plate and drawing walks. A good rough cut-off for "patience" is about 1 walks per 10 at-bats (1 per 10 plate appearances is even better, but this will do). I started tracking it last year, and I found it useful to know which of the prospects you might hear about on soxtalk.com are patient hitters.
So far this year, it looks like patience is up among the farm system. Some of this is the introduction of patient, former major leaguers like Jeremy Giambi and Greg Norton into the system. But a lot of it is organic. Lots of folks at Birmingham and Winston-Salem seem to be getting the patience concept. But the winner of the "most walks" concept is Adam Ricks down in Kannapolis, who is providing a lot of value to the Intimidators despite his .216 batting average by getting on base 19 times via the free pass. Your hitting will come around, Adam...keep up the patience at the plate.
| Team | Name | AB | BB | BB/AB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Charlotte | B Anderson | 83 | 9 | 0.11 |
| Charlotte | G Norton | 29 | 7 | 0.24 |
| Charlotte | J Burke | 81 | 9 | 0.11 |
| Charlotte | S Bikowski | 55 | 7 | 0.13 |
| Charlotte | M Spidale | 63 | 7 | 0.11 |
| Birmingham | A Gonzalez | 70 | 11 | 0.16 |
| Birmingham | J Fields | 82 | 9 | 0.11 |
| Birmingham | J Giambi | 11 | 2 | 0.18 |
| Birmingham | R Sweeney | 30 | 4 | 0.13 |
| Birmingham | D Blakely | 87 | 9 | 0.10 |
| Birmingham | G Reyes | 45 | 5 | 0.11 |
| Birmingham | C Haggerty | 27 | 6 | 0.22 |
| Birmingham | A Gray | 54 | 6 | 0.11 |
| Winston-Salem | L Daigle | 88 | 10 | 0.11 |
| Winston-Salem | M Schnurstein | 75 | 11 | 0.15 |
| Winston-Salem | M Myers | 61 | 10 | 0.16 |
| Winston-Salem | R Nanita | 72 | 11 | 0.15 |
| Winston-Salem | N Martel Jr | 29 | 4 | 0.14 |
| Winston-Salem | J Shaffer | 25 | 5 | 0.20 |
| Winston-Salem | N Hall | 11 | 2 | 0.18 |
| Kannapolis | J Hansen | 88 | 9 | 0.10 |
| Kannapolis | D Cook | 61 | 11 | 0.18 |
| Kannapolis | A Ricks | 74 | 19 | 0.26 |
| Kannapolis | C King | 57 | 8 | 0.14 |
Monday, May 02, 2005
Nursery Rhyme for Juan Rincon
To the Tune of Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater:
Wanted extra in his heater.
Urine test didn't go so well.
And Bud put him in a 10-game cell
Thank you, I'll be here all week.
Other thoughts, things I'm working on and hopefull will post about soon - Walking in the Minors (how about that Brian Anderson?), Importance of Double Plays, Relative OBP is all that matters, Jermaine Dye - we are worse in RF this year?
