How Concerned Should We Be?

[wegner]

2 minutes ago, DoUEvenShift said:

You're right. 

I actually feel like he managed the first game fine (after DK shit the bed)

But the 2nd game lineup and management was awful. If you discount the AAA lineup you gotta have at least some pinch hitters/replacement players in the final 3 innings in a 1 run game/ yea? Maybe I'm just an idiot

Honestly I was so pissed that I turned off the game after the inning Super Joe sent Engel, but there had to be an opportunity to pinch hit late in a 1 run game.  TLR truly just pissed that one away.

[tray]

Vaughn clipped and flipped  Harrison pretty good.. Harrison is lucky he did not take the full brunt of that or he would come have come off on a stretcher.

Injuries happen though so no excuses. Just try to win game 3 and get out of town.

 

[joejoesox]

1. Lack of OBP presence + Injuries

2. Pitching is very weak right now

[Chimpton]

The biggest worry is the lack of offense. Dallas Keuchel was worse than we expected and that game was gone after 2 innings but in the 2nd game the pitchers did their bit limiting the opposition to 2 runs and still the offense could only muster 2 runs across the 2 games. Yes the rotation is weak (hopefully Giolito is back healthy very soon) but unless the offense pulls its weight to help them out this season could go south very quickly.

[ron883]

How worried am I about the Sox? On a scale of 0 to Jack Parkman, I'm at about a 4.

Edited April 21, 2022 by ron883

[caulfield12]

After three more singles and another Anderson error -- marking the second three-error game of the shortstop’s career -- Keuchel was pulled. It was the fourth time in his career that he was unable to get an out in the second inning, and the first time he allowed 10 runs in one start.

“There’s really nothing to say,” Keuchel said. “I watched it back on film, and it wasn’t any better.”

mlb.com

[hogan873]

Well, the good news is that the Sox struck out 21 times yesterday.  The OBP should be rising as we speak.

In all seriousness, it was a very non-competitive day of baseball.  Keuchel looked absolutely terrible once a few mistakes were made behind him.  I could easily be convinced that he purposely threw a meatball to Ramirez that led to the grand slam.  The defense was as bad as it gets in game 1.  Truly little league bullshit.  And the offense was...non-existent.  The only bright spot was the bullpen for the most part.  Banks did exactly what he needed to do and saved the Sox from rolling a position player out to pitch.  Lambert actually pitched okay...and was rewarded by being sent down.

It's very early in the season, and I think we can all agree we can just erase yesterday.  But it was not encouraging at all to see a veteran team that is purportedly championship caliber play like they did yesterday.  I doubt TLR will do much to correct the performance, so it's going to be on the guys on the field to get their heads out of their asses right now.

[Ducksnort]

8 hours ago, fathom said:

And yes, Keuchel is done. Never seen a Sox pitcher that makes it seem so hard to get hitters out.

Shades of Shields and Ervin Santana

[NWINFan]

Usually, I don't worry about three-game losing streaks. Tampa had lost four in a row before winning that last game. But this Cleveland stuff was weird. First, a losing pitcher throws his team under the bus, then the manager throws his team under the bus. The willingness to lose a game against a close division rival is also weird. I hope we don't see any more of this nonsense.

[Balta1701]

41 minutes ago, hogan873 said:

Well, the good news is that the Sox struck out 21 times yesterday.  The OBP should be rising as we speak.

As of now, the White Sox’s OBP is 29th in baseball. Thank goodness for the Reds being awful.

They are also 29th in walks. The Reds have a dozen more, and there’s a big dropoff after team 28. 

Boston: 29
White Sox: 24
Kansas City: 20

[Bob Sacamano]

49 minutes ago, NWINFan said:

Usually, I don't worry about three-game losing streaks. Tampa had lost four in a row before winning that last game. But this Cleveland stuff was weird. First, a losing pitcher throws his team under the bus, then the manager throws his team under the bus. The willingness to lose a game against a close division rival is also weird. I hope we don't see any more of this nonsense.

 

 
edit: damn, it’s now showing from phone. I will embed when I get to my computer.

Edited April 21, 2022 by Balta1701
Tweet repair

[wegner]

I saw that stat during game 1 that Robert is 1st in MLB at swing % on the first pitch...maybe he needs to rethink that strategy.

[wegner]

32 minutes ago, NWINFan said:

Usually, I don't worry about three-game losing streaks. Tampa had lost four in a row before winning that last game. But this Cleveland stuff was weird. First, a losing pitcher throws his team under the bus, then the manager throws his team under the bus. The willingness to lose a game against a close division rival is also weird. I hope we don't see any more of this nonsense.

Anyone think Dallas might be hoping they release his ass so he can try to move on? He probably was none too happy to be left off the playoff roster last season...maybe still holding on to that?

[Jerry McNertney]

The 2-5 hitters, Robert, Abreu, Grandal and Jimenez are hitting a robust .182 combined. With Giolito and Lynn out and the core of the lineup having miserable seasons so far, it's surprising the White Sox have won any games at all.

[SpringfieldFan]

Robert and the rest of the offense won’t be sitting under .200 the rest of the year. It’s an early season slump. Bad stretches happen. The job is to try to steal a win here and there until things inevitably click.

[caulfield12]

16 minutes ago, wegner said:

Anyone think Dallas might be hoping they release his ass so he can try to move on? He probably was none too happy to be left off the playoff roster last season...maybe still holding on to that?

Not really…he would go for the entire waiver period unclaimed and then the Sox would be on the hook for his full salary…BUT  
 

There’s no team in baseball that would claim him and have that option year hanging over their head.  The only way he possibly gets it is pitching every fifth day for the Sox…especially if VV and Cueto don’t pan out.

Edited April 21, 2022 by caulfield12

[Chicago White Sox]

Just now, Jerry McNertney said:

The 2-5 hitters, Robert, Abreu, Grandal and Jimenez are hitting a robust .182 combined. With Giolito and Lynn out and the core of the lineup having miserable seasons so far, it's surprising the White Sox have won any games at all.

The first three have also gotten super unlucky.  Here are their wOBAs vs xwOBAs:

• Robert: .242 | .426
• Abreu: .294 | .448
• Grandal: .179 | .323

Those guys should normalize at some point, especially Grandal’s walk rate.  Add Vaughn, Tim, and the return of Pollock & Moncada eventually and we should have plenty of offense to destroy LHP and beat up on weak RHP.  Tough righties will still be a challenge and Eloy really need to figure his shit out soon because he’s typically been one our best hitters against RHP.  Still feels like a left-handed bat somewhere (2B?) would be very helpful.

[FoxForce2]

1 hour ago, caulfield12 said:

Not really…he would go for the entire waiver period unclaimed and then the Sox would be on the hook for his full salary…BUT  
 

There’s no team in baseball that would claim him and have that option year hanging over their head.  The only way he possibly gets it is pitching every fifth day for the Sox…especially if VV and Cueto don’t pan out.

Over the last couple of years, Keuchel has been at least on controversy-simmer over some of the remarks he's made re: fielding play behind him. I felt that at least some of his earlier remarks were taken out of context by many in that he wasn't specifically criticizing individuals for their play, but was (mostly), pointing out TEAM weakness and poor positioning calls in his remarks. In yesterdays' post game comments, Dallas has raised the controversy a full notch; things may not be at a roiling boil, but the pot is hot. Basically, he came up just short of going full-on diss of TA's and the team's abysmal field play. At the same time, other than the Ramirez dinger, he certainly didn't own up to his own flaws in the fiasco. The Keuchel situation isn't far from getting team-toxic.

Keuchel has publicly stated on 2-3 occasions that he's a ground-ball/contact pitcher that needs a quality fielding team, (especially the infield), behind him to be effective.  The Sox, even with Moncada in play, simply don't meet the criteria of a top 25% defense. The Cardinals or Braves - they ain't. But even if that were the case, Keuchel glosses over the hard-hit rate he's been surrendering at least since last June. The guy has been getting hammered way too often to think about relying on him as a regular starter - but what choice do the Sox have at this point? This a true rock and hard place situation for everyone involved.  

Edited April 21, 2022 by FoxForce2

[The Grinder]

Tony must have taken the 4/20 thing to heart, that or he was drunK

i saw TA flip off the crowd, out of frustration but he needs to grow some thicker skin not a classy thing to do Tim

What happened me thinks is a fluke

Get em today and be back on track

[CentralChamps21]

15 minutes ago, FoxForce2 said:

Keuchel has publicly stated on 2-3 occasions that he's a ground-ball/contact pitcher that needs a quality fielding team, (especially the infield), behind him to be effective. 

It really sucks for Keuchel that they had three gold glove infielders when they signed him and then replaced them with Moncada, Anderson and Abreu. Oh, wait, that's not how it happened.

[Tnetennba]

10 hours ago, hi8is said:

Potatoes.

Mmmmm, potatoes. 

[Balta1701]

1 hour ago, Chicago White Sox said:

The first three have also gotten super unlucky.  Here are their wOBAs vs xwOBAs:

• Robert: .242 | .426
• Abreu: .294 | .448
• Grandal: .179 | .323

Those guys should normalize at some point, especially Grandal’s walk rate.  Add Vaughn, Tim, and the return of Pollock & Moncada eventually and we should have plenty of offense to destroy LHP and beat up on weak RHP.  Tough righties will still be a challenge and Eloy really need to figure his shit out soon because he’s typically been one our best hitters against RHP.  Still feels like a left-handed bat somewhere (2B?) would be very helpful.

Please don’t misinterpret this as meaning “Robert will go hitless the rest of the year”, but something worth considering is that the relationships between exit velocity and results have to be calibrated based on previous results. If the balls are behaving differently in flight, then projections based on previous results would be far less accurate, and the statistics suggest exactly that early this year. From Passan’s insider piece yesterday:

https://www.espn.com/mlb/insider/story/_/id/33766486/why-home-runs-vladimir-guerrero-jr-best-hitter-world-answering-20-early-mlb-questions 

Quote

The sweet spot is somewhere between 20 and 35 degrees. More than 90% of home runs hit this season have left the bat at that angle. The percentage of balls hit 93 mph-plus with 20 to 35 degrees of launch have gone for home runs 29.8% of the time -- the lowest mark over the first 10 team games played since Statcast came to be and down from last year's 34.17%.

A specific area is where the change is really happening, though. It's on balls hit between 100 and 102 mph at those same launch angles. Only 16.42% of such batted balls are going for home runs. Over the past seven years, that number has been 33.1%. That is not just an outlier. It means something is happening.

The likeliest culprit: the ball itself

 

[southsider2k5]

7 minutes ago, Balta1701 said:

Please don’t misinterpret this as meaning “Robert will go hitless the rest of the year”, but something worth considering is that the relationships between exit velocity and results have to be calibrated based on previous results. If the balls are behaving differently in flight, then projections based on previous results would be far less accurate, and the statistics suggest exactly that early this year. From Passan’s insider piece yesterday:

https://www.espn.com/mlb/insider/story/_/id/33766486/why-home-runs-vladimir-guerrero-jr-best-hitter-world-answering-20-early-mlb-questions 

 

Sox pregame a few days back made the case that scientifically the Sox had lost 4 homers due to the cold, and Robert had lost two of those.  Abreu was one, and I can't remember the other one.  The Sox were also leading MLB in games played in the cold.

[Balta1701]

19 minutes ago, southsider2k5 said:

Sox pregame a few days back made the case that scientifically the Sox had lost 4 homers due to the cold, and Robert had lost two of those.  Abreu was one, and I can't remember the other one.  The Sox were also leading MLB in games played in the cold.

But the “scientifically” part of that is the calibration based on previous results. If it’s not the weather but instead it’s largely the ball, then the correct way to say it would be that the white Sox had lost 4 HR due to the ball, and those would only come back if they resinserted the Happy Fun Ball again this season. If it was just the weather, then it would be likely to be an every year phenomenon, which this isn’t.

I would also bet the other was that fly ball Anderson hit to the wall against iiRC Tampa.

[southsider2k5]

1 minute ago, Balta1701 said:

But the “scientifically” part of that is the calibration based on previous results. If it’s not the weather but instead it’s largely the ball, then the correct way to say it would be that the white Sox had lost 4 HR due to the ball, and those would only come back if they resinserted the Happy Fun Ball again this season. If it was just the weather, then it would be likely to be an every year phenomenon, which this isn’t.

I would also bet the other was that fly ball Anderson hit to the wall against iiRC Tampa.

This is in another thread, but also relevant.