One of the worst Sox losses I've ever witnessed

[iamshack]

What did Sale do?

He took a bat with him back into the tunnel to beat the living s*** out of something...

[iamshack]

You don't have to go back very far to see that. Robin was an idiot to bring his closer into a 3-0 game in the 9th with John Danks pitching. An absolute idiot.

I actually don't remember a lot of hemming and hawing about that decision.

[Dick Allen]

I actually don't remember a lot of hemming and hawing about that decision.

After the game he was a total idiot.

[Buehrle>Wood]

I actually don't remember a lot of hemming and hawing about that decision.

Robin was an idiot that day too although it was more for what he did with the lineup.

 

 

 

Not that the Danks situation is even remotely comparable to last night, but someone will still try.

[LittleHurt05]

I didn't disagree with letting him face Trout...at that point, Sale might have been the best shot to get him out. But then do you leave him in to face Pujols with that logic too?

 

I guess it depends how the Trout at bat went down. If he popped him up on the first pitch keep him in. If it was a long at bat with Trout hitting it hard at someone, then maybe you take him out.

 

 

 

[caulfield12]

I still haven't seen anyone come up with some specific areas of managing they feel Ventura is extraordinarily good at...

 

If Cooper makes ALL of the pitching decisions, what does Ventura do other than fill out the line-up card and argue with umpires and make replay challenges occasionally?

 

Wouldn't you then have to argue that Steverson and Cooper are more important to the team's success, then?

 

 

 

On the other hand, you're looking at a starting line-up right now in a large degree of flux...it's quite possible that only Jose Abreu is back next year. Of course, it's likely that Eaton will still be around, but it wouldn't be going out on a limb to say we're likely to have 6-7 different starters for Opening Day in 2015 (and certainly by the end of 2015) compared to today's line-up.

Edited June 8, 2014 by caulfield12

[Buehrle>Wood]

I still haven't seen anyone come up with some specific areas of managing they feel Ventura is extraordinarily good at...

I was going to say that too. You won't get any though. It's like the strange "defense" of Greg Walker. No one ever actually defended him or thought he was good, just people like to argue and talk in circles. Same with RV.

[Dick Allen]

I was going to say that too. You won't get any though. It's like the strange "defense" of Greg Walker. No one ever actually defended him or thought he was good, just people like to argue and talk in circles. Same with RV.

Players like playing for him. Sale,Abreu, Eaton, Beckham all on the DL this year. Johnson and Paulino train wrecks, and a team a lot of the Ventura haters said had no chance at the playoffs with a full roster, still have a shot.

 

The fact that you are still pissed off they are losing and not the "good fans" we are supposed to be not caring if they lose so their draft pick is higher, shows he is doing a job. There is a fight in this team.

Edited June 8, 2014 by Dick Allen

[caulfield12]

I was going to say that too. You won't get any though. It's like the strange "defense" of Greg Walker. No one ever actually defended him or thought he was good, just people like to argue and talk in circles. Same with RV.

 

 

For example, Ozzie was great (especially in the beginning) at 1) knowing how long to go with his starters, especially getting a lot out of Garland, 2) having an intuitive/innate sense of how to use the bullpen wisely until the second half of his Sox career when he got lazy and went with Baseball 101 textbook managing.

 

He was also (like what he said or not) excellent at taking the pressure of his teams/players by bringing a lot of attention to himself or creating issues. Baseball is also partially about entertainment, and I'm not going to go out as far as greg775 on this one, but Ventura can be boring. Now, in the end, it doesn't really matter, as long as he inspires his players to play hard for him and they respect him. Clearly, they have fought harder to come back in many games this season, but they've also never come close to finding a rhythm or going on a long winning (or losing) streak. A lot of that's attributable due to the transitional state of this team, of course.

[caulfield12]

Players like playing for him. Sale,Abreu, Eaton, Beckham all on the DL this year. Johnson and Paulino train wrecks, and a team a lot of the Ventura haters said had no chance at the playoffs with a full roster, still have a shot.

 

 

Of course, you can say the same thing about 20-24 teams in the majors.

 

Even the Astros (with Springer and Singleton now up), Cubs and DBacks are showing signs of life. The Rays might be the "deadest" of them all at the moment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“It sucked,” Sale said. “There’s no doubt about it. When you put as much effort, and kind of your heart and soul into a game and it unravels like that, more than anything, I’m just kind of disappointed. I threw a good pitch to a better hitter and things happen.

 

“That’s why this game is as crazy as it is. You love it one minute, and you hate it the next.”

 

The White Sox loved life headed into the eighth inning.

 

Fangraphs.com’s probability for a White Sox victory stood at 98.4 percent.

 

Sale entered at 93 pitches and with a shutout intact. He had only allowed three hits, though two came in the seventh inning before Sale struck out C.J. Cron to strand a pair.

 

“He was going pretty good by that point,” White Sox manager Robin Ventura said.

 

“You’re not going to pull him out the way he’s going there. You have to let him have his game.”

 

 

Howie Kendrick worked a full count and singled on the ninth pitch of the at-bat to load the bases for Trout. Trout fouled off two fastballs and then worked his count full before he crushed an 86-mph changeup from Sale.

 

Prior to the seventh, when he allowed five runs (four earned) and four hits, Sale had allowed two earned runs and seven hits in his previous 32 innings.

 

“It doesn’t matter what you’ve done up until then,” Sale said. “It matters how you finish it, and they finished it.

 

“I don’t really remember much from it. I just remember that ball going over the fence and wanting to rip my own head off.”

 

Everything was going according to plan, Sale destined for his sixth win in six decisions.

 

Even as the inning unfolded in nightmare fashion -- the botched ground ball, Kendrick’s bleeder to the right side -- Sale wanted every chance to hang on and finish the game.

 

“Yeah, without a doubt, I wanted to be in there,” Sale said. “I wanted to be in there, for sure. Without a doubt.”

 

Kudos to Sale for tipping his cap to Trout though, he didn't make any excuses. Just disappointed with himself, and that's to be expected from the ace of any team in that situation.

www.csnchicago.com (Dan Hayes)

Edited June 8, 2014 by caulfield12

[Dick Allen]

Of course, you can say the same thing about 20-24 teams in the majors.

 

Even the Astros (with Springer and Singleton now up), Cubs and DBacks are showing signs of life. The Rays might be the "deadest" of them all at the moment.

And if you wait to see what the results were, you too can manage better than any manager in history. Sure, after the fact, taking Sale out after the guy reached on an error is the move everyone would have made. It is obvious. And sure, after Petricka and his 1.50 ERA come in an blow the game, unless you are the idiot Ventura is, Putnam should have been used.

 

Just go to the archives of the gamethread against the Yankees where Danks gets pulled after 8 leading 3-0, and the Sox lose. Many of the complainers are the same, but they now are using the opposite argument. It is funny Ventura is becoming like Obama to a republican to many posters here. It doesn't matter what he does, it is wrong.

[The Ultimate Champion]

That was a hard loss to watch but it doesn't really bother me at all. Part of me actually likes (if not loves) the decision to leave Sale in through all that. Yes, he was gassed, yes his defense let him down once again, yes he was facing Trout who hit the ball hard off him before & who had seen everything Sale had to offer, BUT if he gets through that inning what does that do for his confidence level? The bomb to Delmon Young in DET isn't something he has forgotten, and this situation, getting through that is kind of like getting even there.

 

I think lost in all this stuff is that we're developing Sale too here. This is not a contending season nor should we treat it as one. Sale is already an ace, but he's also going to be our horse in the playoffs, and facing that kind of extreme pressure in a non-contending regular season game could be a good thing in the long run.

 

Did Robin manage himself to a loss? Of course, and he's a pretty poor game manager anyway and we've known this for a while. I don't care so much about that. I do like him trusting Sale to that degree though, even though I completely disagree with putting a similar level of trust in any other pitcher on our team, especially a closer. But overall I'm not sure Robin is going to be the guy when we're a great team again, in fact, I'm not sure that was ever the idea on the Sox FO part anyway. I think Robin was a purely developmental type of guy who had upside to be more than that.

 

Anyway it just doesn't really bother me. Sale is our guy. That loss hurts our ego, it certainly hurts mine, but again this is going to be our horse in the playoffs, this is the guy we're going to ride deep on, and as long as you keep the guy healthy & you're making sure he's not so gassed that his mechanics are off & he is endangering himself, then I say take the kid gloves off and let him develop as the bulldog he wants to be.

 

And lastly I have to say I am certainly not in love with Tyler Flowers game calling at all. I can't remember the hitter, think it was Hamilton, but he had Hamilton set up to be put away with the fastball on the outside/off the plate, or at least it would have been tough for him to make contract out there, yet Flowers calls slow again in and it's ripped for a hit. Also vs. Trout in the slam sequence which you could see coming well into Kendrick's AB, Trout was really close to timing the fastball but you could tell he was looking offspeed. I get why you don't want to give him a fastball 3-2 with the bases loaded but why the f*** don't you throw the slider? He's looking for less velocity anyway and he's close enough to the fastball to get the bat out there and hit it hard, so give him some break. A 3-2 slider to the best offensive weapon in baseball, bases jacked, game on the line etc. that's balls right there and the correct call. No way should Flowers have called a change right there IMO, either another fastball which he was behind on but close to or you give him the wipeout pitch. I just don't like the way Flowers calls things sometimes and I don't think it's coming from the bench because I don't think Robin really cares about that part of the game.

[caulfield12]

And if you wait to see what the results were, you too can manage better than any manager in history. Sure, after the fact, taking Sale out after the guy reached on an error is the move everyone would have made. It is obvious. And sure, after Petricka and his 1.50 ERA come in an blow the game, unless you are the idiot Ventura is, Putnam should have been used.

 

Just go to the archives of the gamethread against the Yankees where Danks gets pulled after 8 leading 3-0, and the Sox lose. Many of the complainers are the same, but they now are using the opposite argument. It is funny Ventura is becoming like Obama to a republican to many posters here. It doesn't matter what he does, it is wrong.

 

The fact of the matter is that Ventura still thought the game was safely in hand, so he had his 3rd or 4th (after Belisario, Putnam and Webb) best reliever out there thinking it wasn't even a save situation yet...and by the time everything fell apart, which was quite quickly, there probably wasn't enough time to get Putnam ready.

 

That's a tough one. I know that with the way Hamilton has been hitting recently, and matching up with a power pitcher in Petricka instead of the more finesse/movement guy...I never would have had Petricka face Hamilton. That's not second-guessing.

 

As far as when to remove him, yeah, there's going to be a split between after the 7th (those worried about Sale's elbow falling off every time he nears 100 pitches), after the initial double, after the RBI single by Ianetta and THEN almost everyone retroactively is saying after the Ramirez error.

 

Of course, Sale's not Quintana and hasn't been snake-bitten and Trout was 1/10 against Sale, hadn't looked good and Chris was still throwing in the mid 90's.

 

I guess even if Quintana was in that same situation, Ventura would argue that leaving him out there and forcing him to fight through adversity is the best approach for his career long-term, even if it results in short-term losses and frustration.

[caulfield12]

That was a hard loss to watch but it doesn't really bother me at all. Part of me actually likes (if not loves) the decision to leave Sale in through all that. Yes, he was gassed, yes his defense let him down once again, yes he was facing Trout who hit the ball hard off him before & who had seen everything Sale had to offer, BUT if he gets through that inning what does that do for his confidence level? The bomb to Delmon Young in DET isn't something he has forgotten, and this situation, getting through that is kind of like getting even there.

 

I think lost in all this stuff is that we're developing Sale too here. This is not a contending season nor should we treat it as one. Sale is already an ace, but he's also going to be our horse in the playoffs, and facing that kind of extreme pressure in a non-contending regular season game could be a good thing in the long run.

 

Did Robin manage himself to a loss? Of course, and he's a pretty poor game manager anyway and we've known this for a while. I don't care so much about that. I do like him trusting Sale to that degree though, even though I completely disagree with putting a similar level of trust in any other pitcher on our team, especially a closer. But overall I'm not sure Robin is going to be the guy when we're a great team again, in fact, I'm not sure that was ever the idea on the Sox FO part anyway. I think Robin was a purely developmental type of guy who had upside to be more than that.

 

Anyway it just doesn't really bother me. Sale is our guy. That loss hurts our ego, it certainly hurts mine, but again this is going to be our horse in the playoffs, this is the guy we're going to ride deep on, and as long as you keep the guy healthy & you're making sure he's not so gassed that his mechanics are off & he is endangering himself, then I say take the kid gloves off and let him develop as the bulldog he wants to be.

 

And lastly I have to say I am certainly not in love with Tyler Flowers game calling at all. I can't remember the hitter, think it was Hamilton, but he had Hamilton set up to be put away with the fastball on the outside/off the plate, or at least it would have been tough for him to make contract out there, yet Flowers calls slow again in and it's ripped for a hit. Also vs. Trout in the slam sequence which you could see coming well into Kendrick's AB, Trout was really close to timing the fastball but you could tell he was looking offspeed. I get why you don't want to give him a fastball 3-2 with the bases loaded but why the f*** don't you throw the slider? He's looking for less velocity anyway and he's close enough to the fastball to get the bat out there and hit it hard, so give him some break. A 3-2 slider to the best offensive weapon in baseball, bases jacked, game on the line etc. that's balls right there and the correct call. No way should Flowers have called a change right there IMO, either another fastball which he was behind on but close to or you give him the wipeout pitch. I just don't like the way Flowers calls things sometimes and I don't think it's coming from the bench because I don't think Robin really cares about that part of the game.

 

Strangely enough, I'm finding myself agreeing with most of that.

 

My problem is more with what happened after the Trout GS.

 

And Flowers, for all his offensive improvement, has regressed in some phases of the game defensively....especially pitch framing and blocking.

Edited June 8, 2014 by caulfield12

[iamshack]

Strangely enough, I'm finding myself agreeing with most of that.

 

My problem is more with what happened after the Trout GS.

 

And Flowers, for all his offensive improvement, has regressed in some phases of the game defensively....especially pitch framing and blocking.

All I can say is leaving Sale in there to pitch to Trout was dangerous...it's too soon off his injury to have him trying to get Trout there having thrown that many pitches. If this is a developmental season, and not a competitive one, you don't risk Sale exerting too much effort there just to try and save the game.

[flavum]

The Sox are soft, like their manager.

[qwerty]

No thank you. This isn't little league.

 

Fell asleep in the 6th...thank God.

 

 

Agree that is why he was not allowed on team bus after the game. He had to walk back to the hotel.

 

You jest...

 

 

Say Sale went down for the rest of this year, and out all of next season. Hell, Sale just misses the rest of this season if that sounds nicer. Now he comes back... and he simply is no longer the Chris Sale fans so fondly remember. So say Sale is now only capable of pitching like a damn fine number 2 starter from the injury on. Think even crazier and say he becomes a middle of the rotation starter, in comparison to a contender for the Cy Young, year in, year out.

 

Want to know what happens?

 

 

Biggest thread in all of this very websites history. The server would be destroyed on the day the news broke. The inevitable "Catch all anything Chris Sale injures himself" thread would get bumped for a decade at the very least whenever someone got bitter over Sale's name merely being mentioned. I know these posters far too well to expect anything different. In this case, they would sadly all be right.

[The Ultimate Champion]

All I can say is leaving Sale in there to pitch to Trout was dangerous...it's too soon off his injury to have him trying to get Trout there having thrown that many pitches. If this is a developmental season, and not a competitive one, you don't risk Sale exerting too much effort there just to try and save the game.

Robin wasn't trying to save the game, he was putting his confidence in Sale. Saving the game would have been getting a reliever up very early in the inning, at least one manager visit while the guy warms up, then he sends Flowers out there, etc. Protocol. Robin was letting Sale pitch through the adversity. No problem with that IMO.

 

The injury stuff, what you're looking for is mechanical changes that are compensating for something. That's almost certainly 90% or more of what Don Cooper is looking at and monitoring during every single one of Sale's starts. Doesn't matter if the bags are empty or loaded, or if it's the 1st inning or the 9th, if Coop sees something he's going to run out there immediately and the bullpen will be up and going.

 

Weaver the night before, that's the kind of stuff Sale needs to learn how to do, and he's been becoming much more of a pitcher. He gets his groundballs when he needs them, his Ks when he needs him, and the Trout situation last night was the toughest situation any pitcher ever gets himself in during the course of a regular season game. Only way that situation can get any tougher is if you magnify it by the playoffs. But sometimes you get a situation like that where the hitter has seen everything you've got, he's on the change, almost on the fastball, you haven't thrown him a good slider yet during the game but he's seen it against the rest of the lineup and you certainly can't hang him one, etc. There's a point where as great as the stuff is it is not enough, you need to pitch/think your way through it, and that's where we are with Sale. Remove all the health/injury stuff and look at Sale just in terms of his young age, experience level, and level of dominance and the path he's on is the kind of path that takes you to the Hall if you can pitch long enough to get there. So obviously he is going to want to model himself after all those types of pitchers, and he's just learning how to do that.

 

But yeah, Coop is all over the mechanics. There is zero chance they f*** around with Sale at all if they see something concerning. And there's no reason to confuse the discomforting feeling of tight situational baseball pressure with "oh my god his elbow is going to snap." That's not fair to him at all nor is it even logical.

Edited June 8, 2014 by The Ultimate Champion

[caulfield12]

The Sox are soft, like their manager.

 

 

Who's next, Aaron Rowand? Carl Everett? Jim Thome? Konerko? Thome and Konerko personality-wise would be no different from Ventura, one would imagine.

 

AJ as player/manager like Don Kessinger or Lou Boudreau?

 

 

Have always thought Omar Vizquel would make a good manager...pretty sure he's currently with the Tigers' coaching staff, working with their infielders. He did a lot of great things with Alexei, and defense is one of our biggest areas we need to show improvement in to be a playoff-caliber team. Of course, Robin Ventura because almost as famous for his defense as for his hitting.

 

 

 

FWIW, a lot of people who watch Trout say he struggles the most with sliders and a bit with two-seamers this year.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/forcing-a-r...out-mike-trout/

Edited June 8, 2014 by caulfield12

[LittleHurt05]

The Sox are soft, like their manager.

 

All year I've been hearing about how much heart this team has, but now suddenly they are soft because the best hitter in the world hit a home run.

[flavum]

All year I've been hearing about how much heart this team has, but now suddenly they are soft because the best hitter in the world hit a home run.

 

I'm just pissed.

 

My problem with Ventura is that I never feel he's in charge of anything. He's just a face with words coming out of it before and after the games. It's pretty on-par with what is going on in baseball...Hire a nice guy that the players like, give him information, let him manage more-or-less "by the book", and do interviews.

[Kyyle23]

Who's next, Aaron Rowand? Carl Everett? Jim Thome? Konerko? Thome and Konerko personality-wise would be no different from Ventura, one would imagine.

 

AJ as player/manager like Don Kessinger or Lou Boudreau?

 

 

Have always thought Omar Vizquel would make a good manager...pretty sure he's currently with the Tigers' coaching staff, working with their infielders. He did a lot of great things with Alexei, and defense is one of our biggest areas we need to show improvement in to be a playoff-caliber team. Of course, Robin Ventura because almost as famous for his defense as for his hitting.

 

 

 

FWIW, a lot of people who watch Trout say he struggles the most with sliders and a bit with two-seamers this year.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/forcing-a-r...out-mike-trout/

 

I don't know who is next, please list 50 more ex players

[The Ultimate Champion]

Who's next, Aaron Rowand? Carl Everett? Jim Thome? Konerko? Thome and Konerko personality-wise would be no different from Ventura, one would imagine.

 

AJ as player/manager like Don Kessinger or Lou Boudreau?

 

 

Have always thought Omar Vizquel would make a good manager...pretty sure he's currently with the Tigers' coaching staff, working with their infielders. He did a lot of great things with Alexei, and defense is one of our biggest areas we need to show improvement in to be a playoff-caliber team. Of course, Robin Ventura because almost as famous for his defense as for his hitting.

 

 

 

FWIW, a lot of people who watch Trout say he struggles the most with sliders and a bit with two-seamers this year.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/forcing-a-r...out-mike-trout/

One other thing about Sale is that he should call off the catcher any time he wants to. And not saying he would have done that there, but that's what the great pitchers do and he's a great pitcher himself. Buehrle is really one of the exceptions, but if you've got a Sale out there and he knows the game and he knows how to pitch then you let him be the man out there, and if he puts it on his own shoulders & gets hurt by it, so be it. He can take it.

[The Ultimate Champion]

I don't know who is next, please list 50 more ex players

lol

 

Don't ask for something you don't want to get.

[caulfield12]

I'm just pissed.

 

My problem with Ventura is that I never feel he's in charge of anything. He's just a face with words coming out of it before and after the games. It's pretty on-par with what is going on in baseball...Hire a nice guy that the players like, give him information, let him manage more-or-less "by the book", and do interviews.

 

 

It's back to the "figurehead/symbol/take one for the organization and serve as a buffer during rebuilding" thing again.

 

Cooper and Steverson have their clearly-identified roles and outputs, but what is Robin really in charge of? Certainly, it's not fundamentals and defense, or something about his message hasn't gotten through very clearly. Lack of consequences/punishment?

 

Or maybe it's a lack of players/capable depth to be able to send a message to guys like DeAza who seem like they might need a kick in the butt from time to time....Alexei Ramirez in past seasons, for example.

Edited June 8, 2014 by caulfield12