Black Sox Blog

Will Carroll finished up the White Sox Team Health Report. It’s a premium BP article so I don’t want to give too much away but there was way too much yellow for my tastes. There were a few reds as well, but none of those were surprises.

And since we’re just days away from the start of the season, here’s how I think things will roll out:

1) Joe Crede will be the biggest surprise of the season. He’ll set career marks in homeruns and batting average, and flirt with 30 homers for the first time.

2) Brandon McCarthy will pitch well enough to ensure a spot in the rotation in 2006

3) Frank Thomas will come back with a vengence and tear up AL pitching, but by the end of the season, you’ll see him back on the DL.

4) While four White Sox starters will have more then ten wins, none will have more then fifteen.

5) The White Sox will finish in third place, behind the Twins and the Indians and will win 77 games.

So nothing earth shattering, but some things to chew on.

Studes, who also runs the Baseball Graphs site, did a nice balanced look at the White Sox. Well worth checking out.

MLB.com has a couple of nice columns up. Once of them discusses how Joe Borchard hasn’t quite lived up to his potential (understatement of the day).

The other talks about my favorite White Sox, Joe Crede. This is a pretty old column, but I ran across this weekend and thought I’d pass it on. Crede’s another guy who hasn’t quite lived up to his billings. Hopefully both of these guys can turn things around this year.

Frank Thomas and Mark Buerhle were both talked about in Will Carroll’s latest Under the Knife. It’s a premium article so I can’t give too much away, but it’s not good for either of them.

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Exile in Wrigleyville has their 2005 season preview up. Excellent work as always, so be sure to check it out.

One of my daily reads, besides all of the other great content at the Hardball Times, is Lee Sinins’ Around the Majors. There’s no easier, or better way to keep up with just about everything that’s going on in the major leagues.

And that’s where I found out that the Sox sent two upstarts down to the minor leagues. Brian Anderson, who probably could have been the starting centerfielder for the big league club had the Sox not traded for Podsednik was sent down along with Ryan Sweeney. Sweeney is less a surprise. The second round pick for the Sox in 2003 is still only 20, and with Jermaine Dye in right field for the forseeable future, he’ll have quite a bit of time to work on his power. He slugged only .379 at Winston Salem last year.

Meanwhile, the Sox hammered the Brewers 17-9 today. Carlos Lee got a little bit of revenge by hitting his fifth homer of the spring, but the White Sox logged 25 hits, including Joe Crede’s first homer. He ended up going four for four and Juan Uribe, who also hit a homer, was four for six with four RBIs. Jon Garlan pitched two shutout innings, but Dustin Hermanson was crushed for five hits and four runs in only an inning of work.

Tomorrow, Exile in Wrigleyville will have their White Sox preview up. I’m looking forward to it.

Wow, talk about a turnaround. The initial news had Mark Buerhle missing the first month of the regular season. Now ESPN is reporting that it’s not a fracture, but a “stress reaction,” and that he’ll only be out for a spring start or two. He threw off of a mound today and participated in some workouts.

Jose Contreras had six strikeouts in his six innings of work today. He only gave up three hits and one run, so that’s pretty encouraging. Hopefully the Cuban will be a factor in the rotation for the Sox. Jermaine Dye hit his second homer of the spring in the loss to the Mariners.

As good as McCarthy has been pitching, this isn’t how I wanted to get him into the rotation.

Mark Buehrle suffered a broken bone in his left foot, and is out for six weeks. Not only does this mean we’ll be without our staff ace for the first month of the season, but it also means he’ll have missed the final two weeks of the spring season to get his arm ready. So even when he does come back, he’ll probably be on a pretty limited pitch count. You figure this will probably have an impact on what would have been his first ten starts (he’ll miss six or seven, then he’ll be limited in his first three or four back).

Sigh. And you never like to be playing from behind, not that the Sox have done well in playing from a position of advantage. The last two years they’ve led the division at the break only to lose out to the Twins.

The White Sox stood at fourth place overall in the American League with a 10-8 record this spring. The loss this afternoon to the Angels might drop them down a spot, but notches in the win column are good things.

Paul Konerko has been putting his lumber to use, racking up a .606 slugging percentage. Hopefully this can carry over into the regular season. We need his bat until the The Big Hurt makes it back.

Mark Buerhle is a perfect 3-0, and Brandon McCarthy continues to impress. He’s now thrown 10 1/3 shutout innings, while allowing only seven hits. Can you say sleeper?

I need to add some links here when I have some time (sorry I haven’t gotten to you Polo Grounds). Work has been tight, so blogging has suffered.

While the ability to score under Ozzie Guillen’s “one run at a time” system somewhat questionable, the White Sox are going to really have to ride their pitching. Brandon McCarthy did the job yesterday as he pitched five solid innings to improve to 3-0 this spring.

McCarthy gave up two unearned runs and six hits. He walked one and struckout three. At this stage, I’ll take it. MLB.com talks about how McCarthy might end up finding his way to AAA despite the strong spring season. They also say that if he does make the big league team, it will be as a long reliever. I’m all for it, since I’ve always been a fan of the Earl Weaver method of developing pitchers. When you bring them up, let them pitch long relief before putting them in the rotation.

This is the kind of trend you want to see. The early games mean little because unknown players are being shuffled in and out of the lineup and starting pitchers are used for only two or three innings. The closer you get to the REAL season, the more the games take on the semblance of actual games.

Aaron Rowand has been the hot hand in Arizona this year. He’s hitting a mind boggling .520 in 25 at bats, with two homers and three doubles. Carl Everett and Joe Borchard lead the team in homers with three, and three other White Sox (Ozuna, Podsednik, and Konerko) have racked up ten hits.

On the pitching side, Mark Buerhle has made three solid starts, and Jon Adkins has been very solid.

Exile in Wrigleyville would be at the top of most lists of White Sox blogs, and they’ve found a new home. Exile is now at All Baseball. I saw sort of in the title because the site used to be at MVN, and All Baseball is now affliliated with them.

Here are the graphs of the 1902 season, courtesy of Baseball Graphs. You can see how bad their isolated power is in the second one.

Unfortunately, there are no new biographies.

Record – 74-60, Finished Fourth Place in the American League
Pythagorean Record – 74-60

Starters (Note – I couldn’t find a set lineup, so I’m listing the players who got the most time at their respective positions)

Hitters (BA/OBP/SLG)

C – Billy Sullivan (.243/.268/.323)
1b – Frank Isbell (.252/.276/.318)
2b – Tom Daly (.225/.303/.288)
3b – Sammy Strang (.295/.387/.364)
SS – George Davis (.299/.386/.402)
LF – Sam Mertes (.282/.334/.362)
CF – Fielder Jones (.321/.390/.370)
RF – Danny Green (.312/.388/.391)

Team Leaders

Homeruns – Frank Isbell (4)
Batting Average – Fielder Jones (.321)
OPS – Gerogie Davie (.788)
Best Fielder – Fielder Jones (15 Fielding Runs Above Average)

Pitchers (IP/W/ERA)

SP – Roy Patterson (268/19/3.06)
SP – Clark Griffith (213/15/4.18)
SP – Wiley Piatt (246/12/3.51)
SP – Nixey Callahan (282.3/16/3.60)
SP – Ned Garvin (175.3/10/2.21)

Team Leaders

Wins – Roy Patterson (19)
ERA – Ned Garvin (2.21)
Strikeouts – Wiley Piatt (96)

Synopsis

1902 was a step back for the White Sox. They won nine less games and finished in fourth place in the American League, eight games back of the Philadelphia Athletics. Only the Detroit Tigers (.320) had a worse slugging percentage then the White Sox (.335). They did finish second in walks (411), first in stolen bases (265) and first in sacrafice hits (154). Offensive leaders included Fielder Jones, who finished first in singles (150), tenth in hitting (.321) and sixth in On Base Percentage (.390). They also got a good season out of newcomer and future Hall of Famer George Davis. Davis was fifth in the league with 93 RBIs, and finished fifth in walks as well (60).

Pitching declined as well. The team added almost half a run to their ERA (3.41). 1901 staff ace and Hall of Famer Clark Griffith had the first of several erratic seasons. His ERA+ of 81 was the worst of any season where he threw more then fifty innings. Ned Garvin, who was traded late in the season, led the team in ERA and was eighth in the league in WHIP (1.209).

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The White Sox continued their struggles this afternoon, losing 6-1 to the Rockies. Rookie phenom Jeff Francis got the win for Colorado, and Todd Helton hit his first homer of the spring off of Jon Garland.

Yesterday, the Sox lost to the Giants 6-5. Joe Borchard hit two homers and drove in three runs, and Paul Konerko went two for two. Tomorrow they’ll be going up against San Diego.

Not that I encourage gambling, but I made a gentleman’s wager with Brian over at Tigerblog. We had a nice discussion about some of the historical aspects of his site (a 1917 White Sox diary would be very cool), and got to talking/arguing about our team’s prospect. Needless to say, I’ll win some money if the White Sox finish ahead of the Tigers in AL Central and/or win the season series.

I wonder when we’re going to get to play another team? The White Sox are now 1-3 against the Diamond Backs, and 1-0 against everyone else (i.e. the Rockies).

Saturday was a good game as the Sox pummelled the Snakes 10-0. Carl Everett’s grand slam was the big hit of the game.

Sunday’s game wasn’t quite as fruitful as we lost to, yes once again, the Snakes 8-3. Jermaine Dye hit his first homerun of the spring. You can never trust spring box scores though. Here on Yahoo. it says Dye hit his homer in the sixth inning, yet there were no runs scored.

I was hoping to get my 1902 season lookback done this weekend, but work got a little hectic so I ended up being short on time. If not this week, I’ll get it done this weekend.

Well, at least they finally won a game. In the game against the Rockies, they won 7-5. Podsednik went two for two with two triples, and he scored twice. Nothing would make me happier then him proving me wrong about trading Carlos Lee away.

Over in the other game, the White Sox lost to the D-Backs 10-9. Orlando Hernandez got tagged for two homers, and Jose Contreras was tagged for one. Iguchi went 2 for 2 and scored twice, while Carl Everett went two for three with two runs and three RBIs. Aaron Rowand also drove in three runs in the loss.

The fact that El Duque and Contreras were hit very hard is a little concerting. By the end of five innings, the D-Backs had eight runs.

The Sox play the D-Backs again this afternoon. Hopefully they’ll start showing some progress

I know it’s early, but you hate to see too many notches in the loss column. At least this one was close, and Arizona needed a walk off RBI single to top the Sox.

Mark Buerhle was a little roughed up. The two runs he gave up were unearned, but five hits over three innings isn’t that great.

It’s Arizona again tomorrow, so hopefully we’ll have more luck. I’m just happy there’s games.

Scott Podsednik, for all the grief I’ve given him, went three for three today in the White Sox spring opener. In fact, left fielders really cashed in because Sweeney player out there and went two for two. Nothing like a combined 5 for 5 from your leftfielder/lead off hitters.

Damasco Marte was roughed up, giving up two runs in sixth, and Felix Diaz gave up four runs in the ninth. Tadahito Iguchi went 0 for 2 in his American debut.

Tomorrow the Sox play the Diamondbacks.

I was surfing the net and ran across a very cool site called Baseball Graphs. The site is run by Studes (who recently wrote the Hardball Times Bullpen Book ) and it provides an insightful way of looking at the season through the use of charts.

If you enjoyed my 1901 White Sox Lookback, here are the graphs that have been compiled for that season. The three graphs pretty much show that the White Sox were a fairly dominant team in their debut season.

Also, Richard Lederer finished his awesome three part interview with the great Bill James. Excellent work.

Studes at Hardball Times did a nice column on closers, and followed it up by putting out what looks like a nice product in the Hardball Times Bullpen Book.

In the column, Damasco Marte is highlighted. Apparantly he’s made more appearances where the P was 0.20 or higher. That probably doesn’t make sense unless you’ve read the column, but basically over the last three years, he’s been used more then any other pitcher (18 times) when the game’s been on the line. It’s a great read.