When Eloy Jiménez returned to the White Sox from the sprained ankle he suffered on the left-field wall in Chicago, I'd hoped that Rick Renteria would give him a couple of games at designated hitter to help him get reacquainted with MLB action, and maybe get his bat on track once freed of defensive responsibilities.
Instead, Renteria threw him into one of the most unusual left fields in the game at Minute Maid Park. Thanks to the night game, the White Sox coaching staff had time to put Jiménez through some pregame paces:
Jiménez had a quieter night compared to his previous four games in the field, including an arduous series in Comerica Park. But after handling just one chance -- and a routine one -- over the first seven innings, Michael Brantley made him scramble for a deep drive in the eighth. Here's an uncharitable screen shot documenting the result of Jiménez's effort:
The whole effort looks similarly ungraceful ...
... but I'm more inclined to blame this on the Crawford Boxes than anything Jiménez did specifically. Sure, it features the conservative arc that was the trademark of his play in Detroit, and his right arm is still trying to find the light switch in a hotel room at 4 a.m., but the harsh lines of Minute Maid Field's outfield boundary would have compromised even a good left fielder. Jiménez maintained his angle while giving the the short porch a wide berth when the slice of Brantley's liner begged him to either get turned around or embark on a literal crash course with the corner.
Jiménez handled the tough part probably as well as you could expect. Houston's broadcast sympathized with the rookie's first game in Houston, and Geoff Blum telestrated the required route:
Alas, after Jiménez improbably charted a course that put him in position to make the catch, he mistimed the jump:
Jiménez has now been taken into a wall in four of his last five games, which is the kind of thing baseball does to somebody who's hanging by a thread with a particular facet (see: Adam Engel with two outs and runners in scoring position). After watching Jiménez's first encounter with the Crawford Boxes, I still wouldn't mind seeing him take or turn or two at DH until the Sox move to Target Field's more conventional dimensions later in the week.
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Stretching the statute of limitations on "following up," we head to Citi Field. During Monday night's tilt between the Mets and Nationals, old "friends" Adam Eaton and Todd Frazier showed that L'affaire LaRoche remains a frozen conflict at best.
Eaton and Frazier have been at odds ever since they landed on opposing sides of Adam LaRoche's retirement. Bruce Levine said they had to be separated in the clubhouse at some point over the 2016 season, and they exchanged words on the field last season as well.
Frazier offered the media nothing after the game:
“Yeah, I don’t know,” Eaton said. “Gosh, who knows what goes through that guy’s mind? He’s chirping all the way across the infield. He must really like me, [because] he wants to get my attention it seems like every time we come into town, he really cares what I think about him. I don’t know what his deal is, if he wants to talk to me in person or have a visit or what it is. But he’s always yelling across the infield at me, making a habit of it.
“He’s one of those guys who always says it loud enough that you hear it but can’t understand it. So, he’s making a habit of it. I ignored him a couple times chirping coming across, but I had it to the point where I’m not going to say the saying I want to say but you got to be a man at some point. So, I turned around, had a few choice words with him. It’s funny, I was walking towards him, he didn’t really want to walk towards me but as soon as someone held him back then he was all of a sudden he was really impatient, like trying to get towards me. Just being Todd Frazier. What’s new?”
Both of these guys are weirdos, but as long as they're fighting each other on two different disastrous sub-.500 teams, and neither of them are the White Sox, I'm all for them continuing it as long as they can.
