To a man -- this one, specifically -- Dylan Covey and Juan Minaya are inexorably linked in their general inexorability, so it's kinda fitting that the latter was designated for assignment on Saturday to make room for the former.
Minaya's season numbers don't look DFA-worthy, but they'd been trending the wrong way for a solid month. He allowed 10 runs on 18 hits and seven walks over his last 12 innings, and hadn't really shown signs of getting out of his location funk. He'll live in White Sox lore in the Jake Petricka ward of fleeting effectiveness, and it's hard to imagine the next good White Sox bullpen including him, so the loss won't be felt on an independent level.
It's just gotta hurt Minaya a little bit, because he's a victim of standards the White Sox wish they had.
For one, Covey took his place on the roster and failed to complete an inning of work. After a couple of years of seeing decent stretches derailed by injuries, he pinned his problems this time on being too healthy:
“I played with like half of those guys coming up with the A’s and just really wanted to beat them,” Covey said. “Basically for one of the first times this year feeling 100 percent healthy, I think that just feeling of feeling really good and really powerful and just wanting the game so bad, just kind of led to me getting out of rhythm.”
Covey is now 6-26 with an ERA above 6 (6.07) for his career, and it feels like the rebuild won't really turn a corner until he's nowhere in the White Sox plans. It's not particularly personal -- the organization keeps resting tis forearms on a hot stove by running him out there as a starter instead of trying an opener, and maybe they've lost the capacity to feel pain because the alternatives to Covey are pitchers equally bad or worse -- but they're going to have major problems as long as Covey looks like a potential solution to them.
Moreover, with Minaya out of the bullpen, that's one fewer mediocre righty for Kelvin Herrera to hide behind.
Pitching for the first time in eight days, the rest failed to do Herrera good on Saturday. He retired only one of the five batters he faced, and gave up a run for the sixth consecutive outing. He can thank Jace Fry for keeping his ERA below 8.00, but I'm not sure how long that'll last.
Over his last 20 outings dating back to his back spasms in Boston on May 5, Herrera has a 13.50 ERA, and he's allowed 40 baserunners over those 14⅔ innings. Rick Renteria has done what he can to bury him in the bullpen, but he was already stowing Minaya and Jose Ruiz in the same location. Imagine entering a room, turning on the light and seeing a large lump of right-handed men behind the same curtain bickering over who got there first. It's a terrible game of hide and seek that's unfolding, and Bummer, Alex Colomé and Evan Marshall can only distract us from it for so long.
Right now, the only difference between Herrera and the others is the $8.5 million Herrera is owed the next season. And right now, the only Charlotte reliever who hasn't already auditioned in Chicago is Jimmy Cordero. He's worth a shot, if only to reward a guy for a 0.55 ERA in Charlotte, but his MLB stats hamper hopes.
It'll be kinda fascinating to monitor both scenarios, because there's a shortage of good ideas and unevenly allocated money involved. I used the word "monitor" because there's no way to dress up what it'll be like to watch it.
