The tough thing about the White Sox's three-game loss to Oakland in the wild card series is that they could have won every game, but there are real reasons why they lost two of three.
There's the matter of injuries. Leury Garcia went 0-for-6 with three strikeouts, but he probably shouldn't have been playing. Aaron Bummer couldn't calm down the game, but he had recently come off the injured list. Evan Marshall gave up the lead, but he too had recently spent time on the IL. Dallas Keuchel faltered in his third start after a back issue. Yoán Moncada went 1-for-14, not because he looked demonstrably sluggish due to COVID-19 complications. No, he hit five balls over 100 mph and only had a lousy single to show for it. For all these players, the chief regret from this exposure to the postseason might be reduced to "I wish I could've been in better shape."
For the fully functioning players, it was a mixed bag. José Abreu and Luis Robert had some good at-bats, and some bad ones. Adam Engel delivered against lefties and faded against righties, but it wasn't his fault he had to play all three games. Codi Heuer gave up a two-run homer, but those were his first runs he'd allowed since August. A bunch of White Sox couldn't come through when it mattered most, but baseball is a zero-sum game, and they had to contend with a team that was a little deeper in ways that exploited White Sox weaknesses.
Most of the failures merit shrugs to me, not out of indifference, but out of "that's baseball." That said, if I'm looking for a counterpoint to the post of players who did what they could with this postseason experience, there are four guys in White Sox uniforms who might be carrying motivation into the winter because of October regrets that were more within their control.
CARLOS RODÓN
Ordinarily I would slot him into the "I wish I could've been in better shape" category, but he stands apart because 1) injuries have been a constant for the last several years, and 2) he might've played his last game for the White Sox when he failed to retire any of the three batters he faced in Game 3. He entered with two outs and the bases clear, but he walked Tommy La Stella, then fell behind 3-0 to Marcus Semien before giving up a double. That's not the way a guy would want to get beat, and intentionally walking an unremarkable right-handed batter to load the bases to close out a career seems like an extra indignity.
NICK MADRIGAL
Madrigal's first postseason encapsulated the pros and cons of his first regular season. He looked OK at the plate, going 3-for-12 with no strikeouts. He struggled a bit with runners in scoring position, but he doesn't stand out in that regard.
It's the other stuff that he'll carry into the winter, most of it occurring in Game 2. He committed two errors, getting bit by the lip of the infield for the second time in a week for a costly first-inning error, then rushing a throw on an attempt to turn a 4-3 double play. He also failed to get to third on what should've been a tailor-made hit-and-run, because Madrigal saw it as a run-with-hit and failed to pick up anything or anybody who might tell him to go to third instead of reversing course and thinking about first.
That mistake took a run off the board, and while the butterfly effect says that the White Sox could have very well lost by more if the early events unfolded in a different way, it's generally sound baseball advice to score every run possible.
Entering the season, Madrigal figured to be a below-average hitter, but an above-average baseball player. Instead, he hit .340/.376/.369 and made all sorts of poor decisions on the basepaths and in the field. That should be easier to correct as he gets acclimated to the speed of the game. It's probably just as necessary, too, because it's still hard to count on an above-average runs-created number for a guy who never makes the outfielders run toward the fence.
MATT FOSTER
It wasn't that he failed, it was how he failed. He inherited the bases loaded from Rodón with two outs and promptly walked in two runs without making either Mark Canha or Matt Olson swing the bat. We still don't know if Foster had the ability to throw two strikes against a batter that day, because Khris Davis swung at a 1-0 fastball and flied out to right.
If there's any second-guessing on the deployment of Foster, he only made four appearances in the middle of an inning, and he had the fewest inherited runners (six) of any full-time White Sox reliever in 2020. That said, there was no reason to not go to Foster. He held the first batters he faced to 4-for-22 with one walk and eight strikeouts on the season. Here he is striking out Hunter Dozier under similar circumstances on Aug. 30,
Ideally, he would have started his own inning and pitched another for good measure. A lot of things about Game 3 weren't ideal. Foster just looked like a rookie at the wrong time, and his postseason was an unfortunate coda to a fine first year.
RICK RENTERIA
If you're looking for an evisceration of a self-assessment, Renteria isn't going to provide it. I don't blame him. The White Sox's flagship hired an incomprehensibly popular former manager to second-guess his decisions every game, so it makes sense if he wants to prioritize internal peace over a search for external validation that will always be fruitless.
But let's look at his evaluation of the ill-fated bullpen game anyway.
“I think we handled the bullpen as good as we could possibly handle it,” Renteria said. “All we try to do is use our best guys moving forward — and I think all of our guys are our best guys, but we had to keep the game there. We had to keep them down. I think that’s the most important thing. You’re always trying to keep the offense from jumping on you. You want that space, and that’s all we tried to do.”
There was nothing wrong with the order of pitchers. It's easy to picture Dunning-Crochet-Bummer-Heuer taking care of six innings by themselves. It's not necessarily Renteria's fault that injury and ineffectiveness teamed up to limit them to 3⅔.
I'd just disagree with his notion that the bullpen was handled "as good as we could possibly handle it" if only because of the Rodón-Foster sequence. In our pregame discussion of how to arrange the pitchers for Game 3, I mentioned that I was leery of having the game tilt on the effectiveness of Rodón, a pitcher who might very well be non-tendered after the season. That Renteria came out and visited Rodón with a 3-1 count to Semien suggested a lack of confidence in the move shortly after he made it.
If Foster fared as poorly, it would have felt like another pitcher betraying legitimately earned trust. By putting Rodón out there first, the lack of confidence jumped out. Then again, had Renteria waited to use Rodón, he might've felt compelled to use him in a more stressful situation. I think the idea was to make any Rodón appearances as calm as possible, and even then, it didn't work.
On the other side of the ball, I wasn't crazy about starting Leury García in the first two games, especially considering how ugly his swing looked against competitive pitching. It helped the Sox in Game 1 because of some tough fly balls, but there were no such benefits in Game 2.
Speaking of which, Renteria lifted García in the seventh inning when his spot came to the plate in the seventh inning with two out and one out and the Sox trailing 5-0. The replacement wasn't much better. Renteria tapped Zack Collins because he wanted a lefty bat to face Bassitt, but Collins, who went 1-for-16 during the season and last appeared in an MLB game on Aug. 19, struck out on three pitches.
After the game, he justified the move as hoping Collins would run into one. It's easy to dream on the three-run homer that turns a snoozer into a ballgame, and when Eloy Jiménez left Game 3 after his first strenuous activity, it became a little easier to understand Renteria conserving his most limited resource.
The common thread between Collins, García and Rodón is the resorting to players who hadn't proven ready or able to stand up to MLB competition for weeks. A lack of depth led him to these decisions, but if underachievers or lesser players like Nomar Mazara, Yolmer Sánchez or Dylan Cease led the White Sox into dark corners, it's easier to pin it on the lack of available help. He tried to power the White Sox out of their nosedives with ideas that weren't in manual, and so he ends up adding some "pilot error" to the list of mechanical failures.
If and when the White Sox return to the postseason under Renteria, I'd hope there isn't a ton to learn from this. Let's pray there are minor leagues, and the rehab stints they provide for players trying to get back up to full speed. Rick Hahn should want to supply his manager with a clear-cut Game 3 starter, and an outfield that isn't reliant on guy who a guy who announced his start with "Who has one thumb and is playing left field for the first time since Aug. 10?"
But if I'm Renteria, I'm treating bullpen games as unavoidable, and thus practicing alternate strategies during the regular season when better options aren't available. That would help reduce the sense of dread everybody felt when he came to lift Dane Dunning after two batters, because he'd have proven that such a situation is within his scope. I'd also make a list of every player who hadn't proven himself capable of standing in against MLB competition and not touching them until the rules of the game require it. Both are easier said than done, but if Renteria knows he can't sway people with the saying, then he may as well enjoy the freedom from external scrutiny when it comes to the doing.
(Photo by Nick Wosika/Icon Sportswire)
