This is the last full week of spring training, and next week is the first week with regular-season games in it.
Therefore, it's a good time to get the weekly P.O. Sox mailbags up and running. As always, thanks for your questions and your support.
Do we have any indications from either on the field or comments to the media regarding Pedro Grifol's preferences for stealing or bunting? Will the chronic fragility of White Sox base runners limit their SB attempts?
-- Mark S.
In a stroke of good timing, James Fegan relayed this quote from Grifol about how he sees the White Sox on the basepaths:
"It’s not so much stealing bases that I’m focused on. If they’re there, we’ll take it, of course. But I don’t think we’re going to be like a base-stealing team. I think we’re gonna be an opportunistic base-stealing team. I just want to make sure we take 90 feet whenever they’re giving it to us. Whether it’s an overthrow in the outfield, a ball in the dirt — which by the way, we’ve got to do some drills on balls in the dirt. I just want to just be always on the high alert for 90 feet.”
As you alluded to, the wear-and-tear component has a lot to say about it. The White Sox went 35-for-37 over the first three months of the season, dipped to 6-for-12 across July and August, and then finished the year 17-for-19 on the strength of Elvis Andrus' 10 swipes.
Grifol referred to "the bunting game" as part of what Mike Tosar brings to the coaching staff, but I haven't seen a follow-up. I'm hoping he's seeing what Rick Renteria saw in 2020 -- no real desire to bunt because the talent on hand should be swinging away.
Did you guys catch the MLB Owners segment on Game Theory with Bomani Jones? Hopefully we see more media coverage like this when it comes to owners who refuse to spend
-- Jason H.
I did, at least through the Twitter highlights. Jones didn't put Jerry Reinsdorf among the "cheap-ass, broke boy owners" who are cashing checks, but he used Jerry Reinsdorf to represent the owner who doesn't spend to win.
I really think the Padres and Phillies have done more damage than Steve Cohen when it comes to showing what can and should be spent. Cohen could've been written off as an excessively wealthy aberration, but when you have Peter Seidler making a major market out of San Diego because he thinks exciting fans is smart business, and John Middleton saying that nobody throws a parade for ownership profits, that gets to the heart what of a majority of owners have been about this century.
With the caveat of Moncada's injury, how much did this year's WBC restore good vibes to the White Sox who participated?
-- Asinwreck
Considering Eloy Jiménez had to depart his first game back with the White Sox due to calf cramping, maybe not as much as we'd hoped.
But seriously, I don't think it can hurt. They're showing what they need to show -- Moncada turning on the ball, Robert running well, Anderson playing second to get important plate appearances (Trea Turner established his dominance at short, didn't he), and they did it in one of the more unfamiliar, charged environments they've seen. It's not quite the same as October baseball, but it beats July of a 75-win season, which is what they've seen far more of.
In the past you’ve referred to this player or that as the “fulcrum” for the success of a particular season. Who do you think is this key player this year, or are there just too many critical pieces for any one to be singled out?
-- Trooper Galactus
More the latter. Usually, I've though of the fulcrum as somebody who is just short of being considered a sure thing, and the lineup looks considerably different if he makes that jump. The Sox just don't have enough locks for 140-game contributors for one guy to be the target. Yoán Moncada, Eloy Jiménez and Luis Robert Jr. all have cases to be that guy, but if one comes through while the others end up missing 60 games, then it's hard to say they have scales-tipping power. Maybe Geoff Head is the guy, if you want to go off-roster.
Lucas Giolito is probably the closest thing to a fulcrum, in that if he can summon the form that was reliable for Cy Young votes, the Sox have potentially three pitchers who can mask problems sorting out the other two spots. If he's nothing more than a LAIM, then the Sox's on-paper quality starters are outnumbered.
Have you had a chance to watch the 3 part “Last Comiskey” on YouTube and if so what did you all think?
-- Mark M.
I have not. I'm going to be curling in a bonspiel (tournament) in Kansas City this weekend, and I have it saved for any big chunks of potential downtime. I'm looking forward to it.
Has watching the World Baseball Classic without a pitch clock and spring training with the clock changed your opinion on it?
-- Gregory W.
I think the way some WBC games have oozed along have shown why the pitch clock was inevitable, but it also reminds that fans will tolerate a slowdown if the drama is rich enough. The problem lies when the majority of pitchers focus on "executing the pitch" like their country's happiness is riding on it, even if it's the fourth inning of a seven-run game between two sub-.500 teams. When everything feels like high stakes, nothing is really high stakes.
I'd rather see a hard-line approach to the pitch clock into the season to prod all pitchers along, and then adjust toward the All-Star break if there are clear tweaks to make in advance of the postseason, but Evan Drellich says MLB's competition committee discussed tweaks on Monday for potential rule modifications for Opening Day.
Right now, it seems like the weakest part of the rules is the one timeout for a hitter per at-bat, because that's way too easy to exploit for the guy actually holding the ball.
Where do Lambert and Martin fit on the pitching staff and what happens when Crochett is back?
-- RayHerbert
Both seem to have defined roles at the moment. Martin looks like he's the sixth starter, getting stretched out in Charlotte and staying there until need be, with the Sox hoping the need don't be anytime soon.
Lambert looks like he fits comfortably within an eight-man bullpen at this point, because I can only name six other locks.
- Reynaldo López
- Kendall Graveman
- Joe Kelly
- Jake Diekman
- Jose Ruiz
- Aaron Bummer
And Bummer may or may not be one of those fixtures if he experiences a setback in returning from his lat injury. Nick Avila has Rule 5 rights and Gregory Santos is having the best spring of any White Sox reliever, but Lambert's doing fine right now, and when you look at what he did for the big club last year, it doesn't seem right that both relievers would outrank him.
Now that we see a twitchy back for Vaughn and Moncada getting injured in the WBC, does Jake Burger become a must have on the Opening Day roster? What does that mean for the rest of the roster?
-- Dan F.
In a world where both Vaughn and Moncada aren't able to answer the bell, then yes, Burger becomes a lot more important, even if he's barely a third baseman. Kinda like Jiménez being a nominal right fielder, Burger's ability to stand at third base for even half a game gives Grifol extra ways to mix and match.
If Moncada and Vaughn are able to handle everyday duties -- or close enough -- then Burger isn't a necessity, because he'd really only play as a complement at DH for Gavin Sheets, and does that have more use than somebody like Billy Hamilton?
The default bench looks something like Seby Zavala, Sheets, a utility infielder and a fifth outfielder. Put Burger on that bench while both Moncada and Vaughn are healthy, and that utility infielder now has to cover the outfield as well, and the Sox don't have a guy who is plus in both areas.
I was in Glendale, AZ this last weekend and saw World Series Jermaine Dye giving some instruction at the cages in the morning. He was nice enough to come by and say hello to fans watching. I get it, he's not getting a statue, but why not a Jermaine Dye day at the ballpark, something to acknowledge the guy. To the best of my knowledge there's never been anything. Doesn't this dude deserve it?
-- Matt
He does, as much as any other member of the team who isn't Paul Konerko or Mark Buehrle, at that number-retirement level, but they haven't had an A.J. Pierzynski Day or a Joe Crede Day at the park, either. I think they're prominent enough as members of the only White Sox team to win even a pennant in the last 63 years that they have drop-in privileges, so they're never really forgotten. I've seen Dye at White Sox Charities events, and if SoxFest were a thing, I'd imagine he'd be there on a rotating basis as well.
I normally hate "You want to feel old?" phrasings because I don't really want to feel old, but I remember going to Comiskey Park and U.S. Cellular Field and seeing hot dog stands named for Greg Luzinski and Harold Baines. Guys like Dye aren't that far away from having those kinds of honors, where the latest generation of White Sox fans has little idea of how he went about his business.
Currently the Sox roster is full of actually major leaguers, no clearly AAAA players. We have all moaned about depth for years. Am I being too optimistic about our depth, even if I doubts about each player individually other than Cease.
- English_Sox_Colin
Yes, but only because of all the front-line injuries last year. If the White Sox only needed their bench players to be bench players and Davis Martin as a sixth starter, then yes, they'd be in fairly good shape, and better than in previous years. The problem is that while Sheets, Burger, Hamilton, Adam Haseley, Hanser Alberto and whoever else can serve specific purposes on a 26-man roster, they offer only faint hope of providing any sort of impact if pressed into long-term starting duty, which is what I think a lot of people mean by depth.
If Oscar Colás were blocked from the Opening Day roster, he would represent some really promising depth, just like if the White Sox blocked Andrew Vaughn from being a candidate for breaking camp with the 2021 team without any high minors experience. When they're pressed into Plan A, the margin for error is considerably smaller. Right now, the only guy who excites me past the front line of talent in an extended 2023 audition is Lenyn Sosa, and he doesn't do it for me that much.
Is this team too frail to believe in?
-- Andrew S.
If I understand the timing of this question correctly, I think Andrew asked this shortly after Jiménez pulled up lame with the calf cramps, which doesn't pair well with Moncada colliding in the outfield, or Vaughn's sore back, or Michael Kopech experiencing a velocity drop his second time through.
I think the answer to that question is a simple "yes," as long as you don't entirely eliminate hope. Rick Hahn said that earning the trust of the fans is something that happens on the field, and while it sounded too fatalistic in the context of Mike Clevinger, that sentiment does hold up here.
There isn't yet much reason to believe the White Sox can withstand a sixth-month grind with what they showed last year, and that's reflected in the projections. But if the White Sox finish the first quarter of the season 25-15, it's worth reevaluating the faith/trust levels based on where the production is coming from, how Grifol is handling their business, whether any truly promising depth has emerged, and how the other Central teams are faring. They can earn belief as the season goes along, but some real games have to be logged, first.
