Game Seventeen Recap
Boo, 9-8.
Only caught parts of the game, so once again, shorter thoughts.
The ball flies in Chicago, if you weren’t aware. It’s a little different than hitting at Safeco. Not a great spot to pitch for a flyball lefty, that’s for sure.
Eight righties in the line-up for the White Sox tonight. In his last two starts, Hyphen has faced one left-handed hitter. He’ll pitch better once he stops getting matched up with these teams whose best hitters all swing from the right side.
When Milton Bradley isn’t in the line-up, this offense is pretty bad. Get healthy, Milton, but just healthy enough to hit, not to play the field.
X-Rays on Jack Wilson’s finger were negative, but they’re still putting it in a splint, which is never good. Don’t expect to see him for a few days. If the M’s aren’t going to put him on the DL, they absolutely have to dump Colome and bring up another infielder. They can’t play the rest of this road trip with Tui as the starting shortstop and no reserve infielder. The inflexibility of the bench is a really big problem.
Sean White, not a good pitcher, again being asked to protect a one read lead. Learn, Wak.
Mark Lowe threw some really crappy pitches to Andruw Jones.
When Mark Lowe can’t put away Andruw Jones with his slider… sigh.
Well, you know, one or two bad hops and you’re right back where you started and you have to call a guy up. Obviously the advantage of a two man bench is you can have a bunch of guys out in the bullpen thinking up practical jokes and throwing two-thirds of an inning every other week, and all that stuff. But right now, I just don’t see it happening.
Heck if Blowers can call shots here’s one for ya:
I forcast a trade in the future.
Yeah, he hung an earlier slider to Jones and I thought we got away with it, on a pop up behind the plate, but it went out of play.
Game on the line, Lowe, with no pitches to waste– go with your best pitch. There are only a handful of guys who can throw a 98 mile an hour fastball. At the very least he certainly wouldn’t have pulled it down the left field line like that hanger. If he beats you, so be it; it’s a lot easier to live with THAT than getting beat by your, what, 3rd best pitch?
You’re too good a pitcher to lose a game like that. Shouldn’t happen.
Let’s get ’em tomorrow.
At least Lopez got his home run. Maybe now he’ll stop swinging for the fences every time and actually be productive.
RRS is very terrible this year.
He is a obvious choice to leave the rotation.
Adam Moore also sucks.
His pitching selection is terrible.
Rob Johnson is a far smarter catcher.
I am still trying to figure how how they can go from working the count in one game, and swinging from their shoes in another.
Also, former Mariner Matt Thornton is pretty nasty….5 ks in 2.1 innings.
Hyphen will be fine, it was a bad matchup for him. He wasn’t locating his pitches, but when he gets it on track, he is fun to watch pitch.
Hope Fister takes it to the Sox tomorrow….
Something was off with Hyphen. I am not sure if he was slipping on the mound or what, but it seemed that he came down farther than normal which was causing his pitches to float. I am not sure if anyone else saw this, but his motion just looked – off.
In the postgame, Wak says he considers the bullpen guys interchangeable and considers White a “good pitcher” for him and “he’s done a good job for us this year”… indicating he’ll probably go to White again in these high leverage innings.
Behold the blinding power of ERA.
I don’t believe what Wak says in this case. He probably doesn’t want to shake his pitcher’s confidence, but he must be able to see the sucktitude that we are all seeing.
Members of Wak’s Belief System (with Wak’s reasoning):
Sweeney (he had a great spring training and earned his spot on the roster)
Griffey (1st ballot HoF)
White (low ERA)
I think his belief system is malfunctioning and may need a new hard drive.
All I have to offer after watching this game is this: never put yourself in a position in which you have to listen to Hawk Harrelson commentate. You may want to die.
And for some reason, Jones was sitting slider. Every slider he saw he swung hard at, and every fastball he just chipped away. It was clear he was looking for a slider to hit, so why’d they THROW him one? My son was watching with me, and he said, “why do you keep saying, ‘not a slider, not a slider’?”
I’m sure Wak has his eyes wide open; I think IwearMsHats is on target here. What’s Wak going to say, “White screwed it up; he sucks.”?
flashbeak, was that the name of the White Sox commentator? He was awful. Could not stand him. Almost made me buy MLB.tv premium.
Didn’t see the game but Sean White has a problem. He doesn’t know how to pitch. I remember a game in the late 80’s on TBS. Dale Murphy had been in a dreadful slump for something like 2 months. The Braves announcers were saying how terrible he looked and how he just could’t catch up to the fastball lately, ect. Well there was a rookie (or young) pitcher who had been dominating with his FB and his Curve. FB CRV FB CRV. And then he threw Dale Murphy a change-up. Murphy had 2 strike outs that game and he throws him a change-up that he hits over the center field fence. The lesson here is: don’t throw a struggling hitter your 3rd best pitch, ever. Make them beat you with your best stuff.
The real scary part was in Wak’s post game interview where he said White and League are interchangeable. Really Wak? Really?
How many one-pitch AB’s did the M’s have tonight?!?!? You would think it was slow-pitch softball at how aggressive they were this evening.
I’m with ya Dave. I was absolutely dumbfounded when Wak put White in there. The guy is an absolute glutton for punishment. I don’t understand it. How is it that the fans can see it but he can’t? It makes no sense to me.
The M’s relievers, from best to worst, are probably:
League
Aardsma
Lowe
Kelley
White
Texeira
Colome
With the bottom three basically replacement level relievers. Why on earth didn’t Wak go to somebody with talent in the 7th? I don’t think White is a mopup guy, but he certainly should not have been used in that situation. Wak should be using him when the M’s need to induce a ground ball in a lower leverage situation.
Instead, he got the inexplicable Julio Mateo type usage tonight, with the notable exception that there weren’t any postgame comments about “needing a ground ball”.
Milton Bradley said ” god bless Seattle.” Maybe the hugs are working. Now we need Sweeney to learn the physical healing hug. Similar to, but not excluding Mr.Miyagi’s (Pat Morita) famous hot-hand cure.
Lowe blew it again?
I don’t looking forward to seeing Lowe rack up a large pile of losses again. How many games did he blow last year? I miss Rhodes and Nellie.
Is there no way we can avoid using him in close games? He seems to choke up or something.
I think someone accidentally told the Ms for this one either “the game’s gonna get called on account of rain so hurry up and hit” or “yay! The Cell is a hitter’s park, swing for the fences!”.
I’m much more worried about the hitters collectively forgetting all the patience that worked well for them this past week or so, than I am indicting half the bullpen based on the small sample size of their outings so far this season.
Yes, that is indeed his name. You may realize that he was also the White Sox GM notorious for firing Tony LaRussa because of their personal differences.
I was (un)fortunate to be at the game yesterday — Lopez, despite his grand slam, had some pretty terrible at bats. It made me hate him. A lot. I think he saw may be a total of 6 pitches that day. Swinging at the first pitch with bases loaded and nobody out is ridiculous.
I made the mistake of reading part of Baker’s article today. According to him, White is a great pitcher, and Sweeney just needs a few more at bats.
Now I remember why I don’t read him.
Drayer just tweeted that Jack Wilson won’t play today, they’ll see if he is good enough to play on Sunday.
Lou Piniella had his faults as a manager (and they’re up in arms about him in Chicago now) but one thing he did really well was play the Tacoma shuttle. No way would he go into a game with nobody on the bench like Wak is doing.
Paul – Go read Baker’s article again. He didn’t say that about White or Sweeney at all.
I am starting to get really worried about Waks thought process. I know Dave and many others have expressed there displeasure with his usage of the bench and some of his decisions in the pen but, now this is getting silly. How can he justify keeping Griffey and Sweeney on the team?
Don, we have players getting hurt they need days off and half your bench cannot play the field get a clue. We need answers and not just ” belief system”. Wak they are old and can not play the field anymore get over it.
Could someone please give me the reasons why they are still on the team? I don’t remember.
Baker on White:
Baker on Sweeney:
My conclusion is that Baker is pretty poor at player evaluation. And he uses those poor analysis skills to defend poor decisions by the team.
I don’t need to read that stuff, but lots of other people will, so go for it.
Baker spent the entire article writing about White’s batting average allowed and the belief system the organization has in him. He also did say this, in reference to Sweeney:
I could be wrong, but I sort of imagine Wak’s thought process with Sweeney went something like this:
We invited him to spring training to show off what he could do. He hit the crap out of the ball. I know spring training stats don’t mean much, but what was the point of inviting him if a performance like this didn’t give him the chance to make the team? How can I call him into my office and tell him we don’t think he can contribute when we need bats and he’s been smoking the crap out of the ball?
Now, this overlooks (a) a big presumed part of the reason Sweeney was invited was to give him an opportunity to showcase himself for other teams, and (b) Wak hasn’t been using him all that much. Of course we don’t know if any other teams inquired about him. And part of the reason Wak hasn’t been using him is because Wak doesn’t pinch hit much anyway, and even if he wanted to he’s hamstrung by his inflexible bench… an inflexibility that’s largely the result of having Sweeney on the roster in the first place!
Sigh.