Sox Machine: Chicago White Sox blog

You can come off the ledge now

The Sox notched their second consecutive win after starting the spring season losing six straight, defeating Oakland 8-5.  Oakland, by the way, is the prohibitive favorite to win the AL West, and they're 1-5 this spring.  So there you go.

Today's game had three notable similarities to patterns that seemed to emerge time and time again in 2005, such as:

Mark Buehrle:  He ran into trouble against Oakland after a strong start, allowing four runs in the fourth inning.  Of course, in classic Buehrle fashion, only one of them was earned.  Buehrle allowed 17 unearned runs last season, which seems to have led the American League, though I can't find a definitive stance anywhere.  The best I can do is point to a Baseball Analysts piece,  which says Buehrle allowed the highest percentage of unearned runs of his total runs allowed amount in the American League.  Given that he led the league in innings pitched, it seems like he'd lead in the raw total.

I went over this whole phenomenon in his preview, but it bears mentioning -- those 17 unearned runs weren't even a career-high for him, as he allowed 18 in 2003.  For comparison, Jon Garland only allowed seven.  That's why it's nice to see Don Cooper trying to focus on the number of hits Buehrle gives up, because many of those came after he became unglued by a miscue in the field.

Paul Konerko:  Classic Paulie -- hits a go-ahead homer, and expresses disappointment in how it went over the fence.

"To me, it's important to drive the ball to center and right-center, and see myself doing that in the spring," Konerko said. "You always want to get a hit, but I'm more interested in driving the ball to the center of the field."

Tadahito Iguchi:  Off to another lousy spring, he is.  He's 0-for-13 at the plate, and has committed at least two errors that I'm aware of so far.  Today's error triggered the Oakland unearned-run bonanza.  Mark Gonzalez wrote something interesting about Iguchi in his notebook:

Second baseman Tadahito Iguchi will revert to his old stance after going hitless in three at-bats Tuesday to cap an 0-for-13 start.

Iguchi said through his interpreter that he tried to shorten his swing and make it more compact.

This is good to hear, because I didn't think there was anything wrong with his approach last year -- the only thing that was off was that Podsednik got the green light on the basepaths more than the Emperor got at the plate. 

The shortening of the swing might have something to do with focusing on cutting down on whiffs, as he struck out 114 times last year.  But looking at his Japanese numbers, he wasn't exactly Nellie Fox as a contact hitter there, so who knows.  Often times he looked like the only Sox hitter with a plan at the plate, so it didn't seem like a change was necessary.

On the other hand, there's Ryan Sweeney, who hit another homer against Oakland today.  He's 5-for-10 so far this spring, but more importantly, that round-tripper means he's already topped his home run total from last year.  He only managed one homer in 429 at-bats last year at Birmingham, and even though he was battling a wrist injury and playing in the toughest hitter's park in Double-A, that's still pretty weak. 

Of course, he's only 21 (which is depressing), so he could be filling out as a hitter.  Either that, or he's having what Barry's having.

Variety is the spice of baseball

Here's an interesting juxtaposition of pieces I read this morning, starting with Vince's post on Exile in Wrigleyville, inspired by Joe Cowley's interview with Kenny Williams:

Joe Cowley, meanwhile, writes a feature on Sox GM Ken Williams in the Sun-Times. There's an anecdote about Williams overturning the post-game food table in Oakland in 2001 because he was upset at the tone in the locker room. There's a little more on Williams losing his cool about Frank Thomas. There's a lot of Williams on Williams. I chuckled at the description of Williams during a game:

"He's extremely intense to watch a game with, for the most part,'' Hahn said. "His mind is always working on how to improve. It's a reactionary process for him.''

Sometimes that process leads him to the parking lot or the weight room. "I make people terribly uncomfortable when I watch a game like that,'' Williams said. "So what I now do is walk away. I'll walk around the stadium. I've even taken a drive during the game.

That sounds very similar to the description of how Oakland A's GM Billy Beane acts during games that was in the book Moneyball.

Sure enough, in the morning an e-mail from a co-worker links me to a piece on the Sox by the Washington Post's Steve Fainaru, once again talking about Moneyball and comparing Williams to Beane.

Fainaru doesn't make wrong conclusions exactly, but he does seem to take the surface for granted.  For instance, Ozzie Guillen likes to play dumb, and I'm sure he relies on scouting and numbers more than he lets on.  But there's no advantage for him to say he doesn't do anything to go with his gut, given that a large part of Chicago thinks he's more magician than manager.  And sometimes I'm inclined to believe that as well.

And Kenny doesn't just look to pack smiling faces in the dugout and expect wins.  The New York Times article is now in the pay archive, but this South Side Sox post that links to it shows an excerpt in which assistant GM Rick Hahn describes one of the statistical evaluations the team uses.  Kenny, however, has no reason to tout their number-crunching because it doesn't do anything for Sox fans.  It's obvious the "grinder ball" marketing hit home with Sox supporters, especially those who grew up watching Aparicio and Fox and Landis scrap their way past the slugging Yankees during one glorious season.  With ticket sales at an all-time high, there's no reason for him to change that tune.

The underlying point of this article is a familiar one -- "there are lots of ways to win in baseball."  Those fans in 1959 found that out.  Basically, if you have lots of starting pitching, you can score runs any way you want.  When the Diamondbacks won it, it was because of cagey veteran play.  When the Marlins won it, it was pitching and speed all over again.  When the Red Sox won it, it was because it slugged its way to the top.  When the White Sox won it, it was because of teamwork. 

The diversity in game plans is what makes baseball so freakin' fascinating, but often times it seems like writers -- whether journalists or analysts -- want to NFLize the league via copying the winner.  Each time a team wins the Super Bowl, there's a rush to break down how they did it, and how each team can go about winning it like the winning team did.  Get a defense like the Ravens'!  No, get an offense like the Rams!  No, steal the Patriots' coaches!  Except it's largely a pointless exercise, because you have to win somehow with the players and resources you have.

Baseball Prospectus wrote a book about the 2004 Red Sox season titled Mind Game: How the Boston Red Sox Got Smart, Won a World Series, and Created a New Blueprint for Winning.  Moneyball's subhead -- "The art of winning an unfair game" -- said the same thing.  A book about the White Sox would have a similar tagline.  And they all have their positives and negatives.  The Red Sox spent a lot of money wisely, the A's have been able to replenish positions and pitching quickly on a shoestring budget, and the White Sox have some serious mojo on their side.  If you don't think there are lessons to be learned from any of these teams, you're nuts, and if you think you can win by duplicating what they do, you're just as crazy.

The A's resemble the Sox in that they've gone from fundamentally challenged to defensively sound.  The Sox resemble the A's because they drafted a college standout with better numbers than radar gun readings in Lance Broadway, after selecting high school phenom/flameout Kris Honel the last time they used a first pick on a starter.  That's exactly the route Billy Beane took when he selected Joe Blanton in the notorious Moneyball draft and insulted Kenny for not doing so when he had the chance.  Blanton had a solid first year and is expected to contribute to a deep A's rotation, and the Sox are expecting the same from Broadway in a couple of years. 

Sure, Moneyball reads a lot differently now than it did a few years ago.  Kenny has gone from an imbecile to a genius, most of the A's draft picks didn't pan out, and to quote Beane, his sh-t still hasn't worked in the playoffs.  But it's not like anybody expected Kenny's sh-t to work first.  That's baseball.  It'll continue to surprise people, so there's no point in trying to pin down the "right way" to do things.  The only "right" way is whichever one that works.