The White Sox
released their tentative 2008 schedule. Some initial thoughts:
*The season starts on March 31 -- look for Greg Walker going double-barrell on aerosol cans in the dugout if it's as cold as it was last spring.
*They'll play the visitor to Cleveland's opening day, which could turn into some sort of ring ceremony should they win eight more games. It'd be fun to see a play on
Travis Hafner's "throwing up in the bathroom" quote.
*September will be brutal -- 21 of the 27 games that month will be against teams who finished this season over .500. The games against the sub-.500 squads -- Minnesota and Kansas City, three apiece -- are on the road. They finish August on a weekend series in Boston, so make that 24 of 30.
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Watching the Diamondbacks this October, can one make the claim that the Arizona bullpen is what the White Sox bullpen was supposed to look like? They've assembled some hard throwers with shaky track records, but they've produced far better results.
Juan Cruz is
Mike MacDougal with fewer health problems. Cruz struck out 12.8 batters per nine innings (out of nowhere), but he's also posted ERAs higher than 6.00 in two separate seasons.
Tony Pena isn't all that different from
David Aardsma, as far as I can tell. Pena had 30 innings and a 5.58 ERA under his belt entering the year, and went on to work 85 serviceable innings. Aardsma, meanwhile, was banished to the minors after July 4, never to return.
Jose Valverde and
Bobby Jenks has both experienced highs and lows in the closer role, and
Nick Masset and
Dustin Nippert are equally disappointing sinkerballers.
Doug Slaten and
Boone Logan are tall lefties with good fastballs and big breaking balls.
Valverde and Cruz entered the season with the best track records of the bunch, but neither were what you'd call rock solid entering the season. In fact, outside of Nippert over Masset, there isn't one guy in the Arizona bullpen who would've signaled an upgrade in the White Sox bullpen before the start of the season -- and Nippert's not that good.
The Sox bullpen finished the year with a 5.49 ERA and a 1.61 WHIP; Diamondbacks relievers finished with a 3.95 ERA and a 1.34 WHIP.
Kenny Williams
has to make changes to the bullpen this offseason -- there's no way he could sleep at night otherwise, even if he had a good plan that played out worse than anybody could reasonably expect last year.
At the same time, I'm prepared to be frustrated by investing resources in a "proven reliever" when they can thrive or fall flat on their faces from year to year.
The Baltimore Orioles
spent nearly $12 million on Danys Baez, Chad Bradford and Jamie Walker in 2007, yet finished with a worse bullpen ERA than the White Sox for roughly five times the cost. Look at the trade between Milwaukee and San Diego a couple of months ago -- proven
Scott Linebrink didn't help Milwaukee's bullpen much, while the no-namer the Brewers sent in return --
Joe Thatcher -- dominated lefties in September.
The Padres are another lesson -- their collection of cast-offs, rookies, retreads and Trevor Hoffman ended up with the league's lowest bullpen ERA at 3.06.
This is why I'm never enthused with trading valuable commodities for relievers, no matter who they are. I'm expecting that the Sox will sink $3-4 million into a reliever, or, worse yet, trade Jon Garland for one. At the same time, I'm holding out hope that Williams will once again collect interesting arms instead.
Only this time, they throw more strikes.