With today's loss to Johan Santana finalized by
the actual playing of the game, the White Sox can pop the corks and celebrate their first losing season since
1999.
Santana's probably the right guy to cement this team to its sub-.500 fate. After only striking out five hitters over his last two starts, both against the Cleveland Indians, Santana doubled that number in only one outing. Five of the 10 strikeouts were of Josh Fields and Danny Richar.
So far, the only "We welcome our new lefthanded overlord" comment is
from Jermaine Dye:
"He has our number. It is just hard to say why. He comes out, has a lot of
confidence against us and doesn't do anything different. We just can't
get too many big innings off of him."
Dye had two of the five hits and scored the only run off Santana, so it's awfully magnanimous to lump himself with his teammates. Let's just hope this is the end of the lauding, because buttering him up doesn't make him any less dominant.
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Speaking of quotes, Greg Walker made me laugh when talking about Josh Fields:
“We’re still at a stage where we’re watching, trying to let him be Josh
Fields, but there’s definitely room for improvement there ... Right now, we’re not on him every day, getting on him about striking
out,” Walker said. “I think (that would be) the wrong approach. We
think it’s going to be a gradual process where he cuts down.”
For one, Walker is all about the "[name] being [same name]." He
summed up his spat with A.J. Pierzynski as "A.J. being A.J. and Walk being Walk" And now Josh Fields is just being Josh Fields. We could say that by saying Josh is being Josh, Walk is being Walk.
Secondly, it's tremendous that he's leaning on that phrase more, because it sums up what appears to be his teaching style. Hitters are who they are, and they're not going to be who they aren't. Unless, of course, they hit worse. Then he's going to hope that they find what they're missing (probably "swagger"), so they can go back to being themselves.
And nothing more.
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And because we can't talk about quotes without including Ozzie Guillen, I like
what he said about Joe Crede:
"I didn't even know Joe was still alive, to tell you the truth."
That seems to be the status quo, when coupling it with Kenny Williams' answer to the Crede question a month or two ago -- "I hear that he's doing better. It's a little difficult to keep tabs on that situation for reasons I would rather not go into."
It's hard to tell which Scott Boras-shrouded injury situation is murkier -- Crede's or Magglio Ordonez's back in 2004. Of course, having lived in Missouri for four years, I'm picturing Crede playing Clarice Starling to Boras' Buffalo Bill. It's more fun that way.