White Sox 8, Indians 0: Piling on the pain
It didn’t seem like the Cleveland Indians could be demoralized much further than they were watching their Cy Young candidate get beat by Ross Detwiler to knock them more than a game out of the second wild card spot on Wednesday night.
Tonight showed that the White Sox indeed had more room to make it hurt.
Not only did White Sox trounce the Indians via shutout, but they did it with a bullpen game. Dylan Cease’s hamstring seized up on him during his pregame warmups, but Jose Ruiz, Josh Osich, Jimmy Cordero, Jace Fry and Hector Santiago combined to throw a clean four-hitter (all singles, no walks or HBPs).
And if that wasn’t enough, the White Sox offense piled it on. They had two more extra-base hits than the Indians had any kind of hits, and two of them were Daniel Palka screamers for his first two homers of the year.
Palka’s first one completed the second half of a back-to-back with James McCann, the guy who opened the lid on this one. After Aaron Civale allowed a single and a walk for the Sox’ first scoring threat of the game, McCann made good on it with a soaring three-run bomb over the bullpen in left.
One pitch later, Palka got one of the monkeys on his back, hitting a 114-mph line drive into the first few rows behind the Indians bullpen.
That made it 4-0, and the Sox cruised from there. Osich did the heavy lifting, stranding the bases loaded with a Francisco Lindor lineout after a Yoan Moncada error prevented Ruiz from recording his sixth out. Osich ended up retiring all seven batters he faced to get the game through five, and three via the strikeout. He improved to 4-0 on the season, and this wasn’t his first well-earned win.
Cordero went six-up, six-down, and Fry pitched around a single with a pair of strikeouts. Santiago, reprising one of his first roles with the Sox, closed out the ninth by striking out the side. Sox pitches combined for 10 strikeouts and zero walks. On the other side, an unusually erratic Civale set the tone for a Tribe staff that struggled with the strike zone. They walked six to just eight strikeouts.
The Sox didn’t shy away from tacking on runs, although the Indians offered assistance. In the fifth, Yasiel Puig played a Jose Abreu single into a triple that scored Tim Anderson all the way from first. Zack Collins then doubled home Abreu, as Oscar Mercado mistimed his leap in front of the warning track just left of center.
Palka opened the sixth with a backspin-laden no-doubter to right off James Hoyt, and Collins once again cashed in an Abreu extra-base hit, following Abreu’s 37th double with a single to right.
Bullet points:
*Anderson went 1-for-4 to maintain his .338 average.
*Every White Sox hitter reached base once, including a pinch-hit single by Danny Mendick. Adam Engel was the only one who didn’t reach base twice, but he did walk.
*The White Sox finished 11-8 against Cleveland.
*Cease is done for the year, to nobody’s surprise.
Record: 70-88 | Box score | Highlights
Awesome. 11th draft pick instead of 7th in a draft deep enough where it could matter.
Empty moral victory.
Pretty sure not a single player gives a shit about our draft position. If Hahn came into this season hoping for another top-10 pick then I’m perfectly happy that Moncada, Anderson, Giolito, and others spoiled his master plan.
I’d be more sympathetic to Paulie’s position if it weren’t Hahn’s front office drafting. I don’t think 11 vs. 7 matters with this organization.
It’s Sept 27th. Hahn’s preseason plans are long since moot. A higher draft pick is more important than spoiling the Indians’ year. It doesn’t drop their prospcts rankings below ours, it doesn’t stop Kluber and carrasco from returning next year, it doesn’t stop their payroll from dropping to $70mil after the season and it doesn’t make the climb to match or beat them in ’20 any easier.
I’m sick of having “playing the spoiler be seen as a victory”.
How about having “Tim Anderson wins batting title, Jose Abreu wins RBI title, Zack Collins shows he can hack it at this level” as the real victory, not just the W-L column right now? I want the guys who made the biggest strides this season show that it’s not just some illusion with a heaping dose of regression on the horizon.
Sure, celebrate achievements of important players of the future.
My gripe is with celebrating being “spoilers” as some worthwhile achievement while we lose draft position.
Griping about draft position is no better than celebrating being spoilers.
Naaa fuck the Indians instead.
Maybe if we started trying to win more, we would … actually win more.
We need to be through with tanking. If this front office can’t pick a very good player with the 11th pick, then these bums probably wouldn’t pick a very good one at seventh, either.
Many of our first-round picks, such as Fulmer, Burdi and Burger, have not panned out anyhow.
This organization – a bunch of jerk stores!
There’s three players at the top of the draft. After that maybe a dozen fun choices.
@Paulie, terrible take. Â
This one matters tremendously.  Keeping Cleveland out of the playoffs means keeping millions of dollars out of Cleveland’s revenue and thus out of their budget next year and potentially down the line after that.  It could keep Cleveland from going deep into the playoffs our even winning the World Series.  It could keep a generation of fans in Cleveland from loving the Indians. Â
All of that serves to keep Cleveland worse now and in the future. Â Â
There are incalculable benefits to keeping the wildcard out of our division and making sure that the central only sends the Twins this year. Â And we basically did that by taking 2 of 3 in this series. Â Â
Let’s see…the two best Sox draft picks of the last ten years were #13 and #17. I don’t think it matters one bit where they draft unless it’s the top 2 or 3. I really hope they win their last 4 and secure the number 11 pick. The players are talking how the 2020 season starts now. And they are backing up their words. There certainly looks like a very solid nucleus is in place to win next year. Hope management sees this and spends big this winter.
I’M. SICK. OF. LOSING.
This is a scorching hot take and I love it
Booooo. Cold take.
Are we at the point where people are comfortable saying that Anderson is probably going to win the batting title?
hes 10 points ahead of the competition. yeah, I think everyone is pretty comfortable at this point.
If DJ got scorching hot and timmy when 1-20 it could still flip. but seems unlikely.
Palka with a one bouncer to the Concourse!. That’s a blast!
Is the September call-up version of Collins the platonic ideal of a Collins or is it the jumping off point for a more successful 2020? Hitting .241/.349/.444 with a 30%+ K-rate and 10%+ BB-rate is very Collinsian but he needs a .367 BABIP to get there and considering he doesn’t murder baseballs the way that Moncada does (or does he?) we probably shouldn’t expect that to continue.
If we could extrapolate his September over a full season we’d finally be getting something out of a first round pick, but that doesn’t seem like a great bet.
Taking a look at the statcast numbers, they are encouraging, but I think it all depends if this offseason he can make further developments or not.
Since Sept 14, he has xba of .265 and .591 xslugging with good, not great, launch speed and angle.
For all of Sept, its a xba of .222 and .492 xslug, which is still useable with a 10% BB rate.
His plate discipline and contact numbers look comparable to someone like Jason Castro, excluding power numbers, so thats like a .200/.330 profile, but if he were to improve his contact #’s like 5-10%, he could easily have similar #’s to a Max Muncy with a .250/.370 profile.
If his total rookie slash was 241/.349/.444 with a 30%+ K-rate and 10%+ BB-rate — I think it would have been considered almost an overwhelming success.
The hope is still that he improves upon these september numbers though. He has put down the ground work to give us a bit more confidence in using him as a RHP masher at DH next year, at the least. But we need a just a biiiit more on that OPS. That slash turns in a .793 OPS. If you’re gonna end up strictly being a Left DH/1B specialist, we need to bump another .50 points total on that OPS. if he could ad 40 SLG and 10 OBP, that would be so amazing.
i’m worried about it being a september mirage with him though. He hasn’t shown the ability to hit high heat yet to my memory.
Yeah, he’s still getting blown away by fastballs high in the zone.
I am always torn on draft position but not nearly as mad this year. With most of the push coming from Yoan, Eloy, Gio, TA7 its a lot easier pill to swallow. Throw in knocking the Indians all but out of the playoffs and this feels pretty good.
Now its time to go shopping.
I just hate to get excited about this winter because I really thought they would get Harper or Machado last year and they let us down big time. But how easy was it to sell someone on a team that really had no breakout players last year. Now you can sell players on having an ace. You can sell a slugger on the idea of hitting between Moncada and Eloy. Is there a better place to hit than between those two studs? Ricky and the players are all clearly stating that they expect to contend next year. Hopefully management gets the message and spends.
I am becoming cautiously optimistic. But then again, it’s still Rick, Kenny and Jerry running show.
The sox always let us down. I will say this off season still presents a lot of opportunity. Starting pitching is pretty abundant, Cole, Strasburg, Kuechel, Madbum, Odorozzi, Hamels, its a pretty strong list, add in position player types Rendon, Gregorious, Grandal, Castellanos, Donaldson, and a dh like JD Martinez. So while I have 0 confidence the sox get the elite free agent talent like Cole or Rendon, there is actually a lot of opportunity to go upper mid tier which I do think the sox feel way more comfortable with. Guys who will only command 3-5 year deals at 20 mil or so, vs guys who command 7 to 10 years and 30 mil a year types.
An off season say of Keuchel, Grandal, Castellanos wouldnt break the bank but the uptick in production to the lineup and rotation could be huge.
My biggest concern is the FO is gonna sit there and think:
“We don’t need Grandal because we already have McCann and Collins. We don’t really need Castellanos because Robert will be up to play CF and Leury can slide over to RF. Keuchel would be nice but Giolito is an ace, Kopech is coming back so that’s 2 aces, Cease and Lopez are like having two #2 pitchers because they’ll put it all together so we can really just bring Nova back to eat up innings in the 5 spot. When we re-sign Jose, we just signed the best 1B on the market so that’ll make everyone happy!”
Save those thoughts for Halloween they are scary!
I dont disagree, I would point to the outlier being 2006 when a championship team with a great staff still went ahead and added Vazquez, and a home run heavy team also decided to make a bold move for Jim Thome ….
Grandal to me fits in so many ways more then just C it would be insane not to go all out to sign him. And no mlb team should worry about having too many quality catchers.
It was actually somewhat surprising they didn’t just roll with Brandon McCarthy in hindsight, given the hype around him.
They have so little money on the books, that if they did that, their payroll would be $60-70 million. I don’t think even Jerry is that cheap. I’m more afraid they will spend stupidly, like signing Kendrys Morales and Rick Porcello.
Rough numbers, sox assuming good players back bad players gone… probably come in at what 50 mil with abreu getting 15ish a year
add keuchel (22) grandal (20) castellanos (18) roughly looking at 110- probably add 10 mil into pen via trade or signing that 120.
1. Robert CF
2. Anderson ss
3. Abreu 1b
4. Moncada 3rd
5. Eloy lf
6. Grandal DH/C
7. Castellanos Rf
8. McCann DH/C
9. Madrigal 2nd
1. Giolito
2. Keuchel
3. Kopech
4. Cease
5. Lopez
I mean I can get behind that, and to me you could easily justify spending 140-150 on payroll and this is 30 mil short of that.
I like that a lot, though I think I’d rather spend $22 mil on Bumgarner than Keuchel. That is a very impressive lineup.
I was thinking:
1. Anderson
2. Moncada
3. Abreu
4. Eloy
5. Grandal
6. Robert
7. Castellanos
8. McCann
9. Madrigal
I like Moncada much better in the 2 spot than cleanup.
And I guess they can go to $120-$130mil and replace Keuchel with Cole!!
Thats what I am saying! Little payroll commitment could really go a long way. Still would have some rotation insurance with Rodon hopefully coming back, still would have dunning coming back, Stiever shooting thru the system, probably go pitcher 1st round in this up and coming draft….
That type of team can win 80-85 games in 2020 putting them at least somewhat in contention but the upside by 2021 is more like 90-95 games with money to add via trade or free agency.
I agree with everything except I think that team could win a lot more than 80-85! That’s a really solid lineup and depending on who they add it could be an average or better rotation. Think of what the Twins did with a rotation no better than that. And they had a average bullpen all year too.
I think our bullpen is gonna be terrible next year so the added offense wont fully make up for the step back in the pen. Lets put a great lineup out there though and see what happens.
We need one of Burdi or Hamilton to come back strong. That would help. A back end of Bummer, Colome, Cordero, and Burdi/Hamilton has the potential to be pretty good. Most teams now just mix and match their pen to make it work. Look at Tampa’s. They have one of the best bullpens in baseball and they are just a bunch of no-names.
Even Tyler johnson could be a big part of the pen next year, and hopefully Herrera is healthy. That would be a plus.
2 years ago I thought the young potential pen arms were going to be a strength of the rebuild, the opposite has happened as a lot of the young pen arms stock has sunk. Johnson is the only one I believe in. After that hoping 1 of Hansen, Foster, Hamilton, Burdi, etc give us something.
I just dont see a pen going something like 41-2 when leading after 6 again. Insane to expect that again.
But with a much better lineup, we will score a lot more runs, taking some pressure off the pen. I think we have enough potential arms backs there to get 5 or 6 good ones out of that group.
2 years ago most people thought Bummer sucked ass. Last year we thought Fry was a stopper. Things change for relievers in a hurry; the trick is just to have as many options as possible to roll out there.
Well yeah, it’d be $60M but they need that buffer for when Giolito and Moncada hit free agency.
I am going to give the Front Office SOME credit. They know Leury Garcia should not be their every day Right Fielder. They know they need Starting Pitching help. I agree that i’m very skeptical about what they will do at Catcher and DH.
The question will be what they believe answers are at RF and SP. I’m more confident in them at least bringing in ONE good SP. I have no faith that they fix RF/DH with an actual talent.
Pretty much every single right fielder we used this season was sub-replacement level, and rather predictably so in most cases. Leury Garcia should not be the every day right fielder, but the FO could easily look at him as an internal upgrade at the position and not be wrong on that account while passing on better, more stable options.
So Hahn says RF, DH and 2 starting pitchers are stated upgrades for 2020. And Robert and Madrigal will be in Chicago for most of 2020. Hey, at least he knows what positions need upgrading! Now go out and get 4 studs!
When did Hahn say this?
He had a press conference today. I read the summaries from his conference.
His upgrades at those positions for 2019 were Jay, Alonso, Nova, and Banuelos/Santana. I don’t care that he knows it, he needs to prove he won’t botch it.
I read “one or two starting pitchers.” I hope it’s 2 because I could make an argument for 3 if the team is serious.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/white-sox/2019/9/27/20886941/white-sox-getting-closer-but-its-too-soon-to-say-next-year-is-their-year-gm-says