Podcast: White Sox need to flush April away

Record Date: 4/30/2023

Rundown:

  • Why Sunday’s miraculous comeback was one of the craziest games Josh has attended.
  • Luis Robert Jr. drama
  • Evaluating Pedro Grifol’s first month on the job
  • The White Sox bullpen is a dumpster fire
  • Series preview: Minnesota Twins
Take a second to support Sox Machine on Patreon
7 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
bobsquad

Right now the bullpen is entirely square pegs in round holes. The guys Grifol would logically look to for a ground ball either have been hurt (Kelly), have no control over their breaking stuff (Diekman), or the stuff has just been bad (Bummer).

Jimmy Lambert, given his profile, should probably never be on the manager’s mind with the bases loaded and 1 out… at GRF… versus the best power hitting team in baseball. But when sticking to the script has produced such awful results thus far, the bullpen options are reduced to a binary “has pitched well lately” vs “has not pitched well lately”.

Somehow Hahn has constructed a Three True Outcomes pitching staff: 29th in BB-rate (only Oakland is worse), 29th in HR-rate (only Oakland is worse), and 29th in GB-rate (only Oakland is worse). So I’m not sure then if I feel annoyed with or just bad for Grifol for having to tout the unit’s league-best K-rate in postgame conferences.

This bullpen has some above average pieces, but the strengths of a pitching staff disappear when the weaknesses are uniformly the same.

upnorthsox

I thought the binary was “he only gave up 3 last outing” vs “he’s the only one I have left”.

This bullpen potentially has some above average pieces but none are even meeting adequate let alone potential.

Actually, Santos has been adequate. I just wish I could trust him to maintain his control.

bobsquad

Lambert has looked good in most situations. But he’s not a guy you call to put out a fire with RISP, especially if a double play would end the inning.

Ditto Middleton.

ReyLo has shown this season that, at his best, he has top closer material. But you could have said the same about his stuff as a starter. His inconsistency will probably relegate him to being a solid low- to mid-leverage reliever.

Graveman’s splits speak for themselves. 1+ day rest (9 apps): 3.12 ERA, 1.15 WHIP. Back-to-backs (3 apps): 13.50 ERA, 1.88 WHIP.

Those 4 guys + Santos are all worthy of spots. But the team is lacking effective lefties and ground ball pitchers in a ballpark that is unforgiving to fly balls hit by lefties. There is no one reliable to go multiple innings to prevent the same guys being called on. The sum of the parts ends up being less.

As Cirensica

I was thinking why not Sholtens over Diekman? So I looked it up in Fangraphs but I forgot about when I was distracted by the fWARs of two relievers:

Diekman -0.1
ReyLo -0.4

I have always thought Diekman was, by far, our worse reliever.

I also got distracted by the fact that Lynn and Kopech have allowed 8 homers a piece. Good Lord, we haven’t played any games in May yet. Only 3 pitchers have allowed more homers, and they aren’t from the same team. One makes a living in Denver.

FishSox

I was disappointed yesterday to see Robert come in to pinch hit. Real injury or not, he’s responsible for communicating about his health, both to trainers and staff, either directly or through the chain of command. Any deviance from this is a 100% failure. Do you think you have an issue is a yes or no question, no grey area involved.

It’s a failure of leadership to dismiss that. But, it went down as I predicted here, no tough love, just half measures and softness.

So when you ask the question, is Grifol the right guy to manage the club, my answer is, not yet.

Last edited 10 months ago by FishSox
As Cirensica

In my opinion that “injury” is made up.

Augusto Barojas

Yeah, I suspect so. I mean I would never want to be a jerk if the guy is actually hurt, and he certainly has been in the past, but if I had to bet, I would bet that it’s bullshit. Or at least exaggerated.

I would suspect that there is a reasonably high percentage of MLB players whose hamstrings are pretty tight. I played tennis in high school and college, never pulled one but mine were always tight, and painful if a massage therapist got in there. They are a high demand muscle group that gets worked a ton in any sport.