A few minutes after getting Seranthony Domínguez off the hook by making the White Sox walk-off winners on Monday night, Sam Antonacci tried to do it again.
"We signed up to play a team sport and that's what happens in a team sport," Antonacci said. "If anyone's mad about getting down, tell them to go play an individual sport. Go play tennis or go play golf where you only have to worry about yourself. It's what you sign up for, and you've got to get behind each other."
As is the nature of wild, back-and-forth walk-off victories, Antonacci rescued more than one teammate from a sleepless night. Prior to Domínguez getting booed off the field for retiring one of four batters faced, the popular choice to usurp his closer responsibilities yielded a three-run lead without getting out of the seventh, and Grant Taylor has now allowed earned runs in each of his last three appearances.
The Sox spent to boost the bullpen and improve upon last season's putrid 15-36 record in one-run games; probably a tick more than most felt was necessary or even wise at the time. Now they're tied for the AL Central lead because they've already matched last year's win total in such situations (15-8), and sometimes literally all is well that end's well.
"They continue to battle and putting themselves in a good spot to win those games when you continue to battle and never give up," Will Venable said. "With the bullpen being so good up front in this first part of the season, you know they are not going to be perfect every day. You are depending on those guys to go out and shut the door. They have done a good job with that to this point. They have things they are going to work on and be able to come back and take advantage of the next opportunity."
There's room to dispute this assessment. Domínguez's fifth blown save of the season moved him in a tie for the second-most in baseball, the Sox pulled into a tie for third-most as a team, and it's not just your anxiety -- their pitching staff has the sixth-highest walk rate in MLB in the seventh inning or later.
"My goal is to get better and try to help the team win," Domínguez said postgame Monday, after spiking his season walk rate to 12.9 percent on the year. "When you get on the mound and walk the first guy, you can’t walk the first guy. I have to be better than that."
But disputing Venable's assessment only obscures what he can really do about it before Chris Getz does something about it via trade at the end of next month. After using Sean Newcomb for three innings on 42 pitches on Saturday, the Sox manager has used his remaining three proven leverage relievers to cover three leverage innings each of the past two games, and seen a lead spurned each time. Unless Venable is forgetting to press the "Make a Good Outcome Happen" button on his dugout tablet, the thin volume of leverage relief options seems like the bigger issue than their ordering.
It'd be a nice development if Jordan Leasure returns to being healthy and effective by the end of the season after a flexor injury, but it's far from a given. The same is true for Prelander Berroa, who has yet to pitch since experiencing elbow inflammation in his first post-Tommy John rehab outing over a month ago. Mike Vasil is an amazing clubhouse presence who recently purchased a new lightsaber, but the last two games have reminded that the Sox also miss his innings.
Tyler Davis is one of seven Sox relievers with a save this year and looked to be creeping his way into the leverage mix heading into June, but saw his control regress enough to make a reset in Triple-A look suitable. Jordan Hicks returned in his place and has the stuff to weigh in here, but has more walks than strikeouts. Chris Murphy cleaned things up enough to get the win Monday and his stuff has been up all year, but has been yo-yo-ing between Chicago and Charlotte due to control issues. There are interesting relief candidates still in Charlotte -- Zach Franklin misses a lot of bats, have you seen Jario Iriarte's numbers? - -but they would need to prove themselves to be viable big leaguers before becoming someone Venable asks for over Domínguez in a big spot.
While many remember that the last discussion of this topic found Domínguez polite, but clear in saying his usage has not been what anyone would expect when they're anointed the team's closer, it also hinted that Venable's already been shifting away from using the right-hander as his top option for the biggest moment of the game when it suits him. Domínguez wound up getting the ninth to protect a one-run lead each of the past two nights, but certainly not because he got tabbed for the most dangerous stretch of the opposing lineup.
Sunday was obvious: Taylor was brought in to face the heart of the Tigers order in the eighth, and while he allowed a Dillon Dingler solo shot and a scary deep fly out from Kerry Carpenter, he set up Domínguez to face three righties at the bottom of the Detroit order in the ninth, where he looked like a reliever thriving in favorable matchups until the inning strayed beyond that pocket. Sure, Monday saw Domínguez face the top of the Guardians order, where a left-handed Travis Bazzana drawing a walk started his trouble. But he was also assured of facing three straight righties afterward because Venable intentionally picked Taylor to helm a seventh inning where he expected the Stephen Vogt to flood the zone with every matchup move they had at their disposal.
"More than certain innings or guys fulfilling certain roles, it’s about finding the best spots in the order and the opposing lineup," said Venable, whose answer about whether he was staying the course with his leverage relief options was just to detailing how much he already hunts matchups for them. "You look at that last couple of innings, the way it unfolded, that’s what we had. We had Grant where we wanted them, knowing they would unload the pinch hitters at a tough spot in the bottom of the order, and Seranthony was our best option available at the top."
The tweaks available to Venable thus wind up being small. Sean Newcomb is basically the bullpen MVP, partly because of volume and his being on pace for nearly 100 innings. The Sox have used him in shorter, more frequent stints in the past and could do so again, though Newcomb throwing his most pitches in a single game in nearly two months on Saturday as the team tries to patch over a hole in the rotation is a discussion for a different day.
Waiver claim revelation Bryan Hudson is second on the team in saves and surely will get another try at some point, but also arguably did the heaviest lifting on Monday anyway. He struck out the left-handed Kyle Manzardo to clean up Taylor's jam in the seventh, before returning -- while pitching on consecutive days -- to add a scoreless eighth where three of the four hitters were left-handed, against whom Domínguez has historically struggled.
Hudson began June with a pair of clunkers and didn't strike anyone out in his first five appearances this month, while operating with a bit less velocity than he had in May, so giving him a promotion in role based off his recent brilliance reads as a tacit acknowledgement that relievers can have bad weeks and still be fine. That still seems like a more apt description of what's going on with Taylor than Domínguez, who is simply is falling behind and walking hitters in line with the career-worst control numbers he posted last year and has yet to reward the Sox for betting on his raw stuff to override those issues.
Even if Domínguez is still throwing hard and missing a solid amount of bats, closers on playoff hopefuls have been moved out their role for less. Taylor's slump takes some of the purpose out of formalizing any change in closer title, but not as much as Venable has removed by demonstrating that the closer title does not really dictate who he picks to pitch the ninth anyway.
"I’m not sure that roles necessarily help you find your path to the end of games," Venable said. "We just need guys to be able to get outs and be in spots in which they can help us find a path to the end of the game, and do it in a way that the opposing team scores less runs than us. We’re going to continue to do that, as far as how creative we have to get, that’s depending on what you have that day, and we’ll continue to look for the path as we continue down the season."
Domínguez's control issues could require a lot of creativity to navigate, especially if the current lack of fallback options doesn't improve. But as Domínguez has noticed, Venable already has ways of showing what relievers he trusts most in moments where the games can flip the most.
