Even if the eventual return of Kyle Teel forces Jake Rogers out of the White Sox's catching mix at some point this month, he'll have made his mark on the season in two ways:
- His walk-off homer against the Mets on Aug. 21.
- Mustaches and goatees for everybody.
A bunch of White Sox sported mustaches and goatees with varying levels of success on Tuesday to mark the start of September, and Sean Burke said after the game that Rogers was the inspiration.
Then there’s the mustaches … or the goatees, whichever one each White Sox player chooses. It’s an idea coming from veteran catcher Jake Rogers for the exciting final month of this tremendous season thus far. [...]
“I think it was Rogers who was talking about it yesterday,” starting pitcher Sean Burke said. “I always do a mustache at one point in the year. A new month, last month of the year, want to finish strong, feel like kind of changing it up, do a little team thing and get the mustache, goatees going."
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Rogers' five o'clock shadow has a five o'clock shadow, so him suggesting the team rally around facial hair is like Victor Wembayana offering a slam-dunk competition as a corporate team-building exercise. Nevertheless, many of the White Sox will follow suit, regardless of hirsuteness.
Spare Parts
- Sunday Notes: Tristan Peters has been a pleasant surprise on the South Side -- FanGraphs
- Tristan Peters has gone bananas -- FanGraphs
Tristan Peters, who has no issues going the goatee route over the final month, was the subject of not one, but two articles at FanGraphs over the past few days. Take them together, and you have a guy who is succeeding thanks to an ability to lift and pull the ball more than his raw strength would suggest, and the power of friendship.
Sean Newcomb's workload and arsenal suggests he could once again position himself as a starting pitching possibility when he returns to free agency after the season, but he might be more valuable as a one-man high-leverage crew. Either way, he'll command more than the $4.5 million contract he signed with the White Sox last winter.
Chris Getz tells Jared Diamond that he wasn't sure the team could improve its worst-in-baseball bat speed numbers without replacing the players involved, but they found a way. What's weird about bat speed as a team metric is that the White Sox are still 25th at 71.7 mph, but the teams below them include the Cubs and Dodgers, with the Guardians bringing up the rear.
Arte Moreno sold the Los Angeles Angels to Stan Kroenke for $4 billion, a deal that shocked only for how suddenly it happened. Moreno had been trying to sell the team for years, and the way he'd run the team reflected a lack of interest in doing the job, but there hadn't been a rumored buyer until the news was announced.
This is great news for the Angels, and potentially good news for baseball fans, if you buy into the idea that a 79-year-old Kroenke isn't going to want the excitement doused by a prolonged labor battle. Then again, he owns three teams -- the Los Angeles Rams, Colorado Avalanche and Denver Nuggets -- in leagues with salary caps, so maybe he'll push for them.
While Kroenke's status as ownership-grade rich is well established, Mark Walter, who purchased the other Los Angeles team for a whopping $2.15 billion back in 2012, was far more obscure, to where even fellow Chicago billionaires like Jerry Reinsdorf didn't know anything about him. Because the sale of the Dodgers was conducted through a bankruptcy proceeding, the league didn't have as much control over the vetting.
