As the White Sox's substitution-heavy approach advanced through the Wild Card Series and into the second round of the postseason, I started looking forward to the FanGraphs managerial report card on Will Venable, just to see what a third party would make of it. And while the White Sox squandered a 2-0 lead to the Cleveland Guardians in the ALDS, it actually became an even more fascinating topic of debate. When pitching chaos works, the arguments against it are mostly about the aesthetics. When it fails, it's the first place to point a finger.
I had my own sense of the shortcomings I'd attribute to Venable versus the hand he was dealt, but I wanted to square them up against FanGraphs' outside evaluation, as it brings both distance from the subject and a lot more familiarity about how other managers conduct themselves under similar pressure.
Ben Clemens drew the assignment for evaluating Venable, and his report card that went live on Tuesday aligns with mine, at least in terms of proportions. Clemens gave Venable an A- for how he handled pitchers, versus a B- for the offensive side of the equation.
I'm not sure I'd go that high on the pitching side, just because the diminishing returns for Hagen Smith and Grant Taylor felt predictable, even if better bets were difficult to identify -- but that side is reliant on pitchers executing, and "17 walks over Games 4 and 5" is the sort of thing that the best planning in the world can't overcome.
The hitting side felt like Venable trapped himself into poor protection choices for Miguel Vargas, especially when you could see Cleveland pitchers smelling blood in the water around Munetaka Murakami and Andrew Benintendi. Dave Roberts' handling of Shohei Ohtani this October shows that Venable has company in sticking with name-brand hitters beyond their ability to help in their present conditions, but however it happened, he couldn't present Stephen Vogt with a difficult decision when Vargas came to the plate.
I do like how Clemens wrestled with Venable's handling of Grant Taylor, as though he doesn't want to become the Louis Leroy to Venable's Claude Monet.
I still feel a bit unqualified to opine on how Venable used Grant Taylor. A four-inning save! Fifty-four pitches in the first game of the playoffs! Entering whenever and wherever needed and pitching until he couldn’t anymore. It doesn’t have many parallels that I can draw, and I’d be terrified of using a pitcher that way without having a very solid understanding of his limits and how comfortable he was with the plan. But Venable had those things, and while it sure felt like he overused Taylor, there was definitely method to go along with the madness. I imagine that Taylor’s workload would have at least temporarily dipped if the Sox advanced, but they played seven postseason games and he appeared in five, including two different times going more than two innings, so it’s hard to fault Venable for getting so much out of his best arm. As I keep saying, I don’t think I would have managed it this way, but I definitely see the vision.
Spare Parts
Josh's reward for his work in moving us to the Foul Territory network? Attempting to answer questions from an exasperated A.J. Pierzynski.
While the WInston-Salem Dash won their first league title since 2003, they also suffered the biggest attendance drop in minor league baseball, drawing 1,012 fewer fans per game.
Jamsil Stadium, which hosts both the Doosan Bears and LG Twins, is being torn down and replaced by a 30,000-seat dome. It's probably hosted the best baseball environment I've ever experienced...
... and so I appreciated this ode to Jamsil from Jim Bulley, who hits upon the main theme of every ballpark that gets replaced these days.
Jamsil was never perfect, but it was home. Like most baseball stadiums of its era, it is a towering mess of concrete. It was designed before anyone had thought of hospitality suites or corporate boxes. I once attended a corporate event during a game there, and the Bears' solution was to tape a large flag to the wall of an ordinary office.
But isn't that what we want baseball to be? Jamsil was unapologetically for the fans, not for the corporations that run the teams. That may not have been the intent, but it was the result. It was a beautifully democratic stadium, where every seat was more or less the same and, especially in the early days, a good view cost very little.
All the more reason for the White Sox to spend this offseason. Nothing is guaranteed.
