Baseball's Ups & Downs

June 8, 2019

The baseball season is a long grind. Most teams are going to have their ups and downs. The Chicago teams are a perfect example of this.

The Chicago Cubs started the season poorly. They became the hottest team in baseball and soon were in first place. Before they opened up a home stand Monday, they had gone 2-8 in their previous ten games and were a shade out of first place

The Cubs returned home and Wrigley Field lived up to its billing as the “friendly confines”. They have won four of five with no starter giving up more than three runs. Lester found his form, Cole Hamels has been superb, Kyle Hendricks and Jose Quintana steady. Even Yu Darvish has had a couple of good games. However, in a victory over the Rockies, the bullpen almost coughed up a five run lead in a 9-8 Cubs victory.  President Theo Epstein finally thought it was time to make a move and signed free agent closer Craig Kimbrel. Before you anoint Kimbrel as the savior of the bullpen, consider he was getting battered as of late, losing the closer role in Boston.

 I think it’s time to admit that Kyle Schwarber is not the player he was supposed to be. His low on base percentage wouldn’t be as much of a problem if he were hitting home runs and not striking out. Without Ben Zobrist, left field becomes a problem. I don’t think the resurrection of Carlos Gonzales is the answer to this problem.  You know Cub Manager Joe Maddon is concerned when you see Anthony Rizzo leading off. People will argue that he only leads off once a game. However, the players in the bottom of the lineup don’t get on base, decreasing his RBI opportunities. When is Joe going to stop playing Daniel Descalso?

The White Sox got clobbered and were swept in a 3 game series on the road versus the Minnesota Twins.  The Sox came home to Guaranteed Rate Field and won 6 of 7 games. This team is capable of winning if it plays clean. Even Dylan Covey and Manny Banuelos starts were victories. Lucas Giolito, May’s pitcher of the month, had two victories. The only loss occurred in a game where they had two runners on with no outs and they both got picked off. This set the tone for the loss. This streak pulled them only one game away from the elusive .500 record. However, the Sox lost their next three games. This losing streak ended with Giolito throwing 7.2 shutout innings with a career high 11 strikeouts. He currently is the best pitcher in the American League.

The Sox have vastly improved. They have 30 wins. Last year they didn’t win their 30^tth game until July 3. Finishing .500 would exceed expectations.  To help reach this goal, it would be nice if Yonder Alonso started to hit.  Jose Abreu leads the league in RBI. Think of how much better this would be if he hadn’t struck out 65 times in 244 at-bats. Reynaldo Lopez, who seemed to have the biggest upside of the young pitchers, needs to get better.

 Manager Ricky Renteria handles his pitching staff like a surgeon wearing oven mitts. He has made numerous mistakes when it comes to bullpen maneuvers.  Last year he kept putting in Nate Jones, who always lost games. It took him until September to stop bringing him in to relieve.  This year, he keeps calling on Jace Fry in tight situations.  He has not performed well.  I don’t understand why he doesn’t use better options when games are close.

Renteria will be the biggest impediment to the White Sox being good in the future. We need a manager who knows what he is doing, not one that was hired out of convenience.