The craptacular performances by the White Sox's offense has basically given the pitchers a free ride at their disposal. Fortunately, few of them are taking advantage of it, but one of them is coming off a season in which he was the team's best reliever.
Matt Thornton entered the year with a breakout season under his belt and three years of security, and he's used that momentum to turn into
2006 Neal Cotts in the first month of the season. He's failing at his primary purpose -- to retire left-handed batters. Instead, the supposedly disadvantaged hitters
are feasting upon his stuff:
| vs. |
PA |
K |
BA |
OBP |
SLG |
vs. RHP
|
17 |
3 |
.267
|
.353 |
.400
|
vs. LHP
|
14 |
1 |
.462 |
.500 |
.846 |
In the process, Thornton has allowed five of eight inherited baserunners to score, when only 13 of 48 scored upon him last year.
The good news is there's nothing wrong with his arm. He's throwing 96, like he did last year, and it looks so easy coming out of his hand that he seems like he could do it forever.
The bad news is that there was nothing wrong with his arm when he convinced the Mariners to give up on him with two below-average seasons, so I suppose the threat of a relapse could be more real than we think.
Thornton attributes his issues to hitters not looking for wild stuff anymore. Maybe some of that's true, but then he throws a pitch
like the 0-2 grooved fastball to Raul Ibanez a couple days ago that gave the Mariners a comfortable margin for victory, and even a jittery hitter could smoke that one. It's times like these where he reminds me of
Alan Embree, who had an awesome fastball during his time with the Sox but put it in the worst places possible when it mattered most.
At this point, it's not fair to draw any conclusions, but with the Sox providing only the slimmest of margins, I'd rather see Boone Logan in a key situation with a lefty at the plate instead of Thorndog at this point.
While I'm at it, Mike MacDougal's not looking nearly as sharp as he did last year. He's walked four, hit one batter and thrown a wild pitch in his last 3 2/3 innings, spread over six outings because his command doesn't inspire enough confidence to let him last more than a righty or two at a time. Thankfully, opponents are only hitting .143 off him, because it could be considerably worse with his flyball rate about three times higher than his 2006 performance.
In relation to the offense, criticizing MacDougal and Thornton is almost splitting hairs, but every Sox hitter's awful numbers take care of any points I could possibly make.
****************
Minor league round-up:
- Richmond 4, Charlotte 0 (Game 1, 7 innings)
- Brian Anderson started his return to Triple-A with a bang -- 0-for-3, two strikeouts. Fortunately for him, the rest of the offense was just as bad. Pedro Lopez and Ernie Young had the Knights' only hits.
- Charlie Haeger had a wild line: 4 IP, 1 H, 3 R, 2 ER, 8 BB, 4 K. He threw only 47 of 100 pitches for strikes.
- Richmond 5, Chicago 4 (Game 2, 8 innings)
- I forgot to mention this Tuesday, but Jerry Owens is back in business after a few days off due to elbow soreness. He went 1-for-4. Brian Anderson went 0-for-4.
- Pedro Lopez and Andy Gonzalez each drove in two RBIs, all with two outs.
- Birmingham 5, Tennessee 0
- Adam Russell dropped his ERA to 1.85 with seven scoreless innings, walking two and striking out six. Fernando Hernandez Jr. closed it out with two scoreless.
- Thomas Collaro hit a three-run homer to break it open; he has five homers and 22 RBI on the year.
- Ricardo Nanita continued his hot hitting with a two-hit game, including a double.
- Potomac 11, Winston-Salem 6
- Kyle McCulloch managed to have a more ridiculous line than Haeger: 2 1/3 IP, 6 H, 11 R, 5 ER, 4 BB, 3 K. He also gave up a grand slam, with all the runs unearned because it happened with two outs and an error in the inning.
- Matt Zaleski, Joseph Torres and Jason Rice didn't allow an earned run, although Zaleski allowed both inherited runners to score, further inflating McCulloch's line.
- Micah Schnurstein hit his eighth homer, and his third in his last four games. He's slugging a robust .687. He also played third base, as he's been playing first most of the year (Tyler Reves, playing first, had two errors).
- Aaron Cunningham went 1-for-3 and committed an error for the second straight game. From the series of events, I imagine he missed the cutoff man or something similar. It didn't lead to a run.
- Kannapolis 4, Augusta 3
- Chris Carter hit a two-run homer, his fourth of the year. John Shelby had a double and triple, and catcher Francisco Hernandez had two hits to raise his average to .322.
- Justin Edwards pitched six solid innings, allowing only one run on four hits and two walks. He registered only one strikeout.
- Kanekoa Texeira continues to struggle, allowing two singles and a walk after facing three batters.