Peavy lays it down, then lies down
I think this sums up Jake Peavy’s start better than I could. The board is the Indians. Let’s hope the second board isn’t the Rays, because I’ll be at that game.
Making matters worse, Peavy said, “My arm just didn’t feel alive.” Obviously, he didn’t scream at it enough.
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A few stray observations:
*Of course Jeff Cox waves Mark Kotsay from second to third on Shin-Soo Choo’s arm in the same week I praise him for a lack of harmful decisions. This is why we can’t have nice things!
*I didn’t mind Kotsay playing for Paul Konerko, though. When Konerko starts hitting everything on the ground, it’s usually a harbinger of a slump. And he hit three of the exact same grounders to third on Monday. It’s worth keeping an eye on.
*One of the few things that get under my skin these days is the abject refusal by Sox right-handed hitters to take sinkerballers to right field. Alexei Ramirez, of all people, was the only one to go the other way multiple times, and he got a couple of doubles to show for it.
*Ramirez, by the way, is hitting .270/.316/.432 in May, putting him on the course for another typical season, which is fine. He’s also up to 10 doubles; he hit 14 all of last season.
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Christian Marrero Reading Room:
*Sergio Santos gets more nice press, this time from Yahoo!’s from Jeff Passan.
*Mark Buehrle isn’t happy about a fake Facebook page. I think Oney Guillen is behind it.
*Omar Vizquel might be ready to re-retire Luis Aparicio’s number at the end of the season.
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Minor league roundup:
- Charlotte 5, Columbus 3
- Carlos Torres lowered his ERA below 4.00 with an effective outing: 6 1/3 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 1 ER, 3 BB, 5 K, 1 HR.
- Clevelan Santeliz allowed a solo homer over 1 2/3 innings, striking out a batter.
- Jordan Danks went 1-for-4 with an RBI and two strikeouts.
- C.J. Retherford did what Danks did, except without the hit.
- Buck Coats went 0-for-4 in his Charlotte debut. His promotion may grease the skids for outfielder promotions below (Justin Greene, or maybe Brandon Short).
- Winston-Salem 3, Salem 2
- Terry Doyle picked up his first High-A victory by allowing a run on three hits and three walks over six innings, striking out three.
- Kyle Bellamy threw two scoreless innings, allowing a hit while striking out two.
- Short went 1-for-4 with a double (No. 17) and a walk, striking out once.
- Justin Greene went 0-for-3 with a walk and a strikeout.
- Jon Gilmore went 0-for-5; Eduardo Escobar singled and walked over five PAs.
- Kannapolis 2, Savannah 1
- Nick Ciolli tripled and singled over four at-bats, striking out once.
- Trayce Thompson went 0-for-4 with an RBI.
- Kyle Colligan wore the collar and a silver sombrero.
- Birmingham OFF
The Peavy acquisition and both ends of the ‘bookend’ Swisher trades certainly trump the Todd Ritchie disaster as being Williams’ worse moves ever. The fact that the trades were made so close together in time makes me really wonder about our general manager and the future of this franchise.
I say shut Peavy down for a few starts and recall Daniel Hudson.
Do we have the highest paid combo of underachieving starters right now? I hate to add MB to the arguement cause he has been so good for so long but at his current price and peavys…. these results just arent good enough. (Aaron Harang and Bronson Arroyo come to mind as a pair of overpaid guys) Im sure im missing some others.
Dear Board,
Sorry for not liking alexei ramirez I had no idea the love for a powerless, absent minded shortstop who cant hit in april and who eventually levels off to be a below average offensive player. Sorry for wanting more! Ha
Knoxfire30
PS Jake Peavy I hope your hurt, this cant be just the NL to AL and Petco to US Cellular effect can it be????
Apology accepted. BTW Ramirez is currently sporting the third-best shortstop range (by UZR) in the majors, which is not out of line with what he did last year.
Regarding Peavy and Buehrle, I think their situations are pretty different. Buehrle is only signed for one additional year and stays flat at $14 million. Peavy will be here for another two to three years and make $37-$55 million during that time.
Buehrle’s deal is a solid one that he has a good chance of earning even if he’s a bit short this year and next year (that great 2008 season definitely helps). Peavy’s contract is just too big for the type of pitcher he is (although he’s better than he looks right now) and he will almost certainly never be worth it, which is one of the reasons I was so against that move.
UZR said konerko has the most 1b range in the league last year? That CANT be right
Not sure what you’re referring to. I looked it up and he had a pretty average range last year, assuming you mean by Range Runs Above Average, the range component of UZR.
No apology needed. You gave your opinion, which you are entitled to. We just told you your opinion is wrong.
And re: underperforming starters, Lackey and Beckett might be the most conspicuous now.
Randy Wolf and Jeff Suppan too. I mean Suppan has always been meh at best but he makes a considerable amount.
Yeah that’s a good one. Haren and Jackson have been pretty disappointing for the D-Backs as well.
I was gonna say those too, but I dunno if Jackson is in the same earning bracket as these other starters.
On the bright side we don’t have Oliver Perez. Now that guy is awful.
Let’s not forget that Sabathia has been as bad/worse than Peavy this year, too.
And Hamels. And Lowe. Harden. Lackey. Meche. etc.
Sabathia?
Sabathia and hammels have both been pretty good this year.
If of course you mean CC Sabathia and Cole Hammels. If you mean two other guys then I’ll take your word for it.
Well, if you’re willing to accept any sort of sabermetric argument that Peavy has pitched a lot better than his numbers indicate (as many things point to), then yes, he’s been roughly of the same value as Sabathia and Hamels.
Peavy’s xFIP is 4.29 and is .6 WAR.
Sabathia’s xFIP is 4.09 and has .5 WAR.
Hamels might be a stretch, as his xFIP is 3.62 and has .7 WAR
Oh ok. Didn’t know which stat you were going by; tERA prefers Sabathia over Peavy by a decent margin.
Anyway I have much more confidence in Sabathia to right the ship for the rest of the season and earn most of his contract.
It’s all about perspective. He might be a tease, but he’s still a good value.
Is anyone starting to think about WHY San Diego was willing to part with Peavy? Is anyone wondering why Guillen lets his starters get “lit up” like the national Christmas Tree before making a move to the Pen? Is it that the “Pen” is so poor? If so, who “built” that unit? uh – Williams and Guillen? The SOX have talent in the minors and they can’t possibly do any worse than what comprises this squad, so why aren’t the SOX making moves? Did they decide to quit on this season just like they did last September on the ’09 season? Does any of this crap make any sense whatsoever?
Twins gave up Santana, Indians gave up Sabathia and Lee, Blue Jays gave up Hallday, so your why the Padres gave up Peavy doesnt hold up much of an arguement.
Ozzie likes giving his starters every chance to win a game, sometimes to a fault.
Sox have little talent in the minors, if your speaking of Hudson coming up thats fine but noone is even close to giving up on Peavy yet, too much is invested in him.
Hey yeah I agree the entire sox team SUX. WHY don’t we TRADE everyone on the “TEAM?”
Or better yet WHY don’t we have EVERYONE on “the” team throw one pitch each. That’d BE the best WAY to handle THE “pitching” STAFF right?
Hell;waouerhtlierb, seriously stop bitching about the staff. If you’re going to do it, and I assume you will, at least say how it could be handled better. Pose a solution. It carries the discussion better than retreaded hyperbole you keep typing.
that was awesome blah, I’m glad I wasn’t the only one baffled by the caps/quotes there
Thanks, I’m not usually a grammar guy, (If I was I’d be gunning for you knox) but I had no idea what the deal was with that.
me fail engblish thats unpossilbe
Who would you rather have?? Gio Gonzales & Ryan Sweeney or Jeff Marquez??? We should have held onto Nick Swisher & gotten rid of Ozzie. He is more of a problem in the clubhouse than Nick.
Ozzie never showed his bobble head around
Except to Mariotti.
No doubt Peavy’s been a huge disappointment, as has Buerhle, Floyd and now Garcia. With all the hating directed at the hitters, well-deserved though it may be, the SP was supposed to keep up close and win games for us, not get us behind 6-0 to the pathetic (unless they play the ChiSox) Indians. I was holding out a shred of hope for a team turnaround. There’s no logic to that, just wishing my baseball season won’t end by June 1. Alas, these White Sox are great at killing hope, as they have been all season. There’s about 10 more days before the first of the fire sale trades happen. AJ will be the first to go.
The hitters are still the biggest problem as well as the lineups made by the manager.
The difference is that there’s good reason to expect the pitchers to get better (Floyd and Peavy both have significant gaps between their ERA and FIP).
With the hitters, on the other hand, there’s little hope for the offense overall to improve, because the current state of badness is just what was forecasted before the season began.
I was at the game last night, and Peavy looked terrible, even when he got batters out. His numbers on the gun were low 90’s for most of the night, but it seemed that he had lousy location and his breaking pitches didn’t break. Did anybody else have the same impression? I wonder if there’s something mechanically wrong that he could fix.
I thought he was fine through the first two innings. The third, he looked like a completely different guy.
It has become clear that Jake Peavy is a better talker than a pitcher. Who knew? Certainly not Kenny Williams or the Sox scouts. Must have been the same scouts who recommended Swisher.
acquiring swisher not the problem, trading swisher for 10 cents on the dollar was
I’d take Swisher over Pierre. Or Vizquel. Or Jones. Or Kotsay. Or Nix. Then that DH by committee might actually have worked this year.