I said last night that I'd likely end up penning a mea culpa in apology of my earlier write-up of the Griffey trade.  Well, reading it again, I still like what I wrote.  In the comments at the time (though annoyingly not in the post), I said there should be about a two week cushion at which point we could expect Griffey's routine to have more or less become clear.  To quote myself:

If any of the parties in question care about winning more than they care about anything else, Griffey will end up where he should.

What that implies, I hope, is that merely watching him play should make it obvious what he can and cannot do and that through the simple mechanism of trial and error, his proper place on the team would be found.  Having seen what happened last night on a couple critical plays in center that in the very least changed the course of the game, I have to suspect that these are the kinds of plays that everyone on the team noticed, Ozzie, Kenny, and Junior included.  In the original post, it's fairly clear that I expected that it was Junior's ego that was the largest factor in play here.  What I've seen so far puts the matter in the hands of the bosses.  Whether it's Kenny's ego or Ozzie's mad whims that are on the hook, the fact is The Kid can't play center.

On the other hand, Kenny has been criticized by certain factions of the SSS faithful for having failed to find pitching help.  With Jose Contreras done for the year, a fifth starter certainly fits the bill.  But to my knowledge, there were all of two seeming possibilities: Paul Byrd and Jarrod Washburn.  The former was nabbed by the Red Sox and was likely never a possibility to begin with.  It is extremely doubtful the Indians would be willing to help the White Sox get back to the playoffs.  Mr. Washburn pitches for the Seattle Mariners, perhaps the most dysfunctionally managed club in all of Major League Baseball.  Getting him for less than Aaron Poreda and the Additional Pieces also appears doubtful.  Considering the cost and the available "talent," it looks to me like Kenny's shrewd judgment in the trade market is paying off again.

All that's left now is to bicker about a bullpen.  From highest leverage usage to lowest:

1. Bobby Jenks
2. Octavio Dotel
3. Matt Thornton
4. Horacio Ramirez
5. Adam Russell
6. Lance Broadway

The top 3 + LOOGY looks fine to me.  It would obviously be preferable to have Scott Linebrink back, but there's 4 arms available for games where we're ahead or tied and 2 for games that we're trying to finish out with minimal damage to pitchers that matter.  The competence of each group seems certain to me.  We'll be able to rapidly add an arm since it appears that Dwayne Wise is readily disposable at this point.  The only problem is that we can't add anyone better than Scott Linebrink either internally or externally. The same is true with Contreras.  The annoying fact of baseball is dealing with the unexpected.  Shoulder soreness, ruptured achilles, or a bunch of tiny fish with sharp pointy teeth that just will not go the hell away.  But hey, who thought we'd be here in the first place?

At first glance you might think he's like a less unlucky Javy Vazquez this year.  His K and BB rates are both a lot better than his 4.08 ERA with a definitively lower FIP.  But check out his career ERA and FIP.  The difference is minute.  As always, there's a lot of noise in ERA and his FIP is actually the more telling stat here.  Part of that is a 20 point bump in BABIP over his career numbers.  Boston SS have fairly blah fielding win shares, though Lowell and Pedroia are second and first respectively in the AL at their positions.  I'm going to go with "elevated line drive rate" as the primary issue there.  All told, he's functionally the same ace he was last year.

Versus RHB

He mows them down with heat.  According to Kalk's pitch recognition algorithm, he throws a fastball and a sinker.  From looking at the numbers, it looks like he's just pronating more on one, getting more horizontal break and less lift.  There's only a half mph difference between the two and just a .025 difference in ISO.  It's probably more appropriate to differentiate them as a four-seamer and a two-seamer.  Nonetheless, getting any kind of lift on the fastball is difficult.  The four seamer comes in at .091 ISO against, the two seamer at .066.  This, in addition to the big time heat (he and Big Bobby have more or less the same average fastball velocity), allows him to stay in the zone well above average rates.  He gets ahead easily and puts hitters in a serious bind. 

As for off speed, his one weakness is that he doesn't really have an on-demand strike out pitch against righties.  He doesn't have confidence throwing the change to righties regularly in the zone and as such RHB see it just 4% of the time.  The curve is a good pitch that is apparently very difficult to put in play but when it does, it gets hammered.  This is the strike out pitch, but as he works later in counts and into games, opposing batters will have seen it and be less likely to be overly fooled.  The result is a less than stellar whiff percentage and a slightly below average ball rate. Nonetheless, the whiffs per swing rate suggests it's still very very good.

We're about to find out just how good our batters are.  This is likely what a scout would call "plus plus gas" that basically no one hits HRs off of.  To borrow a phrase, cackle with knowing glee if Dye and Quentin are driving the fastball early in the game.

Versus LHB

Here things become more convoluted.  He becomes a 3 pitch pitcher again, the K rate skyrockets, but the ISO against also increases.  His fastball command is right on par, but the four seamer sports a .280 ISO against and while the two seamer is still (just) under .200, he throws it less frequently (about 30% less).  So I might suggest sitting on the four seamer...

...except the change up comes back into play here.  While the numbers make me wonder if it's actually a splitter (an 89 mph change?), it really isn't that important.  The pitch itself gets a whiff nearly 20% of the time, which is as good a whiff rate I've seen on any pitch.  The next best, iirc, is Dempster's slider.  If you can pick it out, it's decidedly mashable, but history suggests that pretty damn difficult.  The curve, meanwhile, gets a bump in whiff rate while everything else stays mostly in line. 

In sum: pick one out and send it for a ride if you can, but don't expect anyone to be on base when you do.

For Your Reading Pleasure

I picked out two choice lines to check out:

Carlos Quentin vs. +93mph fastballs

Jermaine Dye vs. +93mph fastballs

I have to imagine Beckett will try to rely on the two-seamer against them given those HR numbers.  We shall see.  For those wondering, my math says that's a .493 ISO for JD and .485 ISO for Q!  And given that, it's a serious indictment of Ozzie's choices for Leadoff Position and Bat Handler.  Swish and Griffey would make far more sense.

thank you Javy Dent.  down 2-0...

Your dearly beloved contributing author assumes you've already read this and this from Sox Machine and Life In the Cell respectively.  If you haven't, stop sucking at life.

What Did We Get?

A left handed platoon bat.  The interesting stuff isn't in proving he can't handle LHP anymore.  That's known.  So what else is there?  For one, there's BP's weighted mean projection against RHP:

• .274/.365/.513

And, of course, I checked out the pitch f/x data.  A fun little spreadsheet can be found here.  The critical thing to note is that the tool data only runs up until May 28.  To see how he did during this stretch, I checked out baseball musings.  Bottom line: .280/.364/.417.  From the pitch f/x data, we see the same.  Aside from struggling with changeups (he'll fit right in!), he took walks and RHP generally did their best to pitch around him.  The biggest problem was the lack of power.  He's rebounded pretty well.  Since May 29, he's posted a .245/.386/.509 line against RHP. He rarely whiffed on fastballs, which leads me to believe it was just a rough patch power wise.  No peripherals were out of place.  In other words, the BP projection looks good.

What Did We Lose?

Choose Your Own GOB related caption!

• We lost more than we'll never know.
  
• TAKE THIS PILL AND LOVE US AGAIN.
• Oh I see what you did there.
  

Brandon McCarthy proves to be the gift that keeps on giving.  Thanks to Brandon and Aaron Cunningham, we had enough "prospects" to make this deal happen.  Gone forever from our waking Sox lives are Nick Magic and Danny Richar.  The former is a demi-god around these parts.  His random good starts will be missed.  His relief skills will not. In summary:

Crime:Our Chances To Win::The Bat Signal:Nick Masset

As for Danny Richar, I had pretty much given up on his chances of being very good or even average.  He had some pop, decent wheels but for the life of him could not hit enough line drives to bring those secondary skills into play.  Add to that a relatively meh defensive reputation and he might have found himself labeled The Second Best Second Baseman In Charlotte if someone had cared enough to do so.  Chris Getz is less toolsy, but he can actually hit.  Gimme some of that!

The Million Dollar Question

Where's Griffey going to play?  Eventually, it should and must be first base.  He does nothing well in the field at this point, serving as a serious hindrance even in right.  A possible alternative would be to move Quentin to RF.  Q has the arm and the range for it.  As long as his instincts and ball-routes don't impede his natural talents, this probably works for me.  But seriously, Mr. Junior Sir, why the hell do you care where you're playing?  This is the best team you've been on in a long time and you're back in the Real League.  You win this side of things, the whole "World Series" bit comes a lot easier. 

Whatever the case, this is imminently solvable.  If any of the parties in question care about winning more than they care about anything else, Griffey will end up where he should.  The responses I've seen so far to the trade have been a little baffling and a little shrill.  Let's keep in mind who we're dealing with.  This is the Kenny and Ozzie show.  For all the circus feel of the place, the one thing that neither them will put up with is insurrection from the proletariat.  Jon Rauch?  Sean Tracey?  Hell, Frank Effin' Thomas lost out to Kenny and Ozzie.  You perform, however defined by those two, or you're gone.

So Is This A Good Trade?

Hells yes.

Justin Verlander and his ace stuff and command (well okay it was a little off) proved to be no problem for our boys yesterday.  And indeed, since the All Star break we've absolutely mashed.  But today?  Against Zach Miner?  Shut. Down.  And that's just how it works sometimes I guess.  I don't have much insight there, since batting isn't really my thing and, to be sure, I'm perfectly content with our effort.  We didn't battle as much, like yesterday, but from this contributing author's perspective, it seemed like the foulballs and good counts that were available yesterday simply weren't there today. 

Baseball, it is often said though perhaps in other specific terms, is a game of failure.  So it was today when Javier Vazquez ("Javy Dent") flipped the coin badly a few times and ended up with serious issues.  He was giving up untimely doubles and dongs all day, even if the final line wasn't completely ugly.  What I hope to examine shortly is my idea for a command metric using the pitch f/x data.  Either way, the fastball seemed to be consistently finding the heart of the plate.  Is there anything to be concerned about?  It's hard to say.  I said in the first inning that it didn't look like Javy's stuff was all there, but his offspeed stuff looked okay.  It was the fastball that saw significant damage against.  What to do?  As a fan, there aren't too many real options.  For a pitching coach, I imagine it's a matter of keeping the mechanics reined in (which I thought they were) so he can get back to finding the command we saw earlier in the season and much of last.  I'm not overly concerned.  These are the vagueries of pitching and, in general, predicting performance.  It's a difficult task working with traditional metrics which leave "luck" in the equation.  Barring further explanation, that's all we're left with sadly.

But is it really such a tough loss?  We won 2 of 3 on the road and that certainly goes against the year long trend to date.  These are the series results we need going forward and to lament this overly isn't taking the proper perspective.  Even without further additions to the team, the White Sox are prepped to compete long term with the Twins and have a current 2.5 game lead to make good with.  We stole the previous two games going bullpen against bullpen and sometimes that's what it really comes down to.  We're going through a bad stretch as far as the pitching goes and those tend to even out over time.  Don't get freaked, just remember what we expected going into this season and how well KW has done exceeeding our expectations in general.  As I briefly admonished yesterday about Ozzie I will again about KW: he's damn good.  If he decides there's nothing worth it on the market, he deserves the benefit of the doubt at this point and if it doesn't work out take heart.  This is team has a committed owner, a skillful GM, a talented GM-in-waiting, and an excellent manager.  Considering the heartbreak and annoying failure we've known in the past, this is pretty damn good, no?

RRRRRRRRALLLLLLLY!

Octavio Dotel hasn't exactly solved his career long problems with command and control.  He walked Placido Polanco, he of the career 5% BB/PA line. He gave up a big leadoff double to Maggs that was certainly not the product of Ordonez beating him on his pitch.  He uncorked a wild pitch that allowed Edgar Renteria advance from third and cut the lead to one.  We had to turn WU's TV off to make sure he made it to the next game thread. 

But.

But he racked up 3 K's in 1 1/3 IP and, ultimately, came away mostly unscathed.  It's not like he was the one who loaded the bases in the first place.  His fastball, like Bobby's and Easy Heat's, is elite and it allows him to make and then overcome mistakes.  And in case you weren't sure that striking out Placido Polanco to end the game with a fastball was an accomplishment, the Kalk Pf/x Tool confirms it.  Polanco has swung and missed on just 1.18% of fastballs in the database so far this year, which is something like 1/5 the major league average.  So while our bullpen is suddenly in turmoil (are we ever not worried about something?), in the very least know that there is pure stuff backing up the success of these pitchers so far. 

Meanwhile, the bats look very much alive.  The Sox made Verlander work from pitch one and he quickly found his pitches/inning skyrocketing.  He noted in his post-game interview on FSN that his command was off, particularly on the Q! bomb.  It certainly was, but part of that was Ozzie's doing.  As mentioned in the BUO, Verlander struggles throwing strikes to lefties and Ozzie made sure he had every single one in the lineup tonight. 

From the same interview, Verlander said the second half of the back-to-back job was a good pitch.  He got it inside off the plate, but JD got his hands in and made a vicious turn on Verlander's fastball to put the second straight White Sox batted ball in the seats.  This is a team that can hit mistakes, but the difference between Verlander's stuff in his previous effort against the White Sox and today's game was not great, nor were we squeaking out basehits.  This was a highly impressive effort.

John Danks had the same problem Verlander had today, leaving changeups and fastballs over the plate and getting relatively few groundballs.  I didn't see much of a cutter today, and I wonder if that wasn't part of the problem.  Danks is good, but his fastball isn't Dotelian; Johnny needs to hit his spots and have all of his pitches working to be optimally effective.  That said, the Tigers weren't exactly lacking in the lineup today.  No Mike Hessman, Clete Thomas or Ramon Santiago today.  Just a number of very good major league hitters.  It was a little disappointing, but hardly alarming.

Tomorrow, it's Javy Dent against Zach Miner.  Depending on how Ozzie feels about the distance between the Sox and Twins, we may well see a bit of a Sunday lineup tomorrow.  Either way, I'd feel okay about it.  The bench has proven its worth this year and without Pablo, there aren't any huge gaps in performance at this point.  Uribe or Josh Fields at third?  From what Josh has shown so far, the difference at the plate may well be negligible.  That's overly pessimistic, but he hasn't had a great AB yet.  At least his D didn't show up on the Obviously Crappy side of the ledger. 

Oh.  Happy Jenksgiving!

via the(OMGHE'SSODREAMY)cip

• hupgood

• pecota card

• fangraphs card

RHB

Against RHB he's basically death.  His fastball, which he throws on average harder than 94 mph, is basically a sinker, with batters posting just a .167 ISO against.  I think the primary cause of this is the ton of ride he gets, with more than 7 inches of break horizontally (a lot for that kind of fastball, in my experience writing these)  His curve has a well above average whiffs per pitch rate and he gives up .185 ISO.  He doesn't throw it for a strike that often relative to the average, but he gets so many whiffs out of the zone and throws it primarily once he's ahead, so the cost of a ball is lower anyway.  In any case, there's no real evidence that he struggles with curve command.  And he pounds the zone with his fastball so effectively that working behind in the count does not work against him like the average pitcher.

The change is an opportunity, but I couldn't detect a usage pattern, so actually being able to make something of it requires acute recognition from the batter.  The other interesting note about the change is that he throws it almost exclusively inside to right handers.  That's strange, but it suggests that he's really trying to sell it as a fastball and doesn't like to let righties really see it (longer plane to throw across the plate-->more time to examine pitch).  So, while he gets a solid whiff rate, it's a matter of his approach rather than pure stuff.  The .471 ISO against backs that conclusion.  It's an opportunity but making something of it is still difficult.

LHB

via www.fangraphs.com

He's had a terrible time throwing strikes to LHB this year and he has at least some history of trouble.  According to his BP card, his L/R splits:

LHB: .248/.337/.411

RHB: .240/.309/.364

The difference in power hasn't shown up so far this year, as his change up is profiling divergently in this regard from righty to lefty.  This makes sense to some degree.  The inside changes to righties that get mashed when recognized are away to lefties.  If you remember the fastball dot graphs I posted from John Walsh a while back, it's much harder to hit the pitch away for power.  It's strange that pitches Verlander has little trouble spotting against righties become so much more difficult against lefties, particularly since his inside spots to RHB should translate just fine to LHB.  It looks to me like there's a mental block there. 

Outlook

Neither RHB nor LHB will have an easy time today, but if Sox lefties can take the walks that Verlander has been handing out thus far, their chances look much better. And, clearly, there's a reason why Ozzie is stacking his lefties in this lineup.  Let's remember this next time we call Ozzie out for being stupid.  This is just one point of  many in his favor.  He's been outstanding this year. 

new evidence has come to light

JD hits a 2-run HR with 2 outs in the 9th that wins the game!

• I did a more thorough background on Jose's stuff and I'm going to talk to Josh Kalk and see if I can't get a few things from him on, say, just Jose and hopefully Clayton Richard too.  Anyway, it looks like Jose may have been having some velocity problems after the Cleveland start where he threw 115 pitches.  For those who want to see what I was looking at in particular, check out this and use in conjunction with a game log.  Also, Jose's side arm fastball is incredibly good against RHB, a legit sinker really.  He just doesn't have much against lefties, especially when he doesn't have good velocity.  Without a change up, he can't really disguise his fastball to LHB, nor does he have an out pitch for them if the forkball is off.
  
• Yesterday's win has me thinking about Q's future.  For one, expecting him to noticeably decline at this point when the run scoring environment is so much better in the second half than the first would, once adjusted for the new environ, make the underlying reality even worse than it would seem at first glance.  So keep that in mind if it happens.  Either way, he's sporting a .271 ISO and a .101 IsoD right now.  I doubt you'd find 10 players in baseball with a better combo.
  
• Additionally, and this is something I never read about him and still generally don't, is that his mechanics and way of doing things on the field are very much his own.  That is to say, very particular to him.  He throws a little weird (way over the top, footballishly).  He rolls over his backfoot in his swing.  And that stance!  To all of us, it's already iconic, a silhouette we'd recognize instantly. His peculiarity works both ways: it throws off prognosticators if it turns out he's legit (he's outstripping his PECOTA 90th percentile projection).  But the insularity of individuality only has so much power and, in fact, it can be part of the problem.  The pull toward the mean, the universal squeeze of entropy, more forcefully asserts itself against those who have no mentors, for whom the normal solutions hold no salve. Hall of Famers, of course, are by definition such and they are so incredible that they simply aren't subject to the tribulations of the weak.  They are distanced by their awesome powers, the strange savant, "Manny being Manny".  And they always have mythic proportions.  The Big Hurt.  Ironman.  The Sultan of Swat.  Or even...Q!perman.  Which is why, as I'm watching him, I wonder if it will be less special if 5 years from now he isn't the same Q I'm watching today. If it all ends too quickly, it'll be tough to comprehend and we'll be stuck wondering about what could have been.  Who's going to say they saw it coming?  ...Is it crude to see he and Omar in the same light?