APRIL 5: Anderson underwent an MRI, and the White Sox are still waiting for the results, manager Tony La Russa told Bruce Levine of 670 The Score and other reporters. He’s unlikely to play until at least Thursday.
APRIL 4: White Sox shortstop Tim Anderson was removed from tonight’s game with the Angels after suffering a hamstring injury while trying to beat out a grounder to first base. According to the official announcement from the Sox, Anderson is day-to-day with tightness in his left hamstring.
Leury Garcia took over for Anderson at shortstop before the bottom of the first inning, and Garcia is the likely fill-in should Anderson need some time on the injured list. Further infield depth is available in the form of Danny Mendick at the minor league level, plus other MLB-experienced players like Matt Reynolds, Marco Hernandez, and Tim Beckham who were in camp on minors deals.
Of course, there is no way to easily replace Anderson, who emerged as one of the sport’s better hitters over the last two seasons. Anderson has hit .331/.357/.514 (130 OPS+, 133 wRC+) with 28 home runs over 739 PA in 2019-20, winning the AL batting title in 2019 and a Silver Slugger Award last season. The White Sox were already missing one of their biggest bats in Eloy Jimenez (who will miss the majority of the season recovering from surgery to fix a ruptured pectoral tendon) as well as fourth outfielder Adam Engel, who is sidelined with a hamstring injury of his own.
but A Rod said it was ankle… weird he got that wrong lol
He also said it was because of the bag when he clearly pulled up injured before it.
I wanted to yell at the TV telling A-Rod to open his eyes. Note to self: turn volume down on ESPN games. I’m not American – can someone tell me what they see in him and Marley Rivera?
Agreed. Sunday night games are on silent in the background.
What they see in him? I suppose you could say ESPN’s decision to put Arod in the booth would be similar to having Richie McCaw in as an analyst for the All Blacks. If you look at both men’s incredible careers and their ability to communicate and teach others there are some similarities there.
I think it’s fair to say Richie Mac’s character is beloved by nearly all Kiwis whereas Arod? Might be a wee bit different there eh?
Ohtani hurt now too.
So we are even for the night.
Prick
Knew there was a reason I liked you, Mrs Pederson.
Thank you from the Madhouse.
Inappropriate comment chisox fan
Seriously dude you giving white sox fan bad name cause of you stop
No.
He gave himself a bad name.
We know that’s not how you guys feel. Promise.
Chisoxfan_fan you are trash. Why wish anyone an injury?
Ditto that. Glad to see Ohtani’s well. Historic moment
When did he wish an injury on anyone? All he said was what happened. Ohtani got hurt did he lie? Did he say “I hope Ohtani gets hurt” NO. Did he say ” I am glad Ohtani got hurt” NO. Some of you people are so thin skinned and act like pansies it makes me want to puke. Toughen up and act like an adult for godsake.
Knowing his history of comments, it’s not hard for me to read between the lines.
TA rhymes with 10 day. Sadly.
It’s too bad about Anderson. He’s been playing well. But the Sox are fortunate not to have Luis Robert hurt also.
Did many of you, see how hard that fly all hit him in the head? Wow!! Had to hurt.
You must be surprised Robert’s not in concussion protocol.
Bigger story…Ohtani!!! Wow!!
He’s pitching well. But Maddon is going to ruin his arm by leaving him in, to throw about 90 pitches. With Ohtani’s history of arm issues, this is nuts for his first time out. Maddon has no idea how to handle a pitching staff.
The Sox’ Cease also threw 92 pitches.
I didn’t think that was a good idea either. Cease isn’t that big, he’s a high effort guy, and also has had arm issues. This still is so early in the year.
Size doesn’t have much to do with stamina. 90 pitches is pretty much the norm for April. Cease is not high effort. Pretty easy gas. Every pitcher has had arm issues. You can’t baby them all.
Ahh Steve, so you don’t think Cease is high effort? I’d like to know who then, you think is. Plus, interesting that you use the word, ‘much’.
Cease already has has one TJS. I definitely see him as high effort guy with a fastball as straight as a string.
Of course, they should slowly try to build his stamina so he can reach 90 pitches a game by Sept. We certainly don’t want to burn these pitchers out by having them throw more than 50 pitches a game in April. Why settle for Katz when they should’ve hired you as the pitching coach?
Hahaha! 90 pitches by Sept? Super babying. Try 90 pitches by there 3rd start.
Nobody knows how to best use a two-way player.
I wouldn’t use him on the mound at all until late in the season.
Ken Brett’s career went off tracks when he was used as a pitcher vs. a CF
2 way players? Easy – lots of beer and hot dogs.
And Ohtani got wiped out. Joe tried to give him the win and he got slide tackled instead, and he won’t get the win.
If they want Othani as two-way player, they need to have him be high leverage reliever. They are asking too much of him.
DH rules make it very difficult to relieve. That’s why he is starting exclusively. Just about any scenario where he pitches and hits in the same game forfeits the DH.
Appears the White Sox found a team that plays defense like they do.
Sad.
U
Dang, this White Sox vs Angels game is hard to watch. 2 of baseball’s most exciting players go down with injuries.
I think the Angels need to work on making routine throws to bases
Ruiz and Foster in the game during tie ballgame in 9th with Hendriks riding pine after pitching a single inning in four games.
Explain again how TLR id a master of bullpens? Or what the point of spending serious change on Hendriks was?
Other than Kopech and Crochet, Angels took the BP behind the proverbial woodshed. They are going to be tough on almost everyone. Not simply due to this game, but early overachiever Foster has been struggling since late last season and into ST/now. He may need to get some work in at the alternate site. Marshall is also very mortal if he is not pinpoint, but he’ll just have to work it out with Katz.
Very few relievers are able to string together a series of solid seasons. Hopefully this is just rust as opposed to a sign of decline for the staff.
They cannot afford to have a bad bullpen this season, especially with the cash they doled out to Hendriks.
I know a number of their relievers had pretty good seasons in ’20. That’s kind of a good news/bad news thing. Ya know?
Great that is was last year, but it was basically 15-20 game samples. Not much.
There is a reason Fangraphs – for example – doesn’t think too highly of their ‘pen. Putting together a deep, quality bullpen year after year is not as easy as a lot of folks think it is.
I think their bullpen is their Achilles heel. This is another example of how hard it is to build quality roster depth which the sox are still trying to do. That takes time. It’s the last step in assembling a real contender.
I expect to see some real growing pains for this club. They should take the next step, but I think they’re still a year or so away from being a true contender for the AL pennant.
There were a handful of regression candidates coming out of that bullpen last year, most notably Bummer, Marshall, and Colome. One of those guys left.
Others like Heuer & Foster also pitched much better than their peripherals suggest.
It’ll be interesting to see which of these relievers can dodge the regression bug in 2021. The White Sox can’t afford a bunch of them seeing regression at the same time. And yet, based on what we know about relief pitching, that’s fairly likely in this case.
Curious as to why you included Bummer.
When I saw his numbers the first thing I thought was; “I couldn’t do that on PlayStation, bro”.
I guess he almost has to regress some but it’ll be a long fall to get to ineffective.
As to your larger point: yeah, man.
Year to year reliever performance will drive a lot of fans to the bottle of bourbon.
If you’re looking at ERA and thinking, “there’s no way I could do it in a video game”, there’s a good reason it’s also unsustainable in real life.
Bummer is below average in most of his Statcast metrics. He’s slightly above average in two things: whiff %, and xSLG. But there’s very few peripherals that scream, “sub-1 ERA reliever”. In fact, he outperformed his xERA by nearly 2 full runs last year. His xWOBA was almost 100 points higher.
That makes him major regression candidate, perhaps one of the biggest regression candidates in all of baseball.
It was the K rate & ground ball % that I found to be jaw dropping. Especially when viewed together.
Thanks for the deeper dive & answering my question. Huh. Their bullpen might be an even bigger issue for them than I’d even previously thought.
This isn’t saying that I guarantee that Bummer will regress, but the numbers are by no means favorable to him repeating what he’s done.
If I’m a White Sox fan I’m concerned by two things: 1) the lack of depth across the board and 2) the amount of regression candidates across the board.
The front office failed to address several glaring issues. And I think they’ll pay the price sooner than later.
I’ll buy that.
Particularly the depth issue. When it became apparent that Hamilton was going to break camp with them I took a closer look at their 40 man. They’re paper thin.
Which makes sense.
They’re just coming out of their rebuild. So they were busy augmenting their core on the big league roster & overall depth wasn’t really addressed. Again, makes sense to me.
My guess is that’ll be a pretty major project they address next offseason. I think they’ll still have a decent season. & I look for them to be one of the true AL favorites next year this time.
I would be curious how the White Sox plan to do that. Most of their young, desirable talent is already plugged into the MLB roster (and the remaining is mostly pitching or super young). So there’s not much to trade from or add in later on, and the White Sox don’t have a history of being big spenders in free agency.
So unless they can pull off what Friedman has done by developing the Justin Turners and Max Muncys of the world, or they suddenly decide to spend a lot of money, I’d be curious how they continue to add meaningful pieces to that team.
I guess I’m operating from the premise that they won’t be needing many major pieces.
So they’ll be able to focus on rotation depth, middle relief, the bench, minor league guys, etc.
Now, if they have numerous major holes that would change my take.
I don’t have an issue on grand scale with what they did with bullpen.
I hate the idea of paying closers, in part because managers use them in an illogical fashion as was demonstrated last night – saving them for an accounting stat as opposed to using them in actual high leverage situations, like tie ballgames.
But it’s hard to “build” a bullpen because year-to-year results aren’t consistent, and relievers often beat projections.
Nothing in Alex Colome’s recent numbers screams high leverage guy, but he gets it done, even if it’s ugly.
Hendriks is fantastic when he is on, but he’s really, really bad on the occasions he is off, however rare.
The pen was good last season, and most were still under contract, so there really is no point to adding, although I would have preferred two high leverage guys with the Hendriks money over one, because paying for “saves” is dumb, as demonstrated last night.
Lots of assessments being made based on four games.
Not sure where you’re getting that but Jaso & I are certainly not basing anything on 4 games. Go back & give it a read.
Welcome to every season.
Ohtani is a first ballot hall of fame talent as a full time outfielder. Angels are understandable to let him do 2 way but i prefer to go one way or the other. This experiment imo is not smart. Babe ruth was a great pitcher as well but made the switch and had a stupid career
As for the white sox. I was worried when tim anderson boasted about their world series potential. Theyre a young team who doesn’t know how to win big yet. Just play ball and get better. We all love the white sox potential but man they are decimated already and are facing too much pressure for a young team
He wasn’t boasting per se. He was baited into saying that by the Parkins and Siegal who dared him into agreeing with them that the Sox were a team to beat and he took them up on their dare, laughing along the way
I get it man. But hes the leader of a team with a ton of youth. Simply no reason to put pressure on guys just cutting their teeth
Agree. Its a thin line between confidence and brashness. Think a lot of MLB players have a tendency to wilt under pressure, it’s really different than hoops where you can take control and assert your will on a situation. TA’s first love was hoops. He brings a point guard’s mentality and mental toughness to the game which is refreshing. Three 3 hit games in his first playoff series is a testament to his self confidence
They can survive a series without Anderson or a replacement.
Madrigal can play SS, and Moncada 2b, with lamb at 3b if necessary in an emergency.
It’s a bad idea to play two of your starters out of position. Nick Madrigal hasn’t played shortstop as a pro since his first game in Rookie ball. He also wasn’t the starting SS in his final year at Oregon State University. As for Yoan Moncada, he hasn’t played 2B since 2018.
The White Sox are much better off with Madrigal and Moncada staying put. Leury Garcia is a more than adequate defensive MLB shortstop, maybe even the equal of Tim Anderson with his cannon arm. If necessary, the team can always add reserve infielder Danny Mendick who is traveling with the team on their taxi squad. Mendick is a natural SS who has played the majority of his professional career at the position.
My point was in case of an in-game emergency.
Or even Vaughn at 3b. Moncada wouldn’t really be out of position, he did that for a whole season. I like that setup
Wish they had reclaimed Yolmer. Security blankie.