Nineteen Seventeen

There have been a lot of changes in the past few days (and weeks) in the baseball blogging world:

The first thing to happen was the exodus of Rich's Baseball Beat and Wait 'Till Next Year from All Baseball to a new site that the two created called Baseball Analysts. The new site is of the highest quality and is probably one of the best blogs out there right now. I urge everyone to check it out.

The next major shift to occur was the consolidation of many blogs into the SportsBlogs network. This network doesnt really have a homepage, but it is headed by Blez from Athletics Nation and includes many team blogs and John Sickel's Minor League Ball. I really like how these blogs employ the diary feature, so that others can contribute in a way that doesnt require them to start a new blog.

Another huge shift was the consolidation of many blogs from All Baseball and other sources to Baseball Toaster, including Will Carroll, Mike's Baseball Rants, Bronx Banter and Dodger Thoughts. This new site instantly becomes one of the centers of the baseball blogging universe.

Now that All Baseball was essentially raided of the majority of its highest quality blogs, they merged with the Most Valuable Network. The details of their merge haven't really been worked out yet, but the first thing that happened was Exile in Wrigleyville moving over to All Baseball, which I like a lot. I wasn't a big fan of the old interface of Vince Galloro's site while it was on the Most Valuable Network, but I like the All Baseball interface. I'm also happy that Vince is on a baseball website, not just a generic sports website. He's the White Sox' lone representative of the bigger name bloggers.

The interesting part is that this all took place in the midst of Spring Training. I don't really know why all of this happen, but it's really important to note all of this. It seems as if there is a general consolidation of blogs, which is probably a good thing. I dont think it will compromise the blogs to be affiliated with one another. On the contrary, it might raise the visibility of all of them for them to all be located on one site or in one network.

It seems as if McCarthy is finally getting his due praise from the national media.

His decent start (statistically it was awesome, but it wasn't the best he's done, which is really saying something) at one point was the first slide on the slideshow on MLB.com yesterday.

John Sickels (whose Minor League Ball blog is excellent if you have not been there already) rated McCarthy the top White Sox prospect with an excellent (by Sickels standards) A- grade.

Dayn Perry, rated him the 14th best prospect in all of baseball (which is the highest I have seen him ranked), saying:

McCarthy led the minors with 202 strikeouts in 2004, and he also posted a sparkling 6.7 strikeout-to-walk ratio across three levels. Not bad for a 17th-rounder. He shows exceptional command of a two-seamer, four-seamer and excellent curve. McCarthy's changeup needs refinement, but he still made good progress with it last season. His mechanics are polished and efficient, and his height (6'7") gives him a good downward angle at hitters. Some scouts aren't wowed by his stuff, but the numbers thus far are tremendously impressive.

But we all know that scouts weren't exactly impressed with Buehrle at first, but look how he turned out. McCarthy is not in the same mold as Buehrle, however, in that he is probably going to rack up more K's than Buehrle. I've heard the comment that he's like a tall Zach Greinke, which sounds pretty fair to me in that he gets a lot of K's, pitches smart and has great control.

Hopefully we'll get to see him one more time this spring on television, but I have a feeling that we'll be seeing him a few more times before the season is over.

His being at a very good level puts the White Sox in a good position, in that if Garland isn't adequate, Hernandez isn't healthy or Contreras proves he isn't good enough to start, McCarthy is there and will be a more than reliable replacement. By sheer ability, he'll probably find his way into the rotation before the year's end.

One of the biggest stories to emerge from the White Sox in the 2004 season was the emergence of US Cellular Field as one of the top parks in baseball for yielding runs. The split between the home and road stats of White Sox players is exempified in Paul Konerko and Mark Buehrle. Konerko had a 1.079 OPS at home and a .708 OPS on the road. Buehrle, on the other hand, had a 5.02 ERA at home and a 2.63 ERA on the road. Konerko was Albert Pujols at home and Joe Crede on the road. Conversely, Buehrle was Ismael Valdez at home and Johan Santana on the road (yes the splits on these two players were really that big!).

The prevailing theory that has been proposed is that the changes in the Upper Deck changed the wind flow patterns and thus caused more home runs. This runs contrary to the information given to Kenny Williams before the renovations were made, but it seems like a logical theory for the most part. However, correlation does not always indicate causation.

Another interesting thing to note is that Wrigley Field, usually known as a pitchers' park, played as a hitter's park last year. We can use this as a control because the dimensions or upper deck wasn't changed there.

Given this, is it really the case that US Cellular Field has been permenantly changed to an extreme home run and hitter's park? I have my doubts and I'm calling that US Cellular Field returns to being less of an extreme hitter's park. I believe that the weather conditions in Chicago last year were the cause of the extreme hitters park nature of US Cellular FIeld last year. We'll know which is the case come October.

Finally, the purgatory known as "Spring Training games" is upon us! While the games are absolutely meaningless, they provide a lot more fodder than occasional articles and quotes coming out of Tucson. The White Sox so far have dropped 3 of their 4 Spring Training games (and are leading significantly in their fifth) and nobody could really care less about how they are doing.

The best thing by far that has happened this spring training is Podsednik starting off 6 for 7 with 2 leadoff triples, 2 steals and (I believe) 2 bunt base hits. This is very encouraging and reminds us about his potential. If he could surprise a lot of people, come back to where he was in 2003 and hit .300 with a .360ish OBP, that would be fantastic.

On the downside, the White Sox' starting pitching has been less than fantastic so far, with all five pitchers having some sort of trouble. The only one I'm really concerned about is El Duque. There have been very few encouraging signs about him this year from a performance perspective. His velocity is down and his location wasnt good in his one Spring Training start. We'll just have to wait and see about him, but I fear he might not be all that great for us, even if he is healthy, but I'm going to give him more of a chance than one ST start and a few reports.


The fun really begins when on March 7th, the first of 21 televised Spring Training games is shown on Comcast Sports Net. Supposedly, that is the most amount of ST games televised by any team in history. As much as I like listening to games on the radio, getting to see the White Sox in action is that much better. This also might help the organization build up interest in the White Sox this season, especially if they are winning a lot of those later games (they dont matter, but that doesnt mean that they wont sell tickets).

The Tribune has a new White Sox beat writer. His name is Mark Gonzalez and he is coming in as an outsider who has no biases toward or against the White Sox (from CA originally, via AZ). This is definitely a positive development seeing that Bob Foltman was making up the position of White Sox management to make it appear that Frank Thomas was not going to be welcome to return after the 2005 season. Here's hoping he does a really good job and stays on the White Sox beat for a long time (assuming he does a good job)!

When I read the morning papers, I noticed a similarity between the two: both had an article about Ozzie Guillen and how he is a hypocrite for criticizing Magglio. One was written by Phil Rogers and the other by the Moron: Jay Mariotti.

I have to say that I find the timing interesting seeing that there was a poll on chicagosports.com about who was the leader of the White Sox and Ozzie won by a considerable margin.

Well this didn't surprise me that much from the Moron, though it was apparent that his personal vendetta against the White Sox has strengthened since being fired by ESPN 1000 for his really bad ratings (to which he claims he quit for not being able to criticize Jerry Reinsdorf).

But I have to say I was surprised by Phil Rogers' article today. Maybe I should not have been so surprised after that despicable attack article on Frank Thomas earlier. It seems that with this article he is further trying to stir up trouble. I really can't see any other purpose to this article.

Maybe he wants to be the White Sox's manager for life. Why else do you take on Jerry Reinsdorf's fights? And how else do you explain Guillen summoning righteous indignation toward recent comments by a confused Magglio Ordonez about his financially driven departure from the South Side?

First of all, Phil Rogers is in no position to call anyone a company man seeing that you work for the same company that Mark Prior, Kerry Wood and Dusty Baker work for. Now maybe if he had worked for the independent Sun-Times, this argument would have had more creedence, but coming from the company that owns the Cubs it does not.

No one says the Sox had to pay Ordonez $15 million a year indefinitely, especially in light of the serious knee injury that limited him to 52 games last season. In fact, given the club's spending limits—reasonable with their middle-market attendance and revenue—they made the right decision to let Ordonez walk.

But why keep beating him up? And why turn Guillen loose as an attack dog?

Come on. This is silly.

Now he's criticizing Ozzie for being pissed about Magglio bashing the organization to which he has devoted about 15 years of his life? Of course Ozzie's going to be pissed as hell. Magglio's comments were not, as Rogers says later, "less-than-explosive." The part which upset Ozzie the most was that Magglio seems to be unable to let this whole thing go and move on. The White Sox have moved on, but Magglio can't seem to let go of the whole thing which he created. Ozzie is basically trying to say to Magglio: "Move the [bleep] on and shut the [bleep] up." I'm totally with Ozzie on this.

Quite honestly, Phil Rogers is entering the territory of Jay Marriotti. I don't know if I can take him seriously anymore after these contemptible articles. He's lost a lot of my respect for needlessly bashing Ozzie and trying to push Frank out of town, all in the course of two weeks.