Life In The Cell

Not Such an Offensive Explosion After All

Fun fact: With the White Sox win, they have matched last season’s win total.

Prior to game 2 of the Mariners-Sox’ series, I outlined why this could be a high scoring game and why the Sox could win this game. Let’s see where I went right and wrong:

First, where I went right:

the Sox face Felix Hernandez, who has been pitching very well this year…Normally that would be an indicator that the Sox shouldn’t expect to score a lot of runs, but as of late they have been tearing the cover off the ball. Keep your eyes on Paul Konerko, Alexei Ramirez, Carlos Quentin, Jermaine Dye, and even Juan Uribe.

We’ll take them in order. Paulie didn’t play, but that’s not quite my fault. Alexei Ramirez went 2-4 with a RBI. He had some nice long AB’s and just missed a homer by say 2 feet. Carlos Quentin went 2-3 with a double, a run, an RBI, and a walk. He even stole 3rd base, showing just how awesome he is. Juan Uribe went 1-4 which ain’t half bad for him. Finally, there’s Jermaine Dye, well, there’s no need to get into that. Fine, if you insist, he went 0-4 with two GIDP, not quite the banner day for him. In addition to those hot bats, Nick Swisher and Jim Thome threw in a couple solo shots to give the Sox 10 homers in their last 3 games. I said that this could very well be the time that good hitting overcomes good pitching, and it damn sure did.

Now for where I went wrong:

I didn’t make an outright prediction about how Clayton Richard would perform, but you could infer that it wasn’t pretty. Comments like, “Clayton Richard inflicts on the team” and a title like, “Who’s Up for Some Offense?” should give you an idea. I was thinking something like 5 innings and 5 runs (4 earned), though I didn’t spell it out.

Clayton undoubtedly gave us his best start of the season. He went 6 innings and gave up 0 runs and allowed only 5 hits and 1 walk to go along with his 2 K’s. I would have been okay with him going out there for the 7th to take care of the bottom of the order, but I’m happy that Ozzie pulled him when he did. Clayton was good, but he wasn’t dominant. He was able to limit the damage and was with out a doubt lucky to escape without a run coming across.

In the first, he threw a grounder away (he’s got to get a handle on that) to let Ichiro reach 2nd base, which was followed by a Miguel Cairo single setting up 1st and 3rd and no outs. Ichiro easily could have scored on that single and should have been waved home, I’m not sure why the 3rd base coach thought otherwise. JD basically coneded the run, as he threw the ball to second rather than home. Raul Ibanez then grounded into a unique double play, with a grounder to Swish who stepped on first and fired home to nail Ichiro. It was a good play by Swish that saved a run and made me instantly happy that Paulie was sitting for the game. We’ve all seen how shaky he’s been throwing the ball. The second inning was a smooth 1-2-3 which was surprising as the second has been his worst inning in, admittedly, a very small sample size. The third inning was pretty smooth too. Clayton retired the first two batters before Cairo hit a double. Clayton recovered by striking out Raul Ibanez to end the inning. He was able to ratchet his fastball up to 93 mph to strike him out. That was one of the stronger aspects of his outing. He was able to effectively change speeds on his fastball to keep the Mariners’ hitters on their toes. He went as high as 94.7 mph to strike out Wladimir Balentien in a tough spot and as low as 85 mph against Jamie Burke in the second. The pitch break down will follow below. The fourth inning looked like the point where the wheels were ready to fall off. Adrian Beltre hit a ground rule double on a bad, hanging changeup. He induced a ground out from Jose Lopez, then got the aforementioned strike out of Balentien, and finally got Johjima to pop up to end the inning. It was at this point that Richard had my full confidence. The fifth should have gone 1-2-3, but Juan Uribe bobbled a grounder, but Clayton did his best not to impersonate Mark Buehrle and pitched right over it. His final inning of work started with a lead-off double (I feel like I’m repeating myself here) but was able to get out of trouble once again.

On a normal day, I highly doubt he’ll be able to pitch over three lead-off doubles, but today he was good and lucky enough to do it. As I mentioned before, he was able change up his fastball speed very nicely which coupled with his changeup kept the Mariners’ guessing. That’s not to say, that the Seattle hitters’ didn’t guess right on occasion, as evidenced by the lead-off doubles. He has earned the benefit of the doubt now, the next time he starts for the Sox and showed some of the promise he’s shown in the minors. I’m still not sold on him as a top of a line starter, but if he could develop his off-speed stuff, he could rate as well as say a 3rd starter. That may be a little bit of wishful thinking but we are talking about ceiling here.

As far as the pitch breakdown goes, this is how it looks:

For the sake of comparison, here’s the pitch breakdown from his last start

As you can see, he, as he has in all his starts, thrown a lot of fastballs. Right around the same percentage as last time out. The one thing of note is that he completely abandoned his curveball in favor of his slider which he refused to throw the last time he took the rubber. In his first and second start, he threw both off-speed pitches almost the exact same number of times, but in starts 3 and 4, he concentrated on only one of them. I’m not sure what it means, but it seems to me that it’s a sign that he doesn’t trust his breaking stuff in the bigs, yet. Like I said, maybe he’ll be able to develop his off-speed stuff more, and if he does, the Sox could have a good pitcher on their hands. If his slider and curve remain nothing more than get-me-over pitches, he’ll be relegated to 5th starter at best or reliever.