Posts tagged JohnDanks at FanHouse

Every four years, Major League Baseball's postseason intersects with a presidential election. This is one of those years. In the spirit of the season, we here at MLB FanHouse have divided the playoff teams up for a series of debates. Tom Fornelli and Eamonn Brennan discuss the ALDS between the Rays and White Sox.

Eamonn and I took a look at this series and broke it down into six key areas: Starting rotation, Bullpen, Defense, Lineup, Bench, and Manager. Then for good measure we throw in our five-star lock of the week predictions, because we're psychic mediums in our spare time.

All of the debating goodness after the jump.

It's pretty amazing how important bullpens have become in baseball today. In a way, the bullpen could be the most important part of a team these days. With starting pitchers having shorter and shorter outings, if you don't have a strong bullpen, you don't have a chance to make the playoffs.

For instance, the White Sox had a chance to jump right back into first place on Friday night, but after Ozzie Guillen had to remove a struggling John Danks, his bullpen only compounded matters. In two and two-thirds innings, four White Sox relievers (they don't deserve to be named) combined to walk five guys, hit two others, throw a wild pitch, balk, and give up a grand slam to Ryan Garko. Needless to say, Ozzie wasn't very pleased with the effort.

''I don't think it was a baseball game -- it was a pitching parade,'' said Guillen, who used five relievers before the night ended. ''I think those guys should be a little embarrassed, because I was. I didn't want the fans to see me go out there any more. I begged [Octavio] Dotel [the last reliever] to please get it done.

''I already got mad, breaking things in the dugout. It got to the point I started laughing. I didn't have any other choice. You can't try to play [as badly] as we did. I apologize to the fans who saw me. I think that's the worst first five innings I remember in a long time. We have 40,000 [36,494] looking at stupid baseball. We fought back, yes, but it's getting old.

With the playoff chase coming down to the wire, our MLB editor rounds up the five biggest pennant race stories in Eye Toward October.

- Pressure on Brewers: With a pair of dramatic walk-off wins Thursday night, the Mets and Brewers earned a little less than 24 hours of breathing room -- a momentary respite from the words choker and collapse. They enter the final weekend of the regular season tied for the wild-card lead, and, in another bit of symmetry, both teams must wait until Sunday for their aces -- Johan Santana and CC Sabathia -- to start.

The pressure is always on in the Big Apple, but make no mistake, Milwaukee is facing a tougher road to the postseason. The Brewers must deal with the best team in the National League, the Cubs, as they claw and scratch for a playoff spot.

Lou Piniella rested Aramis Ramirez, Derrek Lee, Alfonso Soriano and Geovany Soto in Chicago's final game against the Mets Thursday, but it's unlikely he will sit them all weekend against Milwaukee, especially with a chance to knock out a Brewers team that presents a real threat in October. And Piniella will also send his best two starters of late -- Ryan Dempster and Ted Lilly -- to the mound in the first two games of the series. The Brewers will start the shaky Jeff Suppan and Ben Sheets coming off injury before turning to Sabathia in the finale.

Of course, the Mets won't have it easy this weekend. The Marlins are a dangerous team and New York is using a spot starter on Saturday. The Phillies will have to take care of business against the Nationals too. But as good as the vibes have been for the Brewers this week against the Pirates, the Cubs present a major obstacle to Milwaukee's playoff hopes.

Dear Ozzie,

Let me start this letter off by saying that I'm a fan. I don't always agree with the moves you make, or the things you say and do, but for the most part I think you're very good at doing your job. Still, that doesn't mean there isn't one thing you do constantly that could end up costing your team a division title this season.

It nearly did last night.

In the second game of your doubleheader against the Tigers last night, your boys had jumped out to a 7-0 lead so you decided to pull starter John Danks early and go to the bullpen. I have no problem with this, and thought it was a smart move, but shortly afterward you nearly killed your team. After the Tigers had made it 7-3 in the eighth inning, you brought in Octavio Dotel with a four run lead.

I knew right then that you guys were going to blow the lead. How did I know this? Well, Ozzie, that's because every time you bring in Dotel with a comfortable lead, he blows it. Maybe you haven't noticed the 500 previous times it's happened this season, but it has. Sure enough, a few pitches later, Marcus Thames was launching a grand slam into the left field bleachers and the game was tied at seven.

In recent weeks the once formidable White Sox pitching staff has been pretty damn awful. After spending the majority of the season with the best ERA in the American League, White Sox starters have had an ERA of 6.75 in the team's last 20 games, and they've fallen to sixth in the league.

So is it that the staff is just going through a rut, and slogging through the dog days of summer, or is there a deeper mental issue? Is the pressure of a divisional race getting to them? If you ask Mark Buehrle it has nothing to do with any pressure, well, unless your Gavin Floyd. That's guy is a mental marshmallow.

''If anything, Gavin might be a guy that's affected,'' Buehrle said. ''[John} Danks is so laid-back, it doesn't seem like anything bothers him. Where Floyd, it seems like there's a little bit more that gets to him. A bigger situation or bigger game might get him more nervous, but Danks isn't a guy I worry about.''

Keep in mind that Buehrle is 8-10 on the season, while Danks is 9-4. Floyd is 11-6. Though I'm not saying that Mark is wrong in his assessment, I'm just wondering why he feels the need to say it publicly. Gavin Floyd is a pitcher that lets things bother him on the mound, and his confidence is extremely fragile, so questioning that in the paper probably won't do much to help it.

Especially when you already play for a team who has a manager that has no qualms what-so-ever about ripping you in public.

In recent weeks there had been plenty of teams who were interested in the services of 16-year old Dominican pitcher Michael Inoa. The 6'7 prospect has had scout salivating for a while now, and organizations were lining up for the chance to add him to their team. Well, when it was all said and done and Inoa was allowed to sign with somebody, he ended up choosing the Oakland Athletics.

As details came out about the signing, other teams (like the Rangers and Reds) found out that even though they offered Inoa more money, he still chose the Athletics over them. This didn't make sense to these other teams, so in their minds, the only logical explanation is that Oakland cheated and signed Inoa before the deadline. Now it looks like MLB will be taking a look into the deal.

Adam Katz, Inoa's agent, would not discuss the offer from Texas (or a reportedly larger offer from Cincinnati), but he said the A's did not sign Inoa until the 12:01 a.m. EDT deadline Wednesday.

"There was no contract before the deadline," Katz told The Chronicle on Sunday. "Absolutely not. Billy (Beane) and the team followed all the rules carefully. Billy and I were both very aware how high profile (Inoa) is."

Personally, I don't think Oakland did anything wrong here. I mean, maybe Inoa and his agent chose a smaller offer from the A's because they've seen the success Oakland has had in developing young pitchers. You know, guys like Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, Barry Zito (he used to be good Giants fans, I swear), Dan Haren, and now Rich Harden and Justin Duchscherer.

Needless to say, the Rangers and Reds don't have the same kind of history. Well, the Rangers can develop good pitching, they just trade it all away before it's ready for the bigs. Just ask John Danks and Edinson Volquez.

Maybe the All-Star Game is a meaningless to the players and just an excuse for Bud Selig to admire himself for a week. That doesn't mean that the selections should be stupid. Today, the MLB 'Haus gives you All-Star Grievances.

Grievance: Jermaine Dye not making the team. I swear in recent weeks I've become Jermaine Dye's publicist telling anybody who will listen that he is far and away the most undervalued outfielder in the game today. Still, I thought enough people knew about him to at least get him on to the All Star team. JD is hitting .308 and OPSing (not sure that's a word, but screw it, I'm angry) at .919 with 19 homers and 52 RBI. His only crime is that he plays in the American League where outfielders are raking this season, and that people still think the Yankees are good.

Grievance: Lack of White Sox pitchers and Joe Crede's selection. Now I'm probably going to come off as sounding like a bit of a homer here, but there just aren't enough White Sox on the team this season. They're in first place in their division, and lead the league in pitching, yet their only All Stars are Carlos Quentin and Joe Crede. While Quentin deserves the nod, Evan Longoria should have gotten Crede's spot. Also, as I mentioned, the Sox lead the league in pitching, yet not a single member of their pitching staff made the team. Does that make sense to you? Gavin Floyd is 10-4 with a 3.22 ERA and a WHIP of 1.12, John Danks is only 6-4 (it's not his fault the Sox average about .00003 runs every time he starts) but has an ERA of 2.52 and WHIP of 1.17. How neither of them make the team baffles me.

Grievance: Jason Varitek as the third catcher over A.J. Pierzynski. Great, another White Sox player. I know, I know, but if you look at the rest of the teams from the AL Central, everybody that deserved to be on the team is on the team (you could argue Carlos Guillen doesn't deserve his spot, but what other Tiger takes his place?). The Sox are the only team in the division to really get screwed here. Anyway, Varitek was chosen by his fellow players over Pierzynski even though he's only hitting .218/.300/.358 with seven homers and 27 runs driven in. Pierzynski, on the other hand, is hitting .296/.333/.442 with seven homers and 33 RBI. Oh, and he's the guy calling all the pitches for the pitching staff with the lowest ERA in baseball. Obviously, his personality is what cost him here, which is idiotic. Is the American League looking to win this game or hang out with friends?

While the Twins and Tigers are busy throwing fastballs at each other's heads this week, the White Sox are taking advantage of it by beating up on the lowly Cleveland Indians, and adding some cushion to their division lead in the AL Central. Still, even though the Sox have won six in a row, have the best ERA in baseball, and have crushed an American League-best 113 home runs, the team still has holes.

Considering that they're relying on two young pitchers without proven track records over an entire season in Gavin Floyd and John Danks, there's some speculation that Kenny Williams could be in the market for another starting pitcher. There's also the fact that the offense is too reliant on those home runs they hit, and could use some more speed on the basepaths.

None of this bothers Ozzie Guillen though, as he's perfectly content with taking his chances with his current roster.

"You have to crawl before you start running," Guillen said Tuesday while being careful not to declare the Sox a playoff-bound team. "This ballclub [can] compete and be in the playoffs, be alive in the pennant race. And if we get to the playoffs, I don't mind taking this ballclub to the World Series."

On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing baseball matchups

You know, throughout the course of baseball history, there have been plenty of relief pitchers who made the transition to being a starter. Hell, before the specialty roles we've all come to know and love (I heart LOOGYs) started, the bullpen was just a place for managers to park starting pitchers who couldn't cut it.

They didn't want to use them, so they put them somewhere as far away as possible.

Anyway, I'm getting off track, what I was getting at was the fact that the move from bullpen to starter happens all the time nowadays. Just look in Chicago where Ryan Dempster has gone from being the Cubs closer last season to being their #2 starter this season. Boston's Jonathan Papelbon was a starter who became a closer then tried starting again only to return to closing and thrusting his pelvis in any given direction at any given time.

So why is Joba Chamberlain's move from the back of the Yankees bullpen to the rotation such a big deal? I swear to God, you turn to ESPN on any day that Joba is pitching and they're breaking into PTI to let us all know that Joba has reached the fifth inning.

"Not the fifth inning!" you scream from your sofa. "I better tune in to see if he makes it to the sixth, no time to feed the kids now!"

Seriously, the hype surrounding this "big" move is utterly ridiculous, so let's add to it after the jump, shall we?

Baseball is America's pastime, but had our forefathers enjoyed the modern conveniences of clocks, ball pumps, or haste, this pastime may well have been basketball or football. Instead, they had wood, leather, and a rudderless disposition. Baseball is Boring is a series of live blogs for folks who need irony and self-awareness to get through a game.

While the annual meetings of the White Sox and Cubs has lost some of its original luster in my eyes over the years, this year's battle between the teams is a bit more exciting. After all, it's not very often that both teams are in first place in their divisions when they face off. In fact, it's so rare that it's never happened before this afternoon.

Unfortunately, all this series seems to do is seperate fans of both sides even further than usual. While the divide is always there, for 50 weeks of the year it's a rather congenial divide. The two sets of fans don't much like the other's team, but at least they can get along with each other most of the time.

Then the week of the series comes and with it comes the hate. All of a sudden friends you haven't spoken to in months are sending you text messages saying "We're gonna kick your ass this weekend!" All of a sudden you find yourself taking some kind of cruel enjoyment out of seeing Carlos Zambrano have to leave a game early and have to undergo an MRI on his shoulder.

It's horrible the way that Sox fans and Cubs fans treat each other during these times, and I hope you join me for the next three hours while I try to do everything in my power to make it worse.