August 31, 20187 yr 55 minutes ago, Jerksticks said: Interesting take. I wonder if most agree. It’s interesting to blame somebody specific for it. I always picture a big team of people that works on maximizing and growing our pitchers, including the pitcher. Maybe they are really working on some specific stuff? Maybe it’s more on Lopez? Just seems like there are so many variables to just call things failures and blame people. I mean the Sox invested a lot of time and currency into Lopez...you don’t think everybody is working super hard to make him realize his potential? This is a good post that many of us seem to forget. My take is that as a whole the Sox focus on commanding the fastball 1st and improving the changeup 2nd AND SLIDERS AND CURVES TAKE A BACK SEAT TO THE 1ST 2. sINCE gIO AND lOPEZ ALREADY HAD DECENT CURVES ITS POSSIBLE THEY WANTED TO WORK MORE ON THE OTHER THINGS SO THE TIME IS STILL BEING USED TO DEVELOP THEM JUST NOT IN THE WAY THAT SOME OF US THINK IT SHOULD HAPPEN. i HAVE NOTICED THAT gIO'S CURVE IS FINDING THE PLATE MORE AND HE USED HIS CHANGE UP A LOT LAST NIGHT. lOPEZ ALSO USED HIS CURVE A LOT MORE HIS LAST START. I'm not fixing this screw it. why does that caps lock key have to be right next to the A Edit: We also forget the Sox hired Dave Duncan as a consultant and its my belief if the Sox are going to content it will be on the backs of their pitching. Also why I don't think we go after Harper or Machado . Just too expensive for one or the other. They'll spread the FA money around on position players a tier below the big fish and do their best not to trade away pitching prospects and that includes the highest ranked relief pitchers too. Edited August 31, 20187 yr by CaliSoxFanViaSWside
August 31, 20187 yr Author 3 hours ago, Chicago White Sox said: Lopez has basically been a two pitch pitcher most of the year. He's gone long stretches without using change-up at all. He's also pretty much abandoned his curveball this year, which was his best breaking ball coming up in the minors and when he first hit the show with the Nationals. Why in a rebuilding season wouldn't we have Lopez focusing on his secondary offerings regardless of the results? To me that a failure that falls on Cooper. To me from the outside it seems like both with Gio and Rey, they simplified their offerings, staying mostly fastball to get them set, and as the season has moved on they have opened them more and more with the offspeed stuff. Almost like instead of everything at once, they were going one at a time. With Gio it seems like even velocity was added back later, my guess is to attempt to get rework his wind up and motion. I could be totally wrong, but that is what I see. If you think back to Sale, it was kind of the same thing. They held off on the slider for the most part early on.
September 1, 20187 yr Looking at his August, he had a .191 batting average allowed, though it came with a drastically increased K rate. With the increased K rate, does that fall in line with the rest of his season results, or is this an outlier that we should expect to increase with worse BABIP luck?
September 2, 20187 yr 23 hours ago, Dam8610 said: Looking at his August, he had a .191 batting average allowed, though it came with a drastically increased K rate. With the increased K rate, does that fall in line with the rest of his season results, or is this an outlier that we should expect to increase with worse BABIP luck? Even when he was walking everyone and throwing 89-92 Giolito didn't give up that many hits. At that time he was hovering around a .240-.260 BAA. That, and the possibility of a velocity increase once the mechanical issues were solved was the basis for my optimism. Now that the velocity is almost all the way back, there's a real chance he can still be an ace. Edited September 2, 20187 yr by Jack Parkman
September 2, 20187 yr Both Giolito and Lopez were praised as minor leaguers for how good their curveballs were and they both reached MLB with the Sox having cut back drastically on the use of their curveballs in favor of a slider or changeup. This has been a very consistent pattern with the White Sox — I don't know if this is common in other organizations. I even remember Nate Jones having a strong curveball as a minor leaguer only to see it completely gone as a major leaguer.
September 2, 20187 yr 2 hours ago, Jack Parkman said: Even when he was walking everyone and throwing 89-92 Giolito didn't give up that many hits. At that time he was hovering around a .240-.260 BAA. That, and the possibility of a velocity increase once the mechanical issues were solved was the basis for my optimism. Now that the velocity is almost all the way back, there's a real chance he can still be an ace. It is legitimately hard to give up hits when you can't throw strikes.
September 2, 20187 yr 29 minutes ago, turnin' two said: It is legitimately hard to give up hits when you can't throw strikes. Yeah, but doesn't BAA exclude walks? It's still a measure of batter efficiency in official at-bats. Unless batters are expanding the zone because they are tired of walking ...
September 2, 20187 yr 42 minutes ago, skooch said: Yeah, but doesn't BAA exclude walks? It's still a measure of batter efficiency in official at-bats. Unless batters are expanding the zone because they are tired of walking ... Yes it does, which is why it was still valid
September 6, 20187 yr Author http://meadowparty.com/blog/2018/09/06/klawchat-9-6-18/ Tadd 1:11 Are we all the way back in on Giolito? Keith Law 1:11 I'm mostly back in. Command still a grade below where it ought to be, but stuff looks better, throwing more strikes, mechanics seem at least more consistent if not perfect.
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