For the White Sox, the good news is that Albert Belle has begun to hit, collecting his 17th home run in Sunday’s victory along with a triple and RBI single.
Good news, too, that while Frank Thomas still is hitting a quiet, for him, .273, it is at least a .273 with a bullet: He has hit safely in a season-high 10 straight games and drove in a run in each of the three weekend games against Milwaukee.
The bad news is that what Belle, Thomas or the rest of the Sox are doing with their bats barely matters because of what Sox pitchers aren’t doing with their arms. While the Cubs are looking for that certain someone to help get them into the World Series, the Sox are looking for someone who can just get them into a fourth inning.
Sox pitchers own the worst collective earned-run average in baseball: 5.61 earned runs per nine innings through Friday, which does not include the 20 runs allowed to the Brewers. The Sox’s mark is nearly a half-run higher than the Baltimore Orioles’, the next-worst staff.
Perhaps an even greater cause for pessimism: Only the Marlins (366) have allowed more walks than the Sox (336). Opponents don’t even need to hit well to beat the Sox; they’ll get help. Four Sox pitchers have more walks than strikeouts, when the baseball standard is a 3-1 ratio of strikeouts to walks.
The Sox indeed are making a season of validating baseball bromides. The game is still 75 percent pitching, if not more. Accordingly, the five worst ERAs in the AL belong to the bottom feeders: Sox (14 games below .500), Baltimore (minus-8), Detroit (minus-18), Seattle (minus-14) and Kansas City (minus-10). The three worst ERAs in the NL belong to teams (Florida, Arizona, Colorado) that are a combined 62 games below .500.
Good pitching inevitably beats good hitting. Bad pitching inevitably loses, no matter how good the hitting behind it.
The problem for the Sox is more than the state of the staff. There is simply very little the Sox can do about where they are.
Manager Jerry Manuel talked last weekend about reconsidering players cut during spring training; in other words, looking for an evaluation mistake made in March. The Sox are unlikely to shop from the top shelf around the league. If the club jettisoned front-liners last year, when it was only three games out of first, it is hardly about to do the reverse now that it is down double digits in the standings.
“(Besides,) there are no seven-, eight-inning pitchers,” GM Ron Schueler said during spring training. “We haven’t seen good pitching, I don’t think, in the last four years and we’re not going to see good pitching for the next three or four years because the pitching has to catch up. There has been so much expansion the last three or four years that we’re just bringing up kids way too early.”
The Sox are doing the early-bring-up thing as much as anyone. Shortstop Mike Caruso played Class A ball last year, and the Sox made lefty Jim Parque the first player from the 1997 amateur draft to play in the majors.
Parque (2-1) is one of the few Sox starters who has not spent time in the bullpen because of poor starts. Not that he has sparkled: He has given up 21 walks to 15 strikeouts in his six starts and has a 5.83 ERA.
With so few effective starters, could the Sox gamble on a four-man rotation? They say they won’t, for several reasons.
“I don’t think the schedule will allow it,” Manuel said. “Plus, with the rotation being so young, it would be tough to put that kind of strain on the young arms, going to a four-man rotation, which they probably haven’t done. That would be kind of tough.”
The Sox, like much of baseball, are trapped, a prisoner of their own system and certain built-in flaws. There aren’t enough good arms to go around, yet the pipeline is geared toward turning out the very breed of pitchers for whom six innings every fifth day is somehow acceptable.
The Sox do have some bright spots. Parque has shown flashes. Mike Sirotka has emerged as the leader of the staff. And James Baldwin turned in a nice performance Friday, shutting out the Brewers into the seventh. He is pitching quickly again and throwing strikes.
“That has been my thing ever since I’ve been in the majors, going out there throwing first pitches for strikes, then getting back on the mound, ready to throw the next pitch. I think that’s a key for my outing, to keep throwing and not even give the hitters time. A lot of times when you’re out there moping around the mound, hitters start thinking a little bit.
“And as a pitcher, you start thinking, and sometimes when pitchers start thinking, that’s dangerous.”
