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September 26, 2008

Prospectus Today

Sweeps and Walk-Offs

by Joe Sheehan

If the White Sox aren't still playing baseball a week from now, they'll have no shortage of people to blame.

• Bobby Jenks is a very good pitcher, but last night he made a couple of inexplicable decisions in critical situations that helped him blow the save. Coming on in the eighth with a 6-4 lead, one out, and a runner on third base, he quickly got ahead 0-2 on Carlos Gomez. He then threw Gomez, who has a personal strike zone as big as all outdoors, a fastball down the middle that he lined into right for a single. Carlos Gomez on an 0-2 count is 11-for-70 with 39 strikeouts. He is nearly four times as likely to strike out as to get a hit. In that situation, you throw him a pitch—maybe two—that he can't reach without going through customs. That was a terrible decision, and the Twins made him pay for it.

  Jenks got ahead of the next batter, Denard Span, 0-2. Span isn't quite the free swinger Gomez is—Hugh Hefner isn't quite the free swinger Carlos Gomez is—but once again, Jenks threw away his advantage by throwing a fastball down and over the middle of the plate. Span yanked it past Paul Konerko for a game-tying triple.

  Jenks would lose the game in the 10^th, appearing to run out of steam as he trundled past the 30-pitch mark. It's been a very long time since Jenks had to pitch in three separate innings, and he seemed to lose his stuff a bit towards the end of the outing. He issued a four-pitch walk to Nick Punto, then two batters later threw either a spinning breaking ball or a fastball with nothing on it—I've looked at it a dozen times and I can't quite figure which it was—that Alexi Casilla lined into left-center for the ballgame. The questionable 0-2 pitches in the eighth inning forced him to be pitching in the 10^th, and he didn't have enough left to go that far.

  Give Ozzie Guillen some credit. He treated this game like a seventh game, knowing that winning it would give the White Sox a massive edge in the division. As mentioned yesterday, neither Matt Thornton nor Bobby Jenks had pitched since Sunday; Guillen went to Matt Thornton in the sixth and Jenks in the eighth, and used no one else in the game. That's using your best pitchers in the highest-leverage situations. It didn't work out, and it may cost him the use of both guys tonight, but it was the right call.

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