Madison Bumgarner turns NL wild-card game into a snooze

All the drama in the wild-card round this season got packed into Tuesday's marathon American League game. If you went to bed early Wednesday and missed the end of the National League wild-card game, you didn't miss a thing.

Madison Bumgarner and the San Francisco Giants made it look easy, as they dispatched the Pittsburgh Pirates, 8-0. With the win, the Giants advance to take on the Washington Nationals in the NLDS. That series will start Friday.

Bumgarner entered his seventh career postseason start with a couple factors working in his favor. First off, he's been good on the road all season -- 11-4 with a 2.22 ERA. Secondly, he pitched well down the stretch, going 7-3 with 2.12 ERA over his last 10 starts.

When the Giants won the World Series in 2010 and again in 2012, Bumgarner was a member of the supporting cast. Now, he's the San Francisco ace, and he proved it Wednesday night with a dominant, efficient performance.

The left-hander needed just 109 pitches in his four-hit, complete-game shutout. He struck out 10 Pittsburgh batters and walked just one.

Believe it or not, Pirates starting pitcher Edinson Volquez also entered this game with reasons to feel good about himself. After a disastrous 2013 that saw him record the highest ERA among qualifying pitchers in the National League, the right-hander enjoyed a comeback season this year.

He posted a 1.85 ERA over his last 17 starts, and he had allowed just four earned runs in his last 34.2 innings pitched at home. Unfortunately for Volquez, he allowed four runs on one pitch in the fourth inning Wednesday night.

Brandon Crawford became the first shortstop ever to hit a postseason grand slam when he picked on a 1-2 hanging breaking ball from Volquez and knocked it over the right-field wall to give the Giants a 4-0 lead.

That was your ballgame. There was no drama from that point on. San Francisco added four more runs, and Pittsburgh had no chance against the masterful Bumgarner.

Maybe we'll have something more interesting to talk about after tomorrow's action. Tonight's game was one-sided. It was all Giants.

Royals use running game to beat A's in AL wild-card game

Kansas City Royals fans have waited exactly 10,565 days for this night.

After 29 consecutive years of missing the playoffs, the Royals captured their first postseason victory since Game 7 of the 1985 World Series on Tuesday night, defeating the Oakland A's 9-8 in 12 innings in one of the craziest, most entertaining American League wild-card games you're ever going to see.

The Royals overcame three deficits and finally prevailed with a two-run rally in the bottom of the 12th inning, capped off by a two-out RBI single by catcher Salvador Perez off former Cubs right-hander Jason Hammel.

Credit the Royals for this: They stuck with their offensive identity in this game. They were going up against a tough pitcher in Oakland ace Jon Lester, who entered Tuesday's action with a 2.11 ERA in 11 career postseason starts. The A's went 2-5 against Kansas City during the regular season, but Lester was the starting pitcher in each of the two Oakland victories.

The A's had the right man on the mound, but the Royals prevailed thanks to their ability to manufacture runs with speed. Kansas City stole a league-best 153 bases during the regular season, and on this night, they tied a Major League record by swiping seven bases in a postseason game. They also successfully executed four sacrifice bunts.

Remarkably, the seven stolen bases came from seven different players: Nori Aoki, Lorenzo Cain, Christian Colon, Jarrod Dyson, Alcides Escobar, Alex Gordon and Terrance Gore.

Dyson had perhaps the biggest steal of them all in the ninth inning. The Royals trailed 7-3 after seven innings, but they scored three runs in the bottom of the eighth to get close at 7-6. In the ninth, pinch-hitter Josh Willingham led off with a bloop single and was lifted in favor of pinch-runner Dyson. After one of the aforementioned sacrifice bunts, Dyson found himself on second base with one out. Moments later, in a gutsy move with the season on the line, he stole third and put himself in position to score the tying run on Aoki's deep fly to right field. The stolen base allowed the Royals to tie the score, force extra innings and, ultimately, extend their season.

The stolen base also played a key part in the 12th-inning rally. Kansas City trailed 8-7 after allowing a run in the top of the inning, but erased the deficit when Eric Hosmer tripled and scored the tying run on an infield single by Colon. 

Colon then came through with the second-most important stolen base of the evening, getting himself in scoring position to set the table for Perez's game-winning hit. 

Defense is not a strong point for Oakland. In fact, the A's were the worst defensive club among the five AL playoff qualifiers. They have excellent starting pitching, but if an opponent can put some pressure on them and force them to execute defensively, they cannot. The Royals proved that with Tuesday's win. 

The loss finishes an epic collapse for the A's, who had a 66-41 record the first four months of the season. But they slumped to a 22-33 mark since Aug. 1, and they did not clinch a berth in the wild-card game until the last day of the regular season. 

The Oakland offense struggled mightily down the stretch of the season, but it was not their bats that caused them to lose to Kansas City. Designated hitter Brandon Moss clubbed two home runs and drove in five runs, and left fielder Sam Fuld reached base three times Tuesday, quieting critics who said before the game that Oakland manager Bob Melvin was making a mistake by not including late-season acquisition Adam Dunn in the lineup.

The A's scored plenty of runs, but they could not slow down Kansas City's small-ball attack. Oakland is going home, and the Royals are moving on to the American League Division Series, where they will face the Los Angeles Angels in a five-game set that starts Thursday night.

A defense of Chris Sale in this whole 'sign-stealing' thing

White Sox ace Chris Sale is taking quite a bit of criticism for the way he handled himself during and after this whole sign-stealing, bench-clearing incident thing with Detroit designated hitter Victor Martinez on Wednesday.

The thing that amuses me most about the whole deal is the fact that few in Chicago have paid any attention to the Sox whatsoever over the past month or six weeks -- Bears obsession in this town runs deep -- but after this incident where Sale plunked Martinez and supposedly accused the Tigers of stealing signs, all the pundits have suddenly come out of the woodwork to comment on Sale's actions during Wednesday's 6-1 Detroit victory.

It's clear to me that most people did not watch this game. They were probably too busy discussing Jay Cutler's mechanics, or "breaking down" Sunday's matchup between the Bears and the Green Bay Packers. That's fine. That's where their bread is buttered, and I get that. But if you didn't see the game, let's not form our opinions based upon Sale's non-answers to the media after the game. Let's also not form our opinions based upon a few angry soundbites from Detroit manager Brad Ausmus. He's an even more biased observer than I am.

It seems that some folks have dismissed the accusations of sign-stealing as completely implausible. But something that happened in the third inning -- three innings before Sale nailed Martinez in his left shoulder with a fastball -- is enough to raise some eyebrows.

Martinez came to the plate with two on and two out in that third inning. Sale looked out toward the outfield a couple times early in the at-bat, and with the count at 2-1, catcher Tyler Flowers paid a visit to the mound. It's pretty clear what they discussed. On each of the next three pitches, Flowers set up on the inside corner, but Sale threw the ball outside.

On the 2-1 pitch, Martinez swung and missed a Sale fastball that was way off the plate. Martinez couldn't have hit that pitch with an oar. On the 2-2, Sale fired a backdoor slider that was just off the outside corner. Martinez swung and just got a piece of it, fouling it off to stay alive. The next pitch was a fastball that was high, outside and well out of the zone. Martinez swung and missed. Strike three, inning over. Sale walks off the mound and gives his now-famous tip of the cap to somebody in the outfield.

Forget about the cap-tipping for a moment. The key point here is Flowers set up inside three times in a row, and Sale threw the ball outside three times in a row. Quite obviously, they suspected someone was tipping location to the Detroit batters, and they reacted the way professional ballplayers should: They changed their strategy and got the desired result.

We don't know for sure that somebody in Detroit was trying to tip location to Martinez. What we do know is Martinez -- who has struck out just 41 times in 627 plate appearances this season -- was swinging wildly at horrible pitches like a blind man. He uncharacteristically struck himself out in a critical RBI situation, against a pitcher he has owned (15 for 29 lifetime) in the past. Isn't that interesting?

It seems likely Martinez was looking for the ball in, only to get the ball away, throughout that at-bat. Maybe he was looking for the ball in because he could sense Flowers move toward the inside corner. Or maybe, someone was signaling to him that Flowers was setting up inside, causing him to look in, only to be fooled by pitches away. It's not as implausible as Sale's critics are making it out to be. Stealing signs and stealing pitch locations has been a part of the game for decades. There are ways to combat it, and Sale and Flowers employed one such method in the third inning.

Then, Martinez comes up in the sixth inning, knowing he struck out on an outside pitch in his previous at-bat. Flowers sets up on the inside part of the plate once again, but this time Sale really is coming in with a fastball. The pitch hits Martinez, who was probably looking away. He glares at Sale. The fans boo. The Tigers say, "That's intentional!" Cry me a river.

Maybe it was intentional. Or maybe Sale figured he had Martinez looking away, so he was going to try to bust him in this particular at-bat, and the ball was just too far in. That stuff does happen, and when you're facing a guy who is 15 for 29 off you lifetime, you gotta try different things. Even if Sale did hit Martinez intentionally, so what? Again, 15 for 29. Isn't it about time Sale do something to make Martinez less comfortable in the box against him? I don't care if the Tigers' feelings were hurt. It's competitive athletics. It's not about feelings. It's about winning. If Ausmus doesn't like or respect Sale now, who cares?

And don't get me started about this lazy media narrative about the Tigers being "fired up" by the incident. First of all, the Tigers are trying to win an AL Central division title. They entered Wednesday's action with a one-game lead over the Kansas City Royals with five games to play. If they need a pitcher on a fourth-place team to do something to get them excited to play, well, they ought to be ashamed of themselves.

Secondly, the Tigers didn't win this game because Sale "fired them up." The game was tied, 1-1, when Sale left the mound. Detroit scored five runs after the Chicago ace departed. That's not a coincidence. Sale struck out 10 and allowed just the one run in this contest. Tiger hitters did next to nothing against him. Javy Guerra and Matt Lindstrom are significantly lesser pitchers than Sale. We've see throughout the course of the season that opposing teams don't need to be "fired up" to score runs against mediocre or less-than-mediocre Sox relief pitchers such as Guerra and Lindstrom. Poor pitches by those two bullpen guys were the deciding factor in the game, not "the fire and the passion."

From where I'm sitting, Sale did nothing wrong with any of the pitches he threw Wednesday. His biggest mistake was the cap-tipping thing after he struck out Martinez in the third. People get angry about antics like that -- maybe more than they should -- but the moral of the story is an athlete never wins in the court of public opinion if he makes a gesture of any sort toward the fans. I'll bet Sale received a talking-to from his manager about that. Hopefully, he doesn't make the same mistake again.

That said, I have no problem with the way Sale dealt with Martinez. If this bothers some folks so much, well, they can go back to breaking down matchups in the Bears-Packers game.

Looking back on Paul Konerko's White Sox career

The end of an era is approaching.

There will be no games remaining on the 2014 White Sox schedule a week from now. That also means there will be no games left to play in the remarkable career of Sox first baseman Paul Konerko, who will retire at the end of the week after 18 seasons -- 16 of them on the South Side of Chicago.

When Opening Day 2015 rolls around, Konerko isn't going to be at U.S. Cellular Field for the first time since 1998. Isn't that going to be a weird feeling for us all? 

Konerko knows the time is right to walk away. Time, age and injuries have taken their toll. He's not an everyday player anymore. He's not the hitter he used to be, as his .216 batting average this season shows. He hasn't been able to play much the past three weeks after breaking a bone in his hand the first week of September.

Everyone associated with the White Sox would like to see a storybook ending for Konerko, but there's a very real possibility he has hit his last home run in a Chicago uniform. Heck, there's a possibility he's gotten his last base hit in a Sox uniform, too, but even if that's the case, it's OK. We should not spend too much time lamenting the struggles Konerko has had in his final season. Rather, we should celebrate the player Konerko was, and the exemplary career he has had.

Konerko's name is high on a lot of lists in White Sox franchise history. That's no small thing. The Sox are one of the charter franchises in the American League. A lot of players have come through the South Side over the past 113 years, and Konerko has been one of the best. The numbers speak for themselves, but we'll recite them anyway.

Konerko is the all-time franchise leader in total bases with 4,009. He ranks second in home runs (432), RBIs (1,383) and games played (2,264). He is third in hits (2,291), doubles (406), plate appearances (9,244) and at-bats (8,155). He ranks fourth in runs scored with 1,141.

If you look at the franchise's leaders in these categories, the names ahead of Konerko are players such as Luke Appling, Nellie Fox and Frank Thomas. Those are Hall of Famers.

If you've paid any attention to the Chicago media lately, there's been a lot of discussion of some of the great moments in Konerko's career. His grand slam in Game 2 of the 2005 World Series was his finest hour. It was arguably the biggest hit in White Sox history. Earlier that postseason, there were big home runs in Games 3 and 4 of the ALCS, a series in which Konerko earned MVP.

These are moments that are fondly remembered, and rightfully so. However, an outstanding career in baseball is about more than handful of big hits on the postseason stage. There are plenty of players who have had their 15 minutes of fame after one good game or one big moment in a championship series. Konerko is not one of those guys. That grand slam in the World Series will live forever, but his career with the Sox has been so much more than that.

I've been privileged to see Konerko play in person about 200 times over the past 16 years. I've watched most of his 9,244 plate appearances with the Sox either at the ballpark or on television. When I reflect back on all those games, there are two memories that stand out that I'd like to share. It may surprise you that neither of them involve postseason play.

April 16, 2005: White Sox 2, Mariners 1

I'll bet a lot of Sox fans remember this game, but not because of Konerko. This game is famous because it lasted only one hour, 39 minutes. It is far and away the shortest White Sox game I have ever attended. At the time, former Sox ace Mark Buehrle had not yet throw his 2007 no-hitter against the Texas Rangers, or his 2009 perfect game against the Tampa Bay Rays. This game was perhaps the signature moment of Buehrle's career to that point. He struck out 12. He only gave up three hits. He worked quick. He made the Mariners look foolish.

But guess what? Buehrle doesn't get the win without Konerko's performance that day. This was a game where the two teams combined for only seven hits. You could count the number of hard-hit balls the entire afternoon on one hand. Two of those hard-hit balls came off Konerko's bat. Both of them landed in the left-field seats. Those were the only two runs the Sox scored. That was the margin Buehrle needed.

Without those two homers, one hour and 39 minutes never happens. Maybe the game goes extra innings and ends up lasting three hours. Who knows? Buehrle got most of the headlines and most of the credit that day. He deserved it. However, you might say the final score was Konerko 2, Mariners 1.

This was an April game with 20,000-some people in the stands. The bright lights weren't shining. It wasn't considered a monumental win in the big picture, but I'll never forget Konerko's performance that day.

August 8, 2006: White Sox 6, Yankees 5 (11 innings)

In this game, the Sox trailed 5-4 in the ninth inning when Konerko stepped to the plate to face New York closer Mariano Rivera, who was the best closer of his generation and a future Hall of Famer.

Rivera is known for having just one pitch - a cutter than moves in on the hands of left-handed batters and away from right-handed batters such as Konerko. During the at-bat, I vividly remember Konerko swinging and missing badly as he attempted to pull an outside cutter from Rivera.

From my seat in the stands, I yelled at the top of my lungs, "C'mon, Paulie, you know it's going to be a cutter away! Go with the pitch and hit the damn ball to right-center field!"

Not that Konerko could hear me, but the next pitch was a cutter away, and Konerko swatted it just over the wall in right-center field for a game-tying home run. The fans seated near me looked at me like, "How did you know?"

The Sox went on to win in 11 innings on a walk-off single by Jermaine Dye, but Konerko's homer was easily the biggest hit of the game. Part of Konerko's genius was his ability to made adjustments from pitch to pitch, even against a tremendous pitcher such as Rivera. That home run that night was perhaps the best example of that I've seen.

There are probably some Sox fans out there who have little or no recollection of these two games, but I'll bet every Sox fan has a couple of Konerko performances they recall vividly like the ones I just described. There has been too many of them to mention.

Maybe your favorite Konerko moment was in the World Series, or maybe it was on a quiet April afternoon in front of a sparse crowd. A great career in baseball is made up of dozens of moments, and Konerko consistently provided them for the White Sox -- in games both big and small -- for the past 16 years. Players like that only come around every so often, and for that reason, we should celebrate Konerko's accomplishments as the book closes on his time as a player.

After Sunday's game against the Kansas City Royals ends, no Sox player is ever going to wear No. 14 again. You can count on that -- just as the Sox have counted on Paul Konerko for big hits every year since 1999.

Will Chris Sale's hiccup against the Royals cost him the Cy Young?

White Sox ace Chris Sale had his worst performance of the season Wednesday night, as he allowed a season-high five earned runs on nine hits over five innings in Chicago's 6-2 loss to the Kansas City Royals.

Just how big of an outlier was this outing for Sale? Consider this: He's thrown 668.2 innings in his major league career, and he had never given up a home run on an 0-2 pitch until Lorenzo Cain took a hanging slider out the park for a 3-run shot in the third inning Wednesday night.

Sale gave up a second home run on a similarly lousy pitch to light-hitting Kansas City shortstop Alcides Escobar in the fourth inning.

It's extremely rare for Sale to give up home runs to any Kansas City hitter. No Royals player had taken Sale deep since Aug. 17, 2012, a span of eight starts.

Indeed, this was an out-of-character start for Sale, and it might have cost him whatever chance he had of beating out Seattle ace Felix Hernandez for the AL Cy Young Award. The two pitchers are statistically similar in a lot of categories:

• Sale is 12-4 in 25 starts; Hernandez is 14-5 in 31 starts.
• Hernandez leads the league in ERA at 2.14; Sale is right behind at 2.20.
• Hernandez has 225 strikeouts; Sale has 198.
• Sale leads the league with 10.6 strikeouts per nine innings; Hernandez is at 9.2 strikeouts per nine innings.
• Hernandez leads the league with a 0.918 WHIP; Sale is right behind at 0.958.
• Sale's strikeout-to-walk ratio is 5.50; Hernandez is at 5.49.

Sale was ahead of Hernandez in both ERA and WHIP until his struggling outing against the Royals, which lessens his case. If Sale were to finish ahead of Hernandez in ERA, WHIP, strikeouts per nine innings and strikeout-to-walk ratio, I think you could make a strong argument he deserves the Cy Young. But, with one poor performance by Sale, Hernandez has nosed back in front in two of those four important categories -- pending his outing Thursday night against the Los Angeles Angels.

I'm pretty certain Hernandez is going to win the Cy Young at this point. If all things are fairly equal, he's going to get the nod because he's made six more starts and pitched 51 more innings than Sale this year. That stint on the disabled list Sale had in late April and early May probably costs him more than one crummy outing in September against Kansas City, but last night's showing did not help his argument. 

Adam Eaton looks like a solution to two long-standing White Sox problems

The White Sox have sputtered as a team over the past six weeks, but center fielder Adam Eaton has continued to establish himself as a major league player.

Judging by the attendance figures and a relative lack of media coverage, few in Chicago have noticed that Eaton has been one of the best players in the American League since the All-Star break.

In Tuesday's 7-5 Sox win in Kansas City, Eaton went 4 for 5 with a double, a triple, two runs scored and a brilliant diving catch on a sinking liner off the bat of Royals first baseman Eric Hosmer. The performance raised Eaton's season batting average to .303.

But, the thing that stands out most about Eaton is his improvement throughout the year. His first-half numbers weren't bad by any means, but he's taken it to a new level since mid-July. Check out these splits:

First half: .270/.340/.372
Second half: .365/.418/.462

His season splits now stand at .303/.367/.403. This is arguably the best performance we've seen from a Sox leadoff hitter in the past 10 years, and it's definitely the best production the Sox have gotten from a leadoff hitter since Scott Podsednik surprised everyone with a resurgent year in 2009.

If you look at the past decade, you'll see the Sox have had their problems in center field.

Here's the revolving door the organization has had at that position since Aaron Rowand was traded for Jim Thome after the 2005 season:

White Sox center fielders:

2005: Rowand
2006: Brian Anderson, Rob Mackowiak
2007: Darin Erstad, Jerry Owens
2008: Nick Swisher, Anderson, Ken Griffey Jr.
2009: Dewayne Wise, Anderson, Alex Rios
2010: Rios
2011: Rios
2012: Alejandro De Aza
2013: De Aza
2014: Eaton

That's 11 players in 10 years. Swisher and Rios were corner outfielders who were asked to play out of position. Erstad and Griffey Jr. were declining players at the end of their careers. De Aza and Mackowiak couldn't handle the position defensively, and were put in center field for the purpose of getting another left-handed bat in the lineup. Anderson, Owens and Wise stunk and didn't belong out there for any reason.

Eaton is none of those negative things. He has proven he can play the position, and he's proving he can hit major league pitching. Sox GM Rick Hahn can rest easier now knowing he has a 25-year-old player who looks like a long-term solution in center field.

If you look at Sox leadoff hitters from the past 10 years, you'll see that Eaton compares favorably:

2005: Podsednik .290/.351/.349
2006: Podsednik .261/.330/.353
2007: Owens .267/.324/.312
2008: Orlando Cabrera .281/.334/.371
2009: Podsednik .304/.353/.412
2010: Juan Pierre .275/.341/.316
2011: Pierre .279/.329/.327
2012: De Aza .281/.349/.410
2013: De Aza .264/.323/.405
2014: Eaton .303/.367/.403

Eaton's .303 average is second only to Podsednik in 2009. His .367 on-base percentage is easily the best in this group. The .403 slugging percentage ranks fourth on the list, and it's a heckuva lot better than anything the Sox ever got out of punch-and-judy Pierre.

Obviously, the free-agent acquisition of Jose Abreu last offseason was a game-changer for the Sox organization. They now have that middle-of-the-order presence to build a lineup around. But almost as importantly, they solved two major holes -- center field and leadoff hitter -- with the acquisition of one player.

Eaton has established himself as a big part of the White Sox core moving forward.

White Sox add to Oakland's misery

When the Oakland Athletics made midseason deals for pitchers Jon Lester and Jeff Samardzija, I thought they were solidifying themselves for a potential World Series run.

Shows how little I know.

The A's were considered by some to be the best team in baseball as recently as late July, but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who would describe Oakland in that manner these days. After Thursday's 1-0 loss to the White Sox at U.S. Cellular Field, the A's have lost 11 of their last 14 games and are just 9-21 since Aug. 10.

Once the AL West leader, Oakland is all but eliminated from the division race. They now trail the first-place Los Angeles Angels by 9.5 games. A wild-card berth is far from a guarantee, as the A's now lead Detroit by just one game and Seattle by 1.5 games in that race.

Oakland was the best offensive team in baseball over the first four months, but now it can't hit a lick. The A's have scored more than three runs only 15 times in the 39 games since Yoenis Cespedes was traded to Boston for Lester on July 31.

And, if Oakland does miss the playoffs, it will look back on these past four days in Chicago as a missed opportunity. The White Sox won three of the four games, with all three Chicago victories coming by one run.

You can forgive the A's for losing to Sale on Thursday. The Sox ace had dominating stuff. He allowed just two hits and struck out nine over eight shutout innings. At one point, he retired 17 consecutive hitters. Sale improved to 12-3 on the season and lowered his ERA to a league-leading 1.99. He is trying to become the first Sox pitcher to lead the American League in ERA since Joe Horlen in 1967.

Oakland isn't the first team to be stopped cold by Sale. It won't be the last.

However, the A's had two other losses in the series, and both were unforgivable for a contending team. They had a 4-3 lead with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning Monday night, only to see Tyler Flowers homer to tie the game. The Sox catcher added a second home run in the 12th inning to lift Chicago to a 5-4 win.

Oakland had a 1-0 lead with two outs in the bottom of the eighth inning Wednesday night, but Avisail Garcia delivered a two-run single with the bases loaded to lift the Sox to a 2-1 win.

The A's should have won three out of four in the series. Instead, they lost three out of four to a Chicago team that has been out of contention for more than a month. Two of the three losses were the type that teams that narrowly miss the playoffs look back on and ask, "What if?"