White Sox bullpen roles still to be determined

Nate Jones

I don't expect the White Sox to make a big playoff push in 2014, but I've still been telling friends that I'm excited for the season. There has been quite a bit of roster turnover in the last 6 to 8 months, and even if the Sox don't do a lot of winning, I'm looking forward to seeing how GM Rick Hahn's offseason moves work out.

The changes go well beyond the everyday lineup. Another area of the Sox roster that enters spring training with a new look is the bullpen. Going into 2013, Addison Reed was the incumbent closer, and veterans Matt Thornton and Jesse Crain were entrenched as the primary setup men. All three of those players have since been traded -- Thornton and Crain left as part of midseason deals last summer, and Reed was moved during the offseason.

Holdovers Nate Jones and Matt Lindstrom will again be a part of the Sox bullpen in 2014. The team also has added free-agent relievers Ronald Belisario and Scott Downs. We can't say with certainty which seven pitchers will make up the Sox bullpen on Opening Day, but barring injury, we can expect those four guys to be there. The question is, who will pitch in what role?

I've been asked my opinion on the closer situation a few times now. The general feeling is Jones and Lindstrom will compete for the job in spring, and I've been saying I think Lindstrom should get the nod. First off, the 33-year-old veteran has been in that role before. He saved 23 games for the Houston Astros in 2010. Secondly, Lindstrom is more of a groundball pitcher than a big strikeout guy. Lindstrom had only 46 strikeouts in 60.2 IP last year.

Why does that matter? Well, in general I'd rather have a groundball pitcher like Lindstrom start his own inning when he enters the game. If Lindstrom comes in with runners on second and third with one out in the seventh inning, he's probably not going to get you that strikeout you need to get out of the inning with no runs scored. In fact, there's a better chance he'll induce a grounder that leaks through the infield for a two-run single.

In those kind of situations, I prefer bringing a strikeout pitcher out of the bullpen. For the White Sox, that guy is Jones, who had 89 strikeouts in 78 innings pitched in 2013. When you need that big punchout with a runner on third and less than two outs, Jones is the best bet the Sox have.

So, if you agree with this line of thinking, you want Jones to "pitch in traffic" when the situation calls for it in the seventh and eighth innings. Then, you go with Lindstrom in the ninth to start his own inning.

At least I thought this logic was good, until I looked at the numbers.

Unfortunately, Jones has not pitched well with runners in scoring position in his career. Opposing hitters have put up a robust .311/.382/.494 slash line against Jones in those situations. So, even though he's a strikeout pitcher, maybe he's not so adept at getting that big K when you really need one. These numbers suggest Jones is actually better off starting his own inning.

Opposing hitters put up a .286/.340/.352 slash line against Lindstrom with RISP last year, which was not too far off from his career norm of .264/.350/.365. All in all, Lindstrom is an OK option for entering the game with men on base. Being a groundball pitcher, he is capable of inducing a key double play from time to time.

Belisario, another groundball pitcher, has the best track record of the group with RISP. Opponents have posted a .235/.363/.324 slash line against Belisario in those situations. The high OBP is indicative of Belisario's propensity to walk batters, but the .324 slugging percentage shows he's pretty good at keeping the ball not only in the park, but in the infield as well. Even though he doesn't strike out a lot of guys (49Ks in 68 IP in 2013), he's a reasonable option as far as cleaning up someone else's mess. He'll certainly have a seventh or eighth-inning role with the Sox this season.

Downs, in case you were wondering, has given up a .255/.363/.362 slash line with RISP in his career. As the only left-hander among this group of four, I'm sure we'll see him in the seventh and eighth innings against select left-handed hitters.

So, the closer question remains, Lindstrom or Jones? Numbers aside, I'm still leaning toward Lindstrom for the ninth. If for no other reason, if he racks up 15 to 20 saves by the All-Star break, maybe Hahn will have a better chance of flipping him for a reasonable prospect in July.

Right now, here's my educated guess on what the Sox 12-man pitching staff will look like:
SP: Chris Sale
SP: Jose Quintana
SP: John Danks
SP: Felipe Paulino
SP: Erik Johnson
RP: Matt Lindstrom
RP: Nate Jones
RP: Ronald Belisario
RP: Scott Downs
RP: Daniel Webb
RP: Jake Petricka
RP: Eric Surkamp

Here are a few other names in the mix for a roster spot:
SP: Andre Rienzo
RP: Donnie Veal
SP: Charlie Leesman

I figure Webb, Petricka, Surkamp, Rienzo, Veal and Leesman are competing for three open spots. Now you know which three I'm expecting to win the jobs. We'll see if I'm right in about two months.

In the meantime, who do you think should be the White Sox closer this year? 

Does Matt Garza make the Brewers a contender?

The short answer is: probably not.

So why was it worthwhile for Milwaukee to add pitcher Matt Garza with a four-year, $50 million contract?

The Brewers are coming off a poor 74-88 season that saw them finish ahead of only the Cubs in the NL Central Division. It was their worst finish in nearly a decade.

Besides the exodus of stars from Milwaukee since going 96-66 and winning a division two years ago -- Prince Fielder, Zack Greinke were both part of that postseason team -- the Brewers were bit by just about every kind of misfortune last year.

Star third baseman Aramis Ramirez was hurt. Longtime pitching stalwart Yovani Gallardo imploded. Closer John Axford never regained his form. Left fielder Ryan Braun was suspended for his role in the Biogenesis scandal. Second baseman Rickie Weeks forgot how to hit, and after improving with his glove through the middle portion of his career, saw his defense continue to nosedive as it has since 2012. After a torrid first half last year, shortstop Jean Segura was awful in the second half. More injuries forced Milwaukee to go through first basemen faster than Spinal Tap went through drummers, including guys like Alex Gonzalez (!), Juan Francisco (!!) and Yuniesky Betancourt (!!!).

That's a long list, and the Brewers certainly have more areas that could use some fixing up. At least you would think they'd have signed a free agent before January.

Here's the thing: The Brewers might not need to add that many more pieces to improve over last year. They still have good players in center field (Carlos Gomez) and at catcher (Jonathan Lucroy), and a steady, if not spectacular, starting pitcher in Kyle Lohse.

Even if minor additions Mark Reynolds and Lyle Overbay make an awful platoon at first base, they'd be hard pressed to be worse than what was out there last year.

There's the hope that Segura makes adjustments and is better his second full season as a starter. Plus there's optimism younger players like Khris Davis can hit well in a corner outfield spot, while starting pitchers Wily Peralta and Tyler Thornburg can either improve or build on last year's work. Maybe Gallardo works out his struggles, too.

A mostly healthy Ramirez could boost them at third base. Ryan Braun just playing, even if he's never as good as what might have been his PED-lifted peak, will help the offense. If Weeks has just lost too much bat speed to ever be useful again, Milwaukee has an option in Scooter Gennett, who probably hit over his head last year (.324/.356/.479), but could be passable at second base.

If all of those things happen for the Brewers, that's not a shabby team. Maybe one that can contend in the NL Central, where nobody made any big upgrade, and where the Reds and Pirates might fall back to earth a little bit.

Granted, things rarely always go your way in baseball. So expecting the best-case scenario across the board is probably foolish.

Still, the Brewers can't dismiss their need for another pitcher, or the fact that the guy they signed came at a decent price, or that Garza might be a key piece for a team that could rebound from a disappointing year.

After how long it took Milwaukee to return to respectability this last decade, their winning season in 2007 being its first in 14 years previous, the Brewers should be working to maintain some of that respectability.

The work isn't over, but bringing Garza aboard and paving over a sinkhole at first base are good starts.

How will the White Sox solve their logjam at third base?

Just over two weeks from now, pitchers and catchers will report to White Sox camp. So, it isn't too early to talk about some of the storylines we'll be following during spring training.

First and foremost in my mind will be the situation at third base, where the Sox all of a sudden have quite a logjam. Jeff Keppinger and Conor Gillaspie got the overwhelming majority of the starts at the position last year, and both are still on the 40-man roster. The Sox also acquired 22-year-old Matt Davidson from the Arizona Diamondbacks in exchange for closer Addison Reed in an offseason trade.

There's no question the Sox hope Davidson is the long-term answer at the position. New hitting coach Todd Steverson has been working with Davidson on hitting the ball to all fields. The Sox seem ready to accept that Davidson will strike out quite a bit, but the belief is his extra-base power will translate against major league pitching.

That said, it's an open question whether Davidson will be the starting third baseman when the Sox open the season March 31 against the Minnesota Twins. I'll be interested to see how he hits in spring. My guess is Davidson will need to have a good March in order to make the 25-man roster, because there isn't room enough for all three of Keppinger, Gillaspie and Davidson.

Of the three, Davidson is the only one you're going to send back to the minors for more seasoning. Certainly, he is not going to sit on the bench at the big-league level.

Ideally, the Sox would trade Keppinger (pictured), but that could be a tall order now because the veteran is coming off a career-worst .253/.283/.317 season. He also has two years and $8.5 million remaining on his contract. The same reasons White Sox fans want him gone are the same reasons another team might not be willing to take him.

There are a couple things to like about Gillaspie: First, he's a left-handed hitter, and second, he has a short swing, which makes it a little easier to stay sharp if he's asked to fill a part-time role. Gillaspie showed improvement defensively last season, and I think the Sox were happy about that.

Still, Gillaspie is the odd man out if Davidson proves he's ready to handle the position full time and Keppinger's contract proves to be unmovable.

The ideal scenario is Davidson wins the everyday job, Keppinger gets traded and Gillaspie fills a bench role. But finding a way to unload Keppinger is the key.

Another distinct possibility is Davidson goes back the minors, the Sox play Keppinger at third base every day in hopes of rebuilding his trade value, and Gillaspie fills a bench role. Under that scenario, you pray Keppinger plays well enough that he can be moved midseason, and then Davidson comes up to take the full-time job at third base in July.

This logjam could be solved in multiple ways. We'll see how the Sox handle it.

Teams should be more willing to include opt-out clauses

A prominent feature of both of the massive contracts given to pitchers this month is an opt-out clause.

Left-handed Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw accepted the richest contract ever given to a pitcher, but can choose to become a free agent after five years. Japanese righty Masahiro Tanaka was guaranteeed $155 million by the Yankees, but can similarly tear up the rest of his deal after four seasons to hit the market again.

At first blush, this might seem like an awful deal for teams willing to climb on the hook for millions of dollars six or seven years down the road. If either player suffers a career-ending injury this year, their teams will still have to pay them millions of dollars for years after. If they pitch well and the free agent market keeps yielding huge contracts, either guy could opt out for a richer deal than what they have in hand, denying the Dodgers or Yankees the opportunity to collect value on the back end of these risky contracts.

That's the wrong way to look at the opt-out.

To the first fear I'll just say that if you're not offering a player like Kershaw or Tanaka six or seven guaranteed years, you're not really in the game as far as bidding for their services. Opt-out or no, they'll get those years guaranteed when they reach the open market. And opt-out or no, if a player gets hurt in Year 1 of a long contract, the team that signed the player is left holding the bag.

As for getting value on the back end of a huge contract, I have a hard time believing any team that signed a player to deal longer than five years expects to be getting a good value beyond that point. Perhaps Tanaka is an exception, because he's hitting the market as a 25-year-old, but these days teams enter into these massive contracts expecting to be overpaying for what the player is by the end of the deal.

Teams do that because they get a good value on the front end. If Tanaka pitches like an ace for the Yankees, they will be very happy to have paid him just under $90 million for four years, plus a posting fee that doesn't count against the luxury tax.

They might be unhappy to have to negotiate a new deal in four years, one that might be in excess of $200 million if Tanaka lives up to some expectations. But if there's that much money still rolling into baseball to spur that kind of salary growth for players, the Yankees are surely a team that can afford to retain Tanaka if they desire. Or if at that point the Yankees decide to spread their financial risk out a different way than on the right arm of a pitcher entering his 30s, they can do that, too.

In other words, if everything goes as planned, the Yankees have the opportunity to say goodbye to Tanaka when, theoretically, his best days will be behind him.

Where teams have been burned by opt-out clauses hasn't been by including them in the original contract. It's been by signing the player once the clause has been exercised.

White Sox fans around in the 90s can probably remember Albert Belle receiving a clause that allowed him to opt out if he wasn't among baseball's highest-paid players. When salaries escalated quickly in the late 90s, Belle took advantage of that clause to leave the Sox two years into a five-year, $55 million deal that once made him baseball's top-earning player.

Did the Sox regret losing Belle's services? Not after seeing him sign a new five-year, $65 million deal with the Orioles. Belle gave Baltimore one good year, then one poor year before degenerative osteoarthritis in his hip ended his career, though not his steady stream of paychecks.

If the Yankees need a reminder of what second-time buyer's remorse looks like, they just have to look at their payroll right now. After giving CC Sabathia seven-year, $161 million contract with an opt-out after three years, they saw the left-hander exercise that clause. Instead of being satisfied with three years and 705 innings of a 3.18 ERA and a 59-23 record, they chose to give Sabathia a five-year, $122 contract that has yielded a 29-19 record with a pedestrian 4.09 ERA through the first two years.

And of course there's the defamed Alex Rodriguez. The Yankees inherited the opt-out Rodriguez had built into his then-richest-ever-for-baseball $252 million contract he signed with the Rangers. After trading for Rodriguez -- with the Rangers picking up part of the tab -- the Yankees got a .303/.403/.573 batting line with 173 home runs from the shortstop-turned-third baseman over four seasons.

When Rodriguez opted out, the Yankees weren't happy with the house money they could have left the casino with in their pockets. So instead they signed him to a new record-setting deal, 10 years and $275 million. For that money they've gotten an often-injured player with a diminished .279/.369/.498 line who instead of collecting career milestones on the way to the Hall of Fame is instead sitting out this upcoming season as part of a cloud of steroid scandal that's rendered his once-incredible career meaningless to most fans.

For me, the moral of the story isn't that including the opt-out automatically makes things peachy for teams. It didn't make it that way with Vernon Wells' contract.

To state the obvious, signing any player to a massive contract involves risk for the team agreeing to the pact. No matter the player, no matter the team.

Something just as obvious is that signing the same player three or four years later to a massive contract is just that much riskier. So is crossing your fingers and hoping the next three or four years of a massive megadeal go as well as the first three or four.

Short of simply offering free agents higher annual salaries for fewer years, the willingness to include an opt-out clause might be the best chance for teams to avoid the years of these free agent contracts when they become an albatross.

Clayton Kershaw expected to make more than entire Atlanta pitching staff

I pulled this nugget out of the Jan. 27 edition of Sports Illustrated:

Los Angeles Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw will make an average of $30.7 million annually over the life of the seven-year contract he just signed.

By way of comparison, the Atlanta Braves' 12-man pitching staff is expected to make $27 million combined in 2014.

I know you've probably heard or read statistics like that before. People are quite fond of pointing out that Alex Rodriguez makes more than the entire Houston Astros' roster, for example.

But here's the thing: The Astros aren't even trying to win right now. They stink. They had the worst record in the league last year at  51-111. I tend to dismiss the Astros as a Triple-A team, so of course they are making Triple-A salaries.

The Braves, in contrast, won the NL East with 96 wins in 2013. Not only that, they led all of baseball with a 3.18 team ERA. Atlanta has a very good pitching staff that happens to be inexpensive as well.

It's hard to say Kershaw doesn't deserve his money. He's won two of the last three Cy Young Awards in the National League. He's the best left-handed starter in baseball.

But, the Braves example shows you don't necessarily have to throw around millions upon millions of dollars to build a successful pitching staff, or a successful team. Keep that in mind when people try to tell you the New York Yankees are a lock for the 2014 World Series after they spent almost half a billion dollars this offseason on free agents Brian McCann, Jacoby Ellsbury, Carlos Beltran and Masahiro Tanaka.

The Yankees have won the offseason for sure, but there is no special prize handed to the team that spends the most money or collects the most big-name players.

White Sox manager Robin Ventura gets contract extension

Robin Ventura won't be a lame duck after all going into the 2014 season. The White Sox manager agreed to terms Friday on a multiyear contract extension. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

This is the kind of move the curmudgeons in the Sox fan base will not like. They'll point out Ventura is coming off a 63-99 season. They'll claim the Sox are making this move to in order to keep a "fan favorite" in the dugout while the team rebuilds.

I don't buy that line of thinking. I think the Sox extended Ventura because they believe he's the right man to guide an increasingly young roster over the next couple years.

As a player, Ventura excelled at the fundamentals and conducted himself like a professional should. He sets an example that you want people to follow. The key question is this: Do you believe Ventura can teach young guys how to be major league ballplayers? If the answer is yes, then this extension is a good move. Internally, the Sox have obviously answered that question in the affirmative.

"I have great confidence that Robin's leadership and direction will help us reach our goals," said Rick Hahn, White Sox senior vice president/general manager. "There was never really any question in our minds as to who we wanted in the White Sox dugout now and into the future."

So there you have it.

The other thing this decision does is end speculation about Ventura's commitment to the job. Ventura declined a contract extension after a respectable 85-77 campaign in 2012, causing some to believe he didn't enjoy managing and wasn't in it for the long haul. Personally, I've questioned Ventura's moves at times, but I've never seen any rational reason to question his commitment to the job. With this contract extension, now everyone knows he wants to be the White Sox manager.

I know some people would like to see a more experienced leader managing the team, but let's be honest. The Sox aren't expected to win a thing in 2014. If Ventura's relative inexperience rears its head again from time to time this season, so what? The focus here needs to be more on player development than in-game moves. If Ventura and his staff can get the young players on the roster to improve as the season goes along, then it's mission accomplished, regardless of what the final won-loss record says.

'Bo knows ambassadorship'

Is "ambassadorship" even a word? I'm not sure it is, but former two-sport star Bo Jackson returned to the White Sox as a team ambassador on Wednesday.

Jackson will serve as a team representative in the community and make appearances on behalf of the organization. Other White Sox ambassadors include former players Frank Thomas, Carlton Fisk, Minnie Minoso, Ron Kittle, Bill Melton and Carlos May.

Jackson played for the Sox from 1991-93 and remains a resident of the Chicago area. His two most memorable moments came in 1993, when he hit a home run in his first at-bat after returning from hip-replacement surgery. Later that season, his three-run homer against the Seattle Mariners on Sept. 27 clinched the 1993 American League West championship for the Sox.

"Bo is an American sports legend, who always will hold a special place in hearts of White Sox fans," White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf said in a statement. "His heroic return from what seemed to be a catastrophic career-ending injury helped us win a division title in 1993, and demonstrated to the sports world an unrivaled will and determination to be the best. It is great to again welcome Bo Jackson as a member of the White Sox."

Garza to sign with Brewers

Ken Rosenthal of FOXSports.com reports the Milwaukee Brewers have agreed to a four-year, $52 million deal with former Cubs right-hander Matt Garza.

Now that Masahiro Tanaka is off the market, we can expect some of the other free-agent starting pitchers to sign. The Brewers were not a player for Tanaka, so their pursuit of Garza likely was unrelated. Nevertheless, Milwaukee might have been compelled to move now on a deal for Garza, knowing the remaining free-agent pitchers might have more suitors now that Tanaka has signed with the New York Yankees.

Other notable remaining free-agent starters include Ubaldo Jimenez, Ervin Santana and Bronson Arroyo.