Palka is 1 for 53 at the big-league level this season. His slash line sits at .019/.133/.019 after an 0-for-4 performance in Wednesday's 8-6 loss to the Cleveland Indians.
He's batting .019!
I'm trying to think of another case where a position player had a batting average that low. Sure, some pitchers have had a crummy average like that over the course of a season -- Al Leiter in 2003, for example. Leiter was 1 for 53, just like Palka.
But typically, a position player will run out of chances when he gets around, say, 1 for 30. Palka, however, is getting a chance to redeem his season as the Sox made him one of their September call-ups.
He's started two of the three games since rejoining the South Siders, and he's 0 for 8 with four strikeouts.
It's actually a little confounding that Palka is this miserable at the plate. He led the Sox in homers with 27 in 2018, and it isn't as if he had a bad season at Triple-A Charlotte:
2018 with White Sox: .240/.294/.484, 27 HRs, 15 2Bs, 67 RBIs in 124 games
2019 with Triple-A Charlotte: .263/.374/.527, 27 HRs, 23 2Bs, 72 RBI in 106 games
Maybe Palka hasn't set the world on fire with these numbers, but he also hasn't done so poorly that you would expect historic ineptness from him at the plate.
I was watching Palka's at-bat against Cleveland pitcher Tyler Clippard on Wednesday night, and he fouled off five pitches before grounding out to second base. Normally, you would say it was a good battle -- fouling off five pitches -- but four of those were pitches were right in the center of home plate. We're talking middle-middle strikes.
One of the four was a high changeup, a pitch that MLB hitters regularly put in play hard. The other three were hittable fastballs. Palka could not put any of them in fair territory, and that suggests his struggles have become a mental thing.
It may be about time to send him home for the year, then designate him for assignment at the end of the season. Palka was a fun story last year, but it just isn't working out anymore.
Lopez shuts down Cleveland
Lopez (9-12) became the first Sox pitcher to throw a complete-game one-hitter with 10 or more strikeouts since Floyd Bannister did it in 1987.
The right-hander's final line: 9 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 11 Ks, 3 BBs
I missed the game because I was at work, but it was real nice to hear that Lopez had bounced back after getting knocked out in the first inning against the Atlanta Braves in his previous start.
Lopez has shown us that he can be an effective starter at times. There's just not much consistency. But the guess here is he's shown enough flashes of brilliance to be in the Sox's starting rotation once again in 2020.
Great article, thanks for posting it.
ReplyDeleteThat's Fred Gladding ineptitude at the plate.
(I'll let you look up his stats. I'll never forget listening to the radio call of Fred's first - and only - ML hit. The broadcast booth was cracking up. It was a bloop to LF that looks like a line drive in the scorebook. It was rare for him to even hit a foul ball.)