As far as third-base coaches go, Jeff Cox must be pretty good at his job for how little we talk about him. Sure, the White Sox make enough outs between first and second that Cox's calls often don't come into play. And guys like Paul Konerko and A.J. Pierzynski make his baserunning calls rather easy.
But aside from the occasional overcautious stop sign, I rarely hear much about Cox's decision-making, which I take to be a plus. Third-base coaches are a lot like umpires, in that you only notice them when they exercise poor judgment.
So I don't blame Cox for enjoying his moment after a risky send of Carlos Quentin on A.J. Pierzynski shallow, eventual sacrifice fly helped the Sox win a ballgame on Wednesday:
"Believe me, there was a little question about it," Cox said. "(Gonzalez) was coming in, he was going to his left, he’s a left-handed thrower and he’s going to have to take a split second to get his feet right.
"Shoot, it’s the ninth inning and that makes the second out, so let’s make it happen and hopefully the throw is off-line a tad. And the more you practice, the luckier you get."
I just hope that mistaking Seth Smith for Carlos Gonzalez was Mark Gonzales' error (and it looks like it is), because otherwise we're going to have to dock Cox a few points. Then again, with lines like these ...
"It’s a fearless job, to be honest with you," the affable Cox said. "But, then again, somebody has to do it."
And then Cox shouted, "And I love doing it!"
... he would've won those points back, anyway.
And speaking of senses of humor, I thought Buehrle's assessment of the two solo homers he allowed was funnier than the way he got picked off after his double:
"The ball carries pretty well here," Buehrle said. "You saw that on two fly balls that should have been outs and left the park."
Giambi's homer to left traveled an estimated 382 feet, while Wigginton's blast sailed three-fourths up the left field bleachers and traveled 434 feet.
The White Sox went to unusual measures to try to get Adam Dunn out of his slump, bringing in the righty-lefty low-minors combo of Stephen Sauer and Garrett Johnson to pitch real, live at-bats. Dunn, who hit a couple of his former-trademark bombs, was appreciative of the idea.
Dunn also had a chat with a sports psychologist, though he's too new to the mental-evaluation circuit to know if it might help.
Two items of note - the Sox's first pick in the draft, Keenyn Walker, will report to Great Falls after he signs (which is good!), and Jake Peavy is flying in his massage therapist to accelerate his recovery so he can make his next start (which still seems very, very wrong.) "I'm doing all we can do to make sure because I've never done what I did," Peavy foreboded, making it sound even wronger. There's still time to change their minds ... buuuuuuut, I bet they won't.
James follows up on the fact that's behind what we're all feeling -- despite modest improvement, the White Sox are still by far the worst-hitting team in high-leverage situations. Also, this line about Alex Rios' trip to Ozzie Guillen's doghouse is great:
It appears Guillen has decided that Lillibridge will castigate himself enough for not being more aggressive, but saw a vacuum of accountability as Rios jogged out a fly out. If this is a consistent policy, AJ might be dead in a week.
Evaluating a hypothetical MLB expansion draft - Beerleaguer
In an interesting thought exercise, J.J. participated as a general manager in a mock expansion draft, which involved picking which players to protect. It's worth rolling around the ideas.