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Carlos Rodon Day started with Scott Boras speaking glowingly about the White Sox, so perhaps we should have expected it to end in an equally uplifting and unexpected fashion.
Boras didn't have the grounds to blast the White Sox for waiting two weeks to promote his client the way he did with the Cubs for Kris Bryant, but he could have needled them a bit if he really wanted. Instead, he had nothing but praise for the Sox' decision-making process:
"The Bryant situation and Carlos’ situation are very different because of the innings issue," Boras said. "Because of the idea that frankly, you really want this process to get a foundation to it for a pitcher rather than building -- because there’s no repetition in amateur baseball that prepares you for what major league pitchers have to go through. Its part of what they have to go through isn’t about ability, it’s about truly building to durability." [...]
"Still the process is one where I don’t in any way think that too many innings too young, being a big leaguer, right there right now and throwing 180 innings your first year of pro ball, I don’t find too many careers where athletes do that that have worked out too well as far longevity goes," Boras said. "So bringing him along slowly and monitoring his innings and doing things like that, I think it’s a very good plan."
That's all true. Plus, in most organizations, Rodon wouldn't be earning major-league meal money in April after getting drafted the June before. Between this comment and Hahn's outline of Rodon's near future, everybody has a reasonable perspective so far.
Terrerobytes
Also reasonable? Robin Ventura on Melky Cabrera. After the game, Bruce Levine asked Ventura about Melky Cabrera showing bunt with two guys on base. Ventura said (at the 2:50 mark of the video), "I would rather him keep that as an element that nobody sees as much anymore, because he can swing the bat."
Not reasonable: Reds manager Bryan Price, who unleashed an 88-profanity tirade at a Cincinnati reporter who had the gall to find out why Devin Mesoraco wasn't available. Not only does he fail to understand that the reporter isn't supposed to shield his team, but Lee Elia Day isn't even until next week.
But back to Ventura, Rick Hahn defended his manager after a rough week, but he did say that the non-challenge in Detroit has led the Sox to change the way they assess such situations.
He admitted that the game situation is "highly relevant" in those instances and that the White Sox "messed it up."
"It happens," Hahn said. "There is a chain of events that went wrong, starting with the umpire missing the call, which is going to happen on a bang-bang play, to our video guys not getting the look they needed in time and giving bad information to the bench.
"And to Robin making a decision that despite the game-changing nature of the call, all right we hear from the bench, it's not worth reviewing and we're not going to review it. We made some changes that night to our processes to how we review things and I think we will be better for it moving forward. It's unfortunate, but we messed it up and we own it."