I really didn't think Cooper was particularly sour in the interview. That's pretty much the way he always is.

I really didn't think Cooper was particularly sour in the interview. That's pretty much the way he always is.

When he contradicts himself (like 3 times in two minutes), the interviewer asks him to clarify and he says "Are you llstening?" its ON if Im interviewing him.

But don't the contradictions speak for themselves? He's the guy who looks ridiculous. Not Mully or Hanley.

Yeah, North would have attacked and Cooper would have hung up and it would have all felt phony like when North yelled at Ozzie for swearing. And North would have taken many bows and boasted about how nobody's gonna talk to him like that. And it would have been worse radio than Cooper stammering and looking dumb under the firm but gentle questioning of M&H.

What would your response been to "Are you listening?"


The politest thing I could possibly utter would be "Im listening to you not make sense"

Mike North wouldnt have taken that shit

Mully is a bitch

I dont care what kind of loyalty to Jerry or worrying about him hanging up


When that jack ass said "Are you listening?" Mully should have unloaded on him

Laurence Holmes is a fucking weirdo, a nerd in denial, and a wannabe. Not a very good radio host either.

real confrontation is great radio

He probably wouldn't have said it to me because I wouldn't try to answer the question myself. North and Mully are both famous for that. I believe Cooper was responding to Mully saying, "So, Sale wants the MRI himself?" If I'm asking the question, I would have posed it like this: "Is the MRI something Sale requested or was it ordered by team doctors?"

Anyway, I actually thought Cooper was less edgy than he has been many other times I've heard him.

Agreed. But phony confrontation isn't. Like the North/Ozzie thing. North contrived that. Do you really think Mike North was furious because Ozzie swore? It's hard to have real confrontation with paid interviewees.

Laurence Holmes is a fucking weirdo, a nerd in denial, and a wannabe. Not a very good radio host either.

I didnt think it was contrived.

I mean I think he was frustrated Ozzie was talking down to him and concentrated on the swearing aspect to express it

Not that he hates Ozzie, but I thought that was some real tension between acquaintences

I actually think the best thing I've read on it was Cowley's article in yesterday's Sun-Times.

I have MANY years of experience in trying to appreciate steaming piles of dogshit.

That was pretty good and it made more sense than anything else I have read on it.

The whole thing still does not add up tho.

I used to know the White Sox. Frankly, we all kind of did.

They were unlike any other major-league team, an open book for all to read. That’s what was endearing about them: There were very few secrets. We saw behind the curtain, saw the dysfunction, and it made them easy to embrace. They were flawed, just like the rest of us.

Now I don’t know if anyone knows the team at 35th and Shields anymore, and that includes the people working there.

Take the ever-changing saga of left-hander Chris Sale, which now has reached the chapter where he will be undergoing an MRI exam on his left elbow. Such exams rarely have happy endings.

When the Sox said during the offseason that Sale would be moved from the bullpen to the starting rotation, it came with more than a few in the organization rolling their eyes. With good reason.

A Sox source indicated the one thing pitching coach Don Cooper and former manager Ozzie Guillen agreed on last season, even when their relationship was disintegrating, was that Sale wouldn’t hold up as a starter.

Guillen, now the manager of the Florida Marlins, was taken aback at Cooper’s apparent change of heart, saying on Opening Day last month in Miami: ‘‘I hope they don’t kill that kid.’’

Cooper, however, denied wanting to keep Sale out of the rotation last season, telling the Sun-Times on Tuesday: ‘‘No, I was never adamantly against it. I want what my guys want. He wants to start.’’

So now 23-year-old pitchers
call the shots?

OK, let’s pretend Cooper was all for Sale starting, despite a Sox source saying otherwise. What about the concerns scouts have expressed about Sale’s violent throwing motion?

‘‘No, there were no concerns about that,’’ Cooper said. ‘‘If you don’t have a good delivery, you can’t throw strikes.’’

There are so many things wrong with that statement, it’s almost unfair to attack. You know who threw a lot of strikes a couple of years ago? Stephen Strasburg, right before he had Tommy John surgery, and hundreds of other pitchers who have had to go under the knife.

The funny thing is, after Cooper saw Strasburg pitch against the Sox in 2010, he predicted the phenom was headed for Tommy John surgery.

Still, the Sox pushed forward with the plan to move Sale to the rotation, with general manager Ken Williams the driving force behind the decision, a Sox source said.

On Friday, the Sox announced Sale was out of the rotation because of lingering soreness in his pitching elbow. Privately, his fellow pitchers weren’t surprised because Sale still was searching for a changeup as a third pitch, so he was relying on a heavy dose of sliders.

According to Fangraphs, 30 percent of Sale’s pitches were sliders. That’s fine for one inning out of the bullpen, but over six-plus innings? Good luck.

Manager Robin Ventura said the move back to the bullpen was for the rest of the season, but Cooper said Tuesday that wasn’t necessarily the case. On Wednesday, the Sox announced an MRI exam was coming.

Wait, who’s in charge?

The Sale saga reeks of mismanagement. Then again, we don’t really know the Sox anymore.

And maybe it’s better that way.

I have MANY years of experience in trying to appreciate steaming piles of dogshit.

...i agree north/ozzie was staged ....just like rome/everett

Some WSOX conspiracy stuff , the little I heard of B & B's take on it they seemed more bemused by it than anything. I wonder if this were the Cubs ( pre Theo of course because Theo doesn't do anything wrong) and something like this were happening with Rothschild directly contradicting what the manager ( say Quade) was saying, they would've gotten both barrels from those 2 about the manager being weak, who is running the show , the pitching coach is out of control, etc. It seemed they touched on that a little bit but sure seemed to be a lot more genteel than if this were the Cub imho.

I dont think North/Ozzie was staged. Maybe North made it a big thing, but It wasnt pre planned

That was pretty good and it made more sense than anything else I have read on it.

The whole thing still does not add up tho.

You know, I think the answer is really pretty simple. There isn't a guy who pitches a baseball for a living who isn't hurt. That doesn't mean he's injured. I think that was a frustration the Cubs had with Prior and his old man. They didn't want to pitch unless everything felt perfect. That isn't realistic.

As far as Sale is concerned, I think he has some inflammation in his elbow. When he leans on the slider it has the potential to make it worse. He doesn't need to throw as many sliders when all he needs to do is get three or four outs. And he can dial his fastball up to 99 mph which he can't reasonably do when he's trying to go seven innings. They don't want to pitch him when his elbow is real sore but that presents a problem if he's in the rotation. If he's in the pen, they can simply not use him on the days when his soreness is a problem. That all makes sense. I'm not sure why they don't just say that.

I have MANY years of experience in trying to appreciate steaming piles of dogshit.

So they are afraid Sale is the next Prior and they want to keep in the pen to get the most use out of him?

I sure hope that isn't what is going on, talk about a waste of a talent.

I don't know if it's that. Some guys don't bounce back as well as others. You read in the Cowley article that Guillen didn't think he was physically equipped to be a starter. A starter has to take that ball every fifth day. It can't be that on that day you're not good to go. That fucks up the whole team.

I dont think he's Prior. I think they should shut him down till the inflammation is gone though

Why force him?



Here's a pretty detailed scouting report of Sale going into the draft

http://projectprospect.com/article/2010/05/27/chris-sale-scouting-report

There's more /\ there, but this is the mechanics portion and conclusion....


Mechanics

Special thanks to Baseball America's Conor Glassey who took the video used below. Follow Conor on Twitter @conorglassey.

Up until now the picture of Sale’s prospects has been pretty rosy. A team looking to draft him in the top 10 is likely relying on his stuff/production combo. Those who rank Sale lower, will do so predominately because of concerns about his throwing motion.

Standing nearly 6-foot-6 and weighing 47 pounds (approximate), Sale could be broken in half by a strong wind. On the one hand, he has plenty of room to mature physically, adding functional muscle. On the other, if this is what he looks like after the freshman 15, his body just might not be made to handle a lot of weight.




On the positive side, Sale's mechanics are certainly deceptive. Even though they are unorthodox, he does seem to repeat his motion well. Even the ‘best’ mechanics don’t mean much if a pitcher can’t repeat them.

On the negative side, while Sale’s motion hasn't caused him much of a problem so far, it does put him at an elevated risk of possible injury.

He begins his motion by flexing his torso and leaning his upper body towards first base. This may disrupt some hitter’s sight as they try and focus on the area in which they expect the ball to be released. However it is also a needless expenditure of energy. The only pitchers who successfully pull of a similar move are submariners who use that shoulder tilt to create their arm angles. Sale releases the ball in a normal, upright stance. His unusual torso bend reduces both his ability to apply force to the ball directly in the driveline and minimizes hip/shoulder separation – the key to velocity.

While the ideal mechanics may vary from pitcher to pitcher, the idea behind the motion is that of an efficient kinetic chain. Energy starts when a pitcher drives off the mound. It continues when he rotates his hips, then shoulders and at last that energy makes its way into the ball. Sale appears to get little drive from his legs and doesn’t maximize his hip rotation.


He seems to throw mostly with his upper body. He flexes his torso out towards first base and reverse rotates his shoulders. He actually dips his front shoulder down slightly and has to flex upward in order to release the ball – fighting against his body’s natural weight shift and gravity as he strides down the pitching mound. This reliance on the upper body to produce most of the force in the pitching motion results in ‘whip’ in which the pitching arm is rapidly – and perhaps unsafely – accelerated.

At some angles, it appears as if Sale’s pitching side elbow reaches well above his shoulder, a process known as hyperabduction. However I believe that is not as severe as it looks, since Sale lowers his front shoulder, the elbows and shoulders are actually much closer to staying in their acromial lines, the line is just angled upwards.

The biggest problem, however, is a severe timing flaw in Sale’s delivery. Whenever his shoulders start to rotate – which is earlier in his delivery than most – the ball is not in a position to be accelerated towards home plate. Instead of being up, with his forearm vertical, the ball is still at, or slightly below, shoulder height. Late forearm turnover appears to be a significant predictor of future injury.



To put it simply, there is energy rushing through Sale’s arm at footplant that is not being used to project the ball towards the home. That energy doesn’t just go away, it gets transmitted into muscles, ligaments, tendons and bones. None of this guarantees a future injury for Sale; it’s possible he can withstand the added stress. But it does make it somewhat unlikely that Sale will able to withstand a consistent starter’s workload.

There are many factors that go into an injury. Rest and recovery time, genetic factors, diet, pitch counts, workload and dozens more. The average pitcher is likely to get hurt sometime in his career. But Sale’s unique mechanics appear to put him at a higher than average level of risk. Nothing certain, just elevated risk level. That level of risk can never reach zero, but if I were a scouting director or general manager and about to invest several million dollars in a prospect, I would want the level of risk to be as low as possible.

I do not know of another pitcher who has been a durable starter with a motion similar to Sale. Players who share the extent of Sale’s timing flaw tend to have injury riddled careers. The closest comparable I can think of, in terms of having similar mechanics, is Anthony Reyes (hat tip to Pat Hickey who first brough up this comparison in the Project Prospect forums)



Conclusion

Chris Sale is an extremely productive left-handed pitcher with advanced control and good stuff. He can crank his fastball up into the mid-90’s with outstanding movement and his change has a chance to be a very good pitch. He has a chance to rack up high strikeout totals, low walk rates and good ground ball rates. If he reaches his upside, he’s a very valuable player. But Sale’s mechanics put him at a very high level of injury risk. If you believe that a pitching motion can contribute to injuries, it’s likely that Sale’s will. He appears unlikely to be able to handle a consistent starter’s workload. His long-term home appears to be in the bullpen. I’d have a hard time taking a closer in round one.


He'll end up a good closer for a few years

I dont think he's Prior.

I have MANY years of experience in trying to appreciate steaming piles of dogshit.

True. Prior actually had a pretty good year as a starter winning 18 games. Don't look like Sale will ever get that far in the rotation.

He'll probably last longer though

He could be a Billy Wagner type or maybe Matt Thornton

True. Prior actually had a pretty good year as a starter winning 18 games. Don't look like Sale will ever get that far in the rotation.