Sale is exciting to watch pitch. Its as if Animal from the Muppets cut his hair and started pitching, his pitches explode from a flurry of scrawny arms and legs. I doubt his mechanics are any good, but I hope he manages to stay healthy.

There's a Florida Gulf Coast University now?

Going off of Vlad's one line quip -- the whole Chris Sale injury/bullpen episode was a strange one. A quick summary -- Sale complains of elbow tenderness/soreness after a start. Sox announce he's going to the bullpen for the rest of the year and is more or less immediately available for use, without any time off or a DL trip. A day or two later he comes out of the 'pen and pitches. It's only after this outing that they actually send him for an MRI. MRI comes back clean. Sale goes straight to the GM and pleads to be reinserted into the rotation. A day or two later he's back in the rotation, where he's been since.

So I still don't know who is thinking what. Were Ventura + Cooper concerned about the Sox' closer issues and found this a convenient excuse to move Sale back there? Do they think Sale's arm is a ticking time bomb, and that moving him to the bullpen will somehow help to preserve it? If Kenny Williams is behind the Sale-as-a-starter project, why were the Sox so quick to tell everyone that Sale's season as a starter was finished? And lastly -- if there are internal concerns about Sale's ability to hold up as a starter, why aren't they taking more of a 'kid gloves' approach with him?

This was a fairly epic pitcher's duel for a random game in May. At one point I thought the Rays would win because I didn't think Moore would give up any runs. Once the Sox got the lead, you knew the Rays weren't going to tie it up off of Sale.

Sale also did a great job keeping his pitch count way down early in the game. He had what seemed like a lot of three pitch strike outs.

There's a Florida Gulf Coast University now?

Yep. And their baseball team has been a massive pain in the ass to the big time Florida schools in midweek games.

After losing Mariano in my fantasy league thanks to his fungo shenanigans, I traded for Sale when he was designated as the White Sox closer. It was like an hour later (not really, but for comedy effect) that they decided "nah, let's put him back in the rotation". Of course, he's been pretty good as a starter so it's not like I lost much. I'm still down a closer, but that's been a weird, weird position this year what with injuries and closers being terrible.

Who was the schmuck alongside Hawk during the game? It wasn't Stone. I only saw a couple of innings, but it sounded as though he might have been a former Sox player. At any rate, I'm not sure if it was the absence of Stone or what, but the broadcast sounded even more like a conversation among Hank Hill and his buddies than usual. Lots of "mmm hmmm" and "yups" strung together.

Also, Hawk almost had the same enthusiasm when Orlando Hudson made a pretty decent diving stop of a ball ticketed for left field late in the game as he did when DeWayne Wise made that over-the-wall catch to preserve Buehrle's perfect game. In other words, a total overreaction under the circumstances.

Hudson's play(*) came late in a one-run game, saving extra bases and likely a run or two. I imagine the difference in win expectancy for making versus not making that play is quite large. How exactly should Hawk react?

Christ. You'd think people who are so put off by Hawk would use the mute button. I guess that hasn't crossed their minds yet, and we end up with the above oh-so-original commentary.

(*)A diving stop towards the line on a short, difficult hop. Coming from a guy who has 56 major league innings at third under his belt.

Who was the schmuck alongside Hawk during the game? It wasn't Stone. I only saw a couple of innings, but it sounded as though he might have been a former Sox player. At any rate, I'm not sure if it was the absence of Stone or what, but the broadcast sounded even more like a conversation among Hank Hill and his buddies than usual. Lots of "mmm hmmm" and "yups" strung together.

Tom Paciorek, who was Harrelson's partner in the booth from 1988 to 1999. He also did some broadcasting work for the Braves and Nationals a few years ago.

Tom Paciorek, who did color for Sox TV broadcasts with John Rooney and Harrelson in the 90s, filled in for the vacationing Stone. I'd like to hear Paciorek and Stone together with Harrelson off playing golf.

Anyway, this game was a lot of fun to watch. Both pitchers piled up the strikeouts like the spaghetti scene in Magical Mystery Tour, and when Dunn hit his moon shot, it felt like the scoring was over.

There's a Florida Gulf Coast University now?

Florida has a knack for creating Universities and having them grow exponentially. The University of Central Florida was founded in 1968 and is now the second largest school by enrollment in the country, with over 58,000 students (50,000 undergrads). FGCU didn't start classes until 1998 and already has over 12,000 students.

Hudson's play(*) came late in a one-run game, saving extra bases and likely a run or two. I imagine the difference in win expectancy for making versus not making that play is quite large. How exactly should Hawk react?

Christ. You'd think people who are so put off by Hawk would use the mute button. I guess that hasn't crossed their minds yet, and we end up with the above oh-so-original commentary.

Hawk's senile and horrible, that said, he's our senile and horrible announcer. If you're a big Sox fan and were born between 1980 and 1995, he's all you know.

Despite my affection for him, I'm hoping Hawk hangs it up after this year. It could get ugly is he doesn't.

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Sale was a thing of beauty yesterday. He didn't have that slider coming out of college, let alone the change up. Sale would be great on any team, but he's espcially deadly with Don Cooper as his pitching coach. The White Sox are really, really good at id'ing flawed pitchers with "stuff", maybe they are a bit wild or can't command their off speed offerings-- and fixing those problems. Give Matt Thornton or Chris Sale to Cooper and he will bring out the absolute best in their ability.
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This is turning into a fun season. Another young player to watch is 23 year old Dayan Viciedo. He's sorta like Vlad Guerrero lite. After today's game he sports a 280/301/504 line with probably around average defense in left. Obviously the walk rate isn't there, but he's cut his K's, and he's always hit for contact, that line might be what he finishes the year around. In the future, if he can improve his walk rate, he could turn into a 6 WAR star player, if not, he's still a solid regular.

If Harrelson retired, who would succeed him? I'm sure many Sox fans would love to have John Rooney back, albeit on the TV side, but could he be pried from St. Louis?

I know a lot of people in D.C. are not big Bob Carpenter fans -- his Midwestern optimism isn't a good fit for an East Coast market -- but he's at least adequate, and Chicago could do worse than hire him.

Ozzie Guillen.

Ozzie Guillen.

If there is a god, this will be so.

Hawk's senile and horrible, that said, he's our senile and horrible announcer.

The White Sox starting pitcher was just ejected for throwing behind a batter and if you can somehow find a clip of Hawk Harrelson calling the play, you should definitely listen to it. Oh my god, he's hilarious, raging about the umpire who clearly "doesn't understand the game of baseball". I kind of side with Hawk on this one (the ump's hook seemed way too quick to me), but man, talk about an overreaction. He's still muttering, "It's an embarrassment to the game of baseball. It's an embarrassment to the profession of umpires, is what it is."

How would one figure out which park had the smallest record number of pitcher Ks?

How would one figure out which park had the smallest record number of pitcher Ks?

I don't know what to do with this information short of some kind of brute force looking at dozens of pages, but Retrosheet has a page for each ballpark that includes best individual performances. For example, here's Candlestick Park. Top single-game pitcher K's are about halfway down the page (the 3rd top "pitching performance") - in this case, Tom Seaver struck out 16 Giants on May 29, 1973.