Effectively, only a day remains to vote a player from baseball’s best team into the All-Star Game. Realistically, the only way a White Sox player will make it is to have already impressed Joe Torre, the man in the opposite dugout during Sunday’s 8-7 survival by the Sox over the Yankees.
“I guess I’m the ogre,” said Torre.
Torre is too decent a man to be a villain in any cause, but it is more than casually bizarre that whatever individual glories are next for the White Sox, a team consumed with being identified as a team, they are at an opposing manager’s whim.
None of the eight starting positions will go to the White Sox, leaving the remaining 22, probably 10 of them pitchers, to Torre, and whatever help he chooses to use. Torre has not asked Sox manager Jerry Manuel to pitch in, but Manuel said he would if asked.
“Jose Valentin has been very important to us,” Manuel said, “and [Herbert] Perry.”
Good luck with that, Jerry. The most the White Sox can hope for is four, with six solid candidates–James Baldwin, Keith Foulke, Cal Eldred, Magglio Ordonez, Frank Thomas and Ray Durham.
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“I would be disappointed if we only get one player on the team,” Manuel said.
One player is the minimum. Everybody must have one. Last year it was Ordonez. This year it will surely be Baldwin.
After that?
“We’re only concerned about winning in this clubhouse, not the All-Star Game,” said Thomas, who certainly deserves to be on the team.
Yet, Thomas may find himself needing to be named at a position he rarely plays in a year without a designated hitter. The American League is overrun with first basemen having great seasons so far: Carlos Delgado of Toronto, Jason Giambi or Oakland, Mike Sweeney of Kansas City and Jim Thome of the Indians.
“I was batting champ in ’97, and didn’t make it in ’98,” Thomas said. “You never know.”
What may be even more damaging to Thomas’ chances is his relative futility against the Yankees in the Sox’s 12 games with them this season. Thomas batted only .163 with a single home run. But more telling than statistics may be the way Torre treated Thomas on Sunday.
With first base open, Torre pitched to Thomas and then walked Ordonez intentionally after Thomas flew out to right field. Three innings later, again with first base open, Torre allowed tiring Andy Pettitte to pitch to Thomas, but then replaced Pettitte when Ordonez came to bat.
Clearly Torre considered Ordonez the more dangerous Sox batter. And he does have the numbers to back up that opinion. Against the Yankees this year, Ordonez batted .372 with six home runs. Pencil in Ordonez for the All-Star team.
Torre has a habit of asking managers around the league for a list of 10 pitchers they think should be on the team.
“I have given it [which White Sox players to choose] a lot of thought already,” Torre said. “And when I get back to New York I will discuss it with Phyllis Merhige [the AL liaison from the commissioner’s office]. We’ll go over everybody chapter and verse.”
Torre is human enough to be affected by his last view of Foulke, who might have lost a spot among the 10 or so pitchers Torre will select. Trying to give Foulke a little work, Manuel handed him the ninth inning and a seven-run lead, which Foulke reduced to a single run before he was bailed out by Bob Howry. Still, it was against the Yankees earlier that Foulke supplanted Howry as the White Sox closer. Whether Foulke makes it or not depends on the length of Torre’s memory and the number of relief pitchers he considers worthy. There were four last year, and Foulke has clearly been in the top four so far.
As for Eldred, he might actually have a better record than Baldwin by the time the choices are made, and right now Eldred is tied for fourth in AL victories and is sixth in ERA. After Pedro Martinez, David Wells and Baldwin, Eldred is as reasonable a pick as any.
“What I wish is that the rosters were bigger,” Torre said. The rosters were expanded from 28 to 30 only two years ago.
Is that the next test for the Sox, to see if jealousies grow out of who makes the All-Star team and who doesn’t? Whatever Torre decides may do more damage to the White Sox than anything his Yankee team could do.
“Nothing will ruin this chemistry,” said Thomas.
I’m guessing Thomas is right.