Cleveland Sports Forum

Sale ready to contribute out of 'pen

By Zach Meisel / MLB.com | 05/07/12 6:27 PM ET

CLEVELAND --

It took a slew of Spring Training starts for Chris Sale to build up the arm strength to make the transition from reliever to starter. His return to the bullpen should be a simpler switch.

Sale was available to pitch out of Chicago's 'pen on Monday against the Indians, six days after his fifth and, presumably, final start of the year. Sale posted a 3-1 record and 2.81 ERA in those five outings, but manager Robin Ventura elected to move Sale to the bullpen in what he deemed an organizational decision.

Sale doesn't appear too bothered by the role reversal.

"I like to use the phrase 'pitching is pitching,'" Sale said. "You still have to go out there and get outs, whether that's at the beginning, middle or end of the game."

Sale totaled 79 appearances in 2010 and '11, all out of the bullpen. He said he liked his time in the rotation, but doesn't have a preference on which role he assumes.

"I enjoyed starting," Sale said. "I thought the transition was going well. I guess we'll see."

Knowing he'll only be asked to pitch an inning or so each time he takes the mound, Sale can unleash his mid-to-high-90s fastball right away rather than pace himself. The 23-year-old admitted, however, that it might take some time to readjust to that style of pitching.

"I don't like to say anything in this game is easy to do," Sale said. "There are a lot of guys who might make it look easy, but at the end of the day, it's not. I'm just taking it day by day, and we'll see where we're at. But maybe the velocity will go up when I'm not throwing as many pitches. Velocity is nice, but it's not going to make or break you."

I like Sale. He's been one of my favorite pitchers ever since his first season. I hope the Sox don't jerk Sale around like the Indians jerked Baez around asking them to switch from relieving, to starting, and back to relieving. We'll have to see how this one works out. Personally, I never liked the decision to move Sale into the rotation in the first place. He was working well out of the pen. Posting a 3-1 record and 2.81 ERA in those five starts is pretty good but I believe he was more valuable to the Sox coming out of the bullpen.

Guillermo Mota, former Cleveland Indian, suspended for 100 games; becomes 3rd big leaguer penalized twice for positive drug tests

Published: Monday, May 07, 2012, 7:16 PM Updated: Monday, May 07, 2012, 7:17 PM
By Plain Dealer staff and wire reports

NEW YORK, New York -- San Francisco Giants reliever Guillermo Mota, a former Cleveland Indian, was suspended for 100 games on Monday, becoming just the third major league player penalized twice for positive drug tests.

The commissioner's office said the 38-year-old right-hander tested positive for Clenbuterol. In November 2006, while with the New York Mets, Mota was suspended for the first 50 games of the next season.

"The Giants are disappointed to learn of Guillermo Mota's suspension," the team said in a statement.

The Major League Baseball Players Association filed a grievance challenging the suspension that will be heard by an arbitrator. Under baseball's drug agreement, grievances for initial positive tests are heard before a suspension is announced but cases involving second or third positives are argued after the penalty is made public.

Outfielder Manny Ramirez and catcher Eliezer Alfonzo are the only previous players to twice test positive. Ramirez was a star outfielder for the Indians from 1993-2000. Both of his positive tests occurred after he left Cleveland. No player has tested positive a third time, which would result in a lifetime ban.

Mota pitched part of the 2006 season for the Indians. He went 1-3 with a 6.21 ERA in 34 relief appearances spanning 37 2/3 innings, before being sent to the New York Mets as part of a conditional deal.

Mota was 0-1 with a 5.06 ERA in nine games for the Giants this year. This is his 14th season in the majors.

Mota has been a setup man and middle reliever throughout his career. He is 39-45 with 10 saves in 726 games while playing with Montreal, the Los Angeles Dodgers, Florida, the Indians and Mets, Milwaukee and San Francisco.

This is Mota's third season with the Giants. He was with the Mets when he previously suspended and missed the first 50 games of the 2007 season. At the time of that suspension, the identity of the substance causing the positive test was not announced.

Ramirez served a 50-game suspension while with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2009, then retired rather than serve a 100-game ban while with Tampa Bay last year. Because Ramirez sat out nearly all of 2011, his penalty was cut to this first 50 games of this season under an agreement between management and the union that allowed him to end his retirement. He agreed to a minor league contract with Oakland.

Alfonzo was suspended for 50 games in 2008 while with San Francisco and for 100 games last September while with Colorado.

I guess I should stop calling it a beer league and start calling it the drug and HGH league.

I guess I should stop calling it a beer league and start calling it the drug and HGH league.

You could!

But why?!?!

The major leagues is your #1 beer league in the world.

I've proven that.

The major leagues is your #1 steroid league in the world.

The world knows this.

I don't see your point !?!?!

What is your point??

I was trying to remember mota on the tribe. Maybe a hazy memory.

He wasn't very good, as I recall. Too many walks.

Joe will be glad to know that Matt McBride is hitting very well for Colorado Springs, with an OPS of 988 while playing here, there and nowhere (RF, 1B, C and DH).

Pomeranz hit a homer yesterday, got hit by a batted ball and didn't pitch too well: "Pomeranz was hit on the right leg by Volquez's liner with one out in the second. He fielded the ball and threw out Volquez. He was checked by the trainer and stayed in the game. Pomeranz (0-2) was the fourth straight Rockies starter who failed to reach the sixth inning. He allowed three runs and five hits in three innings, walked three and struck out two. "It kind of got tight on me," Pomeranz said. "It was fine on me that first inning when I went in and sat down. Then it just kept getting tighter and tighter. It got to the point where it was pretty tight and hurting. "It started to swell up," manager Jim Tracy said. "After what we saw against the L.A. Dodgers, he wasn't real sharp. He had deep counts, made some bad two-strike pitches."

The Colorado Rockies announced tonight that the club has recalled right-handed pitcher Alex White from Triple-A Colorado Springs White, 23, began the season at Triple-A Colorado Springs where he went 1-3 with a 2.92 ERA (24.2 ip, 8 er), eight walks, 21 strikeouts and an opponent batting average of .236 in five starts. White will be making his first start in the Majors since September 27, 2011 at San Francisco. White has a career Major League record of 3-4 with a 7.01 ERA (51.1 ip, 40 er) in 10 career starts with Cleveland (3 starts) and Colorado (7 starts), all in 2011

White Sox pitching coach Don Cooper told Jim Bowden of ESPN.com and MLB Network Radio that Chris Sale will undergo an MRI on his left elbow.
Sale was moved into the closer role late last week due to some tenderness in his elbow and the White Sox apparently want to rule out anything serious. Cooper said to "stay tuned" for news about Sale's role now and in the future, so it's possible they still intend to use him as a starter in the long-term. Cooper also said "don't be surprised" if Addison Reed gets a save opportunity if the White Sox have a lead on Wednesday night, so it appears Sale may be unavailable over the next day or so. Stay tuned.
Source: Jim Bowden on Twitter May 9 - 1:48 PM

Feeling 'normal' again, Dunn returns to form

White Sox slugger more like himself after dreadful 2011 season

By Anthony Castrovince | MLB.com Columnist | Archive

CLEVELAND --

He's on pace for more than 40 home runs and more than 200 strikeouts, which can only mean one thing:

Adam Dunn is Adam Dunn again.

"I don't feel great," he said, "but I feel normal."

And so we can dismiss the notion that Dunn not only went over the hill but straight off a cliff in a 2011 season that continues to boggle the mind and sicken the stomach.

Dunn's season, in which his .159 batting average would have gone down as the lowest ever for a qualifying hitter had he gotten just six more plate appearances, was perhaps the worst in history by a traditionally good player. Nobody saw it coming. Not Dunn, and certainly not the White Sox, who had signed "Big Donkey" to a four-year, $56 million contract the previous winter.

Even upon reflection, one has a hard time deciphering just what happened to Dunn. Was it the switch to the American League? The adjustment to being a designated hitter? The early-season appendectomy? Did his bat slow? Did his 31-year-old body betray him?

A definitive answer has never been offered, and you can't blame Dunn one bit when he says he's done talking about it.

"The largest part," he said, "is just forgetting last year."

And the process of pulling it from his memory began the minute he picked up a bat in the offseason -- something he had usually sworn off in years past -- and started hacking away.

"From day one, when I picked up a bat, everything felt like it should," Dunn said. "I was just waiting for this year to get here."

Now that it's here, Dunn is doing his part to make 2011 look more fluke than fact. His ground-ball-to-fly-ball ratio (0.46) has never been lower, his line-drive percentage (21.5) is up and his infield fly-ball rate (8.6) is down from the career-high 13.2 mark of a year ago.

Most important, there's the homer-to-fly-ball ratio of 28.6, even better than Dunn's career norm (21.5) and a world away from the 9.6 mark he posted last season.

So Dunn, mercifully, has traded in the popups for pure power, and with 10 home runs already, he's just one blast shy of his 2011 total.

Some people will harp on the strikeouts, for Dunn has whiffed in each of his past 36 games (the longest such streak in more than 40 years) and his 34.1 strikeout rate is glaring, even by his standards. But Dunn is still drawing his walks at a satisfying clip (18.1 percent of his plate appearances), and power has a way of earning a player forgiveness for his flubs.

New White Sox hitting coach Jeff Manto made that clear when he told Dunn in Spring Training, "Don't try to be a good hitter, because you are not."

In other words, stick to your strengths.

"To be honest, I've never worried about batting average," Dunn said. "My thing is getting on base and driving in runs. If I'm getting on base and driving runs, I'm doing my job. I don't care how I get on. Obviously, with runners in scoring position, you want to have a good batting average. But other than that, I don't care if I have a two-out single or a two-out walk. The result is the same. You're on."

This is the mentality that, 2011 aside, has served Dunn well throughout the past dozen years. For seven seasons, from 2004-10, he hit at least 38 home runs -- something only Babe Ruth and Rafael Palmeiro had done before him.

Now, having already hit double digits in the homer tally, Dunn is back on track to tout that kind of total. He's back to being Adam Dunn.

And the truth is, being Adam Dunn has never been more valuable, given the lowly state of today's power production.

The 40 home runs that were Dunn's average output from 2004-10? Only two players -- Jose Bautista and Curtis Granderson -- reached that number last year. Only 4,552 homers were hit last season -- the fewest since 1995 and nearly 1,000 fewer than in 2001, when Dunn was a rookie. This year, even with Josh Hamilton doing his part to pick up the pace, hitting four homers Tuesday night, the Major Leagues are currently on track for 4,561 homers.

"The game's changing," Dunn said. "It's getting harder and harder to hit home runs. Pitchers are obviously a lot better. They've closed the gap between the pitchers you feast on and the elite ones. They've closed the gap to where everybody's good, man."

So what Dunn is doing carries perhaps even more weight than it did in his so-called prime years.

He looked plenty past his prime a year ago. And long after Dunn retires, people will still probably point to that season stat line and wonder where it came from.

But all that matters -- to Dunn and to the White Sox -- in the here and now is that 2011 is in the past and Dunn is back to being Dunn.

"I don't feel I'm doing great, but there have been some good results," he said. "It kind of feels normal."

In this case, normal will do.

The nerve of Castro

CARACAS. -

The outfielder Franklin Gutierrez was maintained for 3 to 4 days unable to walk because of a sore heel reports the Seattle Times. The Mariners manager Eric Wedge said that "it appears the new discomfort is not going away soon. " Gutierrez was placed on the injured list to start the campaign for a problem in the chest area of his body and that coupled with this injury will keep him on that list indefinitely. Last season Gutierrez finished with .224 batting average.

It's been a tough two years for Franklin!

Blue Jays sign Vlad to Minor League deal

By Chris Toman / MLB.com | 05/10/12 9:25 PM ET

If all goes right, Vladimir Guerrero will be returning to Canada -- where he started his Major League career -- after signing a Minor League deal with the Blue Jays on Thursday.

But that scenario remains far from a guarantee for the 37-year-old Dominican, who has yet to play a game this season.

Blue Jays general manager Alex Anthopoulos saw no harm in signing the veteran to a $1.3 million contract that will be prorated for his time spent in the Majors, but admits Guerrero isn't even a certainty to be added to Toronto's 25-man roster.

"It's strictly a matter of, there's no such thing as a bad Minor League contract," Anthopoulos said in a conference call about Guerrero, a nine-time All-Star. "There's no guarantees on behalf of the club. There is no financial commitment. ... We continue to look for depth in all areas whenever we can. Any time we have a chance to get someone on a Minor League contract, we almost always explore it because you never know if someone can get lighting in a bottle. ... There's really no downside from the club's standpoint. He was an everyday player last year."

Guerrero will only cash in on the amount if he's added to the big league roster, which Anthopoulos expects wouldn't happen until June at the earliest. In that case, Guerrero would make around $800,000 over the course of the season and could potentially provide the Blue Jays with solid value on the investment. He will report to extended spring training in Dunedin, Fla., where the Blue Jays will get their first look at him.

Well! I wanted to add Guerrero to the Indian's roster before I knew the dollar amount.

Now I'm wondering why we, a team in dire need of a right handed bat with the credentials that he brings to the plate, did not sign him.

Hafner and Guerrero would have been a nice combo at the DH spot in the lineup.

The price was right and like Anthopoulos said, "There's no such thing as a bad Minor League contract."

In my opinion, Guerrero would have been a definite upgrade. Guerrero, who was used exclusively as a designated hitter with the Orioles last season, hit .290 with 13 homers, 63 RBIs and a career-low .733 OPS over 145 games. I'll take those numbers easily over the numbers we're getting from our combined corps of right hand hitters this year (excluding Cabrera and Santana of course).

I hope we did not miss out on a golden opportunity here.