Kuzul

I feel bad writing this after a win (the White Sox won today, 7-6 over the Yankees), but there is indeed no rest for the wicked, and this is a question that needs to be answered.

Let me get things started with this: I’m not an Ozzie “fan.”

I think he is one of the more overrated managers in baseball, still riding high from can’t-miss pitching and power hitting in 2005.

His blowups in the media are infamous, ranging from derogatory terms used to describe hometown sportswriters to his now-tired, “blame me, fire me,” routine.

Truth-be-told, though, I was willing to give Ozzie one more shot in 2010, I really was.

This was finally going to be his team, and we as fans were going to be able to see him actually manage a ball club, hopefully to victory.

And so, with a roster primed to twist the “Ozzieball” knob all the way to “11,” I have kicked back and watched Guillen “lead” (if you want to call it that) the White Sox to a 10-14 record through the month of April.

However, after a month of baseball, I can confidently say that this has to stop, because the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t the glimmer on a World Series trophy, it’s the Cellar Express, and the White Sox have a one-way ticket.

That is, if things don’t change, and soon.

Of course, Mark Buehrle, Jake Peavy, and John Danks could all wake up tomorrow and decide to have a triple-threat match for the AL Cy Young. The main event could be a TLC scrum for the AL MVP, with Andruw Jones and Paul Konerko duking it out for the top prize.

However, given what we have seen thus far, the former match could be an all-out stinker and the latter may be snubbed due to an injury during last week’s house show.

But whether the pitching picks up, or whether Konerko and Jones can stay healthy and productive will be of no consequence if Guillen is still filling out the lineup card and making in-game decisions. His work thus far has been nothing short of brutal.

Let’s start with the “small ball” tactics Guillen has sworn by for this season.

The Sox stand at an unimpressive 74 percent stealing success rate, just barely above the average break-even point, garnering an extra 0.01 marginal runs for their cause.

Indeed, for all the running done so far, Ozzie has garnered just 0.01 of a run for his team by signaling for an attempted swipe of a bag or giving his players the “green light.”

What about bunting?

This team was assembled with the idea of “manufacturing” runs being a big part of the offense, of which bunting plays a large role.

According to Equivalent Ground Advancement Runs (a look at how many runs a team gained or lost advancing runners along via bunts and other situational hitting), Ozzie’s continued implementation of one-run strategies in situations not conducive to increasing the likelihood of any amount of runs scoring has cost this team 0.22 runs.

Hardly the mark of a team creating runs efficiently.

Furthermore, the team’s run scoring has oft been in spite of Ozzie’s attempts at moving runners along, with a hand-full of the team’s 30 home runs (second-best in the AL) being reduced to two-run or solo blasts thanks to erroneous strategies implemented by Guillen.

Lineup construction is another area in which Ozzie is either ignorant, stubborn, or both.

Mark Kotsay started 10 games in the month of April (not to beat a dead horse, but he’s really bad at baseball), many times while resurgent-star Andruw Jones sat on the bench. Juan Pierre has had 94 of his 100-plus plate appearances come from the top spot in the order, despite a horrendous OBP of .260 through April 30.

In fact, Juan Pierre, Alexei Ramirez, and Mark Kotsay have all received too much playing time.

VORPr is the rate-based relative of Value Over Replacement Player, telling us roughly how many runs a player is contributing per game over a replacement player (waiver wire acquisition or a lifetime AAA hitter). The three aforementioned players, according to VORPr, are costing the Sox almost one whole run per game, yet they have received roughly one-fourth of the team’s PAs.

Add in struggling catcher AJ Pierzynski (whom Ozzie insists on starting over the out-of-nowhere Donny Lucy), and the four starters are costing the team 1.42 runs per game, yet they have gotten 34 percent of team PAs.

However, perhaps it is unfair to criticize Ozzie for playing regular starters early on in the season. It is, after all, not Ozzie’s fault that he put regular starters, novelty of all novelties, in starting spots in the lineup at the beginning of the season.

Since April 21st (15 games into the season), the four players highlighted above received 101 of the team’s 328 total PAs through April 30, or roughly 31 percent of the playing time.

For a team that has dreams of October baseball, such a percentage of playing time given to such struggling or all-out bad players is unacceptable from a managerial standpoint.

It is not as though Guillen is without options, however. Backup catcher and minor-league journeyman Donny Lucy has been turning heads with a whopping .733 slugging percentage in 18 PAs.

Mark Teahen has been performing well, with an OBP of .357 so far, yet he can’t seem to buy his way into the leadoff discussion, batting higher than fifth in the lineup only once all season (he hit in the fourth spot in a pinch hitting role).

And a quick note on the pitching staff, if I may: Randy Williams (and his 2.586 WHIP) has received 15 percent of the relief work done by the bullpen thus far.

So, given all the evidence—the overused “small ball” tactics, the myriad of bad lineups and horrible playing time distribution, horrible pitchers getting too many innings—should Ozzie Guillen be fired?

It is a simple question, with a surprisingly simple answer: yes. Yes, with a pink slip containing bold-faced type the likes of which no one has ever seen, yes.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

For awhile now, we at 643 Sports have blustered over devoting an entire show to the identification and removal of the worst and least-worthy parts of baseball’s Hall of Fame.

So, inspired by the hand-wringing we have done over the induction of the Jim Rice and Andre Dawson ilk, I decided to get the ball rolling and put together a definite list of players that, in my humble opinion, do not deserve Hall of Fame recognition.

Let me first set some ground rules for the list, as I can already envision the arguments of disgruntled baseball puritans that are sure to be hurled my way, and I would like to quell those while they are still a gleam in their respective eyes:

-Defense is not accounted for. Yes, I know defense is currently an understudied and perhaps undervalued phase of the game today, but I feel that many people use the ambiguity of defensive valuation as a shield to deflect proper blame from finding its way to the players that deserve it.

Simply put, the players on this list aren’t good enough to profit from the dubious nature of defense valuation, at least when talking about their overall worth as it pertains to inclusion in baseball’s tallest ivory tower.

-Off-field or non-production-related facets of player’s contributions to baseball are also not considered. Admittedly, though not to tip my hand, I was not around to follow these players during their time in the big leagues, so I would not know of any subtle contributions to the game that might warrant their inclusion in the Hall.

However, all of these players were inducted (whether by the BBWA or the Veterans Committee) under the moniker of “player”, so it follows that their inclusion should be subjected to the same form of criticism as everyone else, and thus they warrant no special treatment or indemnity from criticism for sucking at baseball.

-The statistics used here will be rate-based for the most part (AVG, OBP, SLG, etc), though league adjusted metrics such as OPS+ will be used to show the performance of players relative to their peers around the league. Weighted on-base average (wOBA, the more slugging-neutral version of OPS, scaled like OBP) and weighted runs created plus (wRC+, Runs Created based on wOBA, adjusted for league and scaled like OPS+) will also be used in concert with the more common statistics to ensure that proper league and player type adjustments are made.

With that, let’s start cleaning out that Hall, shall we?

Begin Slideshow

I feel bad writing this after a win (the White Sox won today, 7-6 over the Yankees), but there is indeed no rest for the wicked, and this is a question that needs to be answered.

Let me get things started with this: I’m not an Ozzie “fan.”

I think he is one of the more overrated managers in baseball, still riding high from can’t-miss pitching and power hitting in 2005.

His blowups in the media are infamous, ranging from derogatory terms used to describe hometown sportswriters to his now-tired “blame me, fire me” routine.

Truth-be-told, though, I was willing to give Ozzie one more shot in 2010, I really was.

This was finally going to be his team, and we as fans were going to be able to see him actually manage a ball club, hopefully to victory.

And so, with a roster primed to twist the “Ozzieball” knob all the way to “11,” I have kicked back and watched Guillen “lead” (if you want to call it that) the White Sox to a 10-14 record through the month of April.

However, after a month of baseball, I can confidently say that this has to stop, because the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t the glimmer on a World Series trophy, it’s the Cellar Express, and the White Sox have a one-way ticket.

That is, if things don’t change, and soon.

Of course, Mark Buehrle, Jake Peavy, and John Danks could all wake up tomorrow and decide to have a triple-threat match for the AL Cy Young, with the main event being a TLC scrum for the AL MVP, with Andruw Jones and Paul Konerko duking it out for the top prize.

However, given what we have seen thus far, the former match could be an all-out stinker and the latter may be snubbed due to an injury during last week’s house show.

But whether the pitching picks up or Konerko and Jones can stay healthy and productive will be of no consequence if Guillen is still filling out the lineup card and making in-game decisions.  His work thus far has been nothing short of brutal.

Let’s start with the “small ball” tactics Guillen has sworn by for this season.

The Sox stand at an unimpressive 74 percent stealing success rate, just barely above the average break-even point, garnering an extra 0.01 marginal runs for their cause.

Indeed, for all the running done so far, Ozzie has garnered just one one-hundredth of a run for his team by signaling for an attempted swipe of a bag or giving his players the “green light.”

What about bunting?

This team was assembled with the idea of “manufacturing” runs being a big part of the offense, of which bunting plays a large role.

According to Equivalent Ground Advancement Runs (a look at how many runs a team gained or lost advancing runners along via bunts and other situational hitting), Ozzie’s continued implementation of one-run strategies in situations not conducive to increasing the likelihood of any amount of runs scoring has cost this team 0.22 runs.

Hardly the mark of a team creating runs efficiently.

Furthermore, the team’s run scoring has oft been in spite of Ozzie’s attempts at moving runners along, with a hand-full of the team’s 30 home runs (second-best in the AL) being reduced to two-run or solo blasts thanks to erroneous strategies implemented by Guillen.

Lineup construction is another area in which Ozzie is either ignorant, stubborn or both.

Mark Kotsay started ten games in the month of April (not to beat a dead horse, but he’s really bad at baseball), many times while resurgent-star Andruw Jones sat on the bench. Juan Pierre has had 94 of his 100+ plate appearances come from the top spot in the order despite a horrendous OBP of .260 through April 30.

In fact, Juan Pierre, Alexei Ramirez, and Mark Kotsay have all received too much playing time.

VORPr is the rate-based relative of Value Over Replacement Player, telling us roughly how many runs a player is contributing per game over a replacement player (waiver wire acquisition or a lifetime AAA hitter). The three aforementioned players, according to VORPr, are costing the Sox almost one whole run per game, yet have received roughly one-fourth of the team’s PAs.

Add in struggling catcher AJ Pierzynski (whom Ozzie insists on starting over the out-of-nowhere Donny Lucy), and the four starters are costing the team 1.42 runs per game, yet have gotten 34 percent of team PAs.

However, perhaps it is unfair to criticize Ozzie for playing regular starters early on in the season. It is, after all, not Ozzie’s fault that he put regular starters, novelty of all novelties, in starting spots in the lineup at the beginning of the season.

Since April 21st (15 games into the season), the four players highlighted above received 101 of the team’s 328 total PAs through April 30, or roughly 31 percent of the playing time.

For a team that has dreams of October baseball, such a percentage of playing time given to such struggling or all-out bad players is unacceptable from a managerial standpoint.

It is not as though Guillen is without options, however. Backup catcher and minor-league journeyman Donny Lucy has been turning heads with a whopping .733 slugging percentage in 18 PAs.

Mark Teahen has been performing well with an OBP of .357 so far, yet he can’t seem to buy his way into the leadoff discussion, batting higher than fifth in the lineup only once all season (he hit in the fourth spot in a pinch hitting role).

And a quick note on the pitching staff, if I may: Randy Williams (and his 2.586 WHIP) has received 15 percent of the relief work done by the bullpen thus far.

So, given all the evidence—the overused “small ball” tactics and the myriad of bad lineups and horrible playing time distribution, horrible pitchers getting too many innings—should Ozzie Guillen be fired?

It is a simple question, with a surprisingly simple answer: yes; with a pink slip containing bold-faced type the likes of which no one has ever seen, yes.

-Jonathan Platek

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com