Seriously, the ESPN 1000 "Chicago baseball beat reporter" is wrong even more than I am. Somehow, he gets more air time and money than I do.
As most Sox fans know, the pitching rotation got juggled after Thursday's rainout with Minnesota. Javy Vazquez's start was moved up to Sunday. Mark Buehrle's was pushed back to Monday.
The reason? The Detroit Tigers (Sunday's opponent) are right-hand dominant and Vazquez is right-handed. In addition, the Oakland A's (Monday's opponent) struggle with lefties. Hence, it makes sense to pitch the left-handed Buehrle against them.
Pitching coach Don Cooper said the changes were being made to create more favorable matchups for the Sox. Seems reasonable.
Levine's interpretation? He claimed the Sox were "hiding an injury" with respect to Buehrle.
Let's say, hypothetically, that Buehrle actually is hurt. Would delaying his start 24 hours really make a lick of difference? Hell no, and anyone with an IQ over 15 realizes that. There's no chance that was the rational for Cooper's decision.
Now, let's look at the results of this move: Vazquez pitches seven shutout innings in a 11-0 win over Detroit. That worked out nicely, no? Buehrle pitches seven innings in a 2-1 defeat against Oakland. Good performance, just no run support. Tough loss.
The Sox obviously made the correct moves with their pitching staff this week. Teams juggle their rotations for favorable matchups ALL THE TIME. Here in Chicago when that happens, various members of the media start irresponsibly speculating that some sort of shenanigans are taking place.
No wonder we have so many ill-informed baseball fans in these parts. We live in an era where gibberish is taken as fact.
I hope my readers think critically about the crap I spew here and in my columns. I encourage everyone to take everything you hear on the Chicago radio stations with a grain of salt as well.
Sometimes, you really can take comments from the Sox pitching coach at face value, ya know?
Jason, you are so right with Bruce Levine. He reminds me of Jim Rose, Jay Mariotti, and others who really have no clue about anything but they have an "audience" because of their profession, think they know it all, and are very annoying to anyone who understands sports. Buerle sure looked like he was hurting last night (lol)!!