Spring forecasting

Who's hitting, who's throwing well? It's hard to tell

TUCSON, Ariz. -- You can't tell squat from spring training. No matter what anyone says about hot hands or cold bats, you simply can't tell a whole lot from spring training games.

Monday at beautiful Tucson Electric Park, the Arizona Diamondbacks and Chicago White Sox combined for 29 runs on 35 hits in an exhibition extravaganza that included nine doubles, four home runs, two hit batters, two wild pitchers, a pair of picked-off baserunners and five errors. The game, if you want to call it that, lasted 3 hours and 21 minutes. And there wasn't even a designated hitter.

It's maybe not all that unusual in spring training -- long games, high scores and all that -- except that Curt Schilling and Todd Ritchie, two quality pitchers, started what turned out to be this slapfest.

Bad pitching? Good hitting? At this point, you just can't tell.

"It's tough. It's tough," White Sox manager Jerry Manuel said. "You try to judge the sound off the bat, whether that really would have been a hit. But more than anything, you try to give the pitchers the benefit of the doubt, 'cause that's the only benefit they'll get."

With less than two weeks until the regular season starts, guys are still busy working out kinks, working on their swings and working on finding the plate. Pitchers don't throw like they will when the games count. They're experimenting with different pitches, refining what needs to be refined and throwing out the rest.

So, with pitchers not throwing like they will, you can throw out the hitting stats, too. Add into that a park like Tucson Electric Park, where the wind blows, the infield is skippy and the air is so thin, Manuel says, that the breaking balls simply don't break and … well, you just can't tell.

"The guys were scoring some runs, so that's encouraging," said Ritchie. "But, no, you can't tell."

That's not to say things don't matter for these guys. Schilling was hot enough after Monday's outing -- he lasted 4 1/3 innings and gave up 10 hits and three walks -- that he declined to talk to reporters. And this guy is generally a reporter's best friend.

Ritchie (11 hits in five innings with four walks) was none too proud, either, but he shrugged his shoulders afterward and chalked it up to spring.

"I didn't have it at all," he said. "But I got my work done. If I go out there and throw the ball well, I'm fine and good with that."

The defending World Series champion Diamondbacks won Monday's "game," 16-13, and now stand at 16-6 this spring, tops in the Cactus League. The White Sox, expected to contend for the AL Central title now that Frank Thomas is back and healthy and former Indians outfielder Kenny Lofton is on their side, are 7-14 and at the bottom of the Cactus League.

A harbinger? Who can tell?

'Dead arm, dead arm'

It is the time of the year, according to Manuel, when pitchers start to get a little tired and begin to look toward the start of the regular season.

Yeah. Maybe that was the reason for Monday's game in Tucson.

"It’s probably that period of time in spring training," Manuel was saying, "where guys go through a little lull, especially with the arms."

It is a phenomenon known throughout spring training. After an offseason of inactivity, pitchers come back and, as slowly as they try to work into it, often hit a wall. You hear about "dead arms" from Ft. Myers to Tucson.

This is also the time in spring where pitchers start to go a little longer in games, working their arms toward going longer innings in the regular season. That, too, often results in dead arms.

Not that everybody has that problem.

"Dead arm happens, but it's no excuse. You just have to push through it," Ritchie said after Monday's game. "But I don't feel like I have dead arm."

Camping out …

A fashion statement that needs to be nipped in the bud: Green caps. Like the ones that many teams, including the White Sox and Cubs, wore in honor of St. Patrick's Day … Miss the linescore on Sunday's Diamondbacks-Rockies game? Ten errors by the D'backs, including four by Arizona minor-league shortstop Tim Olson. The saddest part? The Diamondbacks still won … The Cubs' lineup figures to be much stronger this season with Moises Alou and Fred McGriff there full-time to protect Sammy Sosa. "It's a comforting feeling," manager Don Baylor said. Smacking the ball around will be new to the Cubs. Last season, they had 34 more sacrifices than any other team in the majors (they had 117 to the Cardinals' 83), which tells you the Cubs were doing their share of scrapping for runs … Labor update, and it's down here in the "dot dots" because it's really, really disappointing to baseball fans: Boston player rep John Burkett is not optimistic about the chances that baseball will avoid some kind of work stoppage. "I have a hard time being optimistic about it. I'm hopeful, but I won't say I'm optimistic," he told The Boston Globe. "That would be the wrong word." Union head Don Fehr is touring the spring camps telling players to be prepared … Ruben Rivera is gone because he stole a glove, Rondell White has a sore rib, Bernie Williams has a sore hamstring. The Yankees' outfield is hurting. They've inquired about Toronto's Shannon Stewart, according to Newsday … Jason Schmidt, whom the Giants locked up in the offseason after a successful stint in San Francisco in the second half of 2001, is nursing a groin injury and will miss his first scheduled start of the season … Julian Tavarez didn't want to go to the bullpen, so he contacted his agent to talk to the Cubs about it. Now, it looks like he'll be the No. 5 guy. But it's more of a "by default" decision, rather than the Cubs knuckling under to his agent … Finally, Arizona first baseman Mark Grace is thinking about what happens after his playing days are over. One possibility is broadcasting. "You guys know I'm full of ----," he told a group of reporters Monday, "so I can broadcast." Another possibility is managing. "You don't have to be a freaking genius," Grace says, "but you still need to learn a lot."

John Donovan covers baseball for CNNSI.com. His Spring Training Buzz will run each Tuesday and Thursday until Opening Day.

 

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