Instead the White Sox were annihilated 10-3 by the team closest to them in the AL Central standings on a stream of defensive miscues, while making the tomato can lefty they flipped to the Twins last season look like a major leaguer and letting one of the worst major league regulars in baseball go ballistic for good measure.

Sometime in the eighth inning, Hawk Harrelson let out a long snort, or blew a raspberry or just made the ultimate sonic representation of disgust, right into his microphone. It was appropriate, since it came right after Justin Morneau hit a bases clearing double, which had come right after garbage-time reliever Deunte Heath walked a run in, which came right after Heath slowplayed a sacrifice bunt into a hit, which came a little after a ball dropped right over the head of a panicked and mournful Alexei Ramirez and at the feet of loping Alejandro De Aza to lead off the inning.

Before that, there was Aaron Hicks, owner of a .137/.239/.216 slash line coming in, homering twice off Hector Santiago and saving the hardest ball Adam Dunn has hit this month from leaving the yard. Aaron Hicks is better than Adam Dunn now. It used to be close.

But I wouldn’t want to focus any blame on Hector Santiago for more than a passing moment. The man was one out away from a quality start, after all, and taught the Minnesota people about the wonder of pitchers who get strikeouts. If nothing else, Santiago is a true starter now, since cleaning up the mess of  his bases loaded, nobody out-jam in the third inning was a job for a fireman. Surely there’s a roster spot available for Tom Gordon.

Instead, after inducing a harmless flyout not deep enough to score a run, a challenging potential double play ball was hit to the right man–Alexei Ramirez. Instead, he booted it and the inning exploded on the strength of a two-run Trevor Plouffe double.

10 runs is quite the collaboration of pitching and defense breakdowns, but it’s not like it was an impossible task. The White Sox were handed Pedro Hernandez as an opposing starter, who was one half of last year’s trade package for Francisco Liriano  that was lovingly described as “air.” Yet fresh off a demolition at the hands of Boston in his previous start and facing the decent cadre of lefty-mashers the Sox were able to cobble together, Hernandez weathered a rough first inning, delivered the Twins into the sixth with a three-run lead and didn’t allow Dayan Viciedo nor Casper Wells to safely reach base. 

RV on sox miscues:”Eventually you get to that point where you don’t pay attention to what’s going on, we’ll find somebody else to do it.”

— Mark Gonzales (@MDGonzales) May 14, 2013

Robin’s enthusiasm–or fierce irritation–is heartwarming for a fan base that feels wrong by this team’s incompetence, but it’s likely that his tolerance for this play hasn’t been the issue.

Team Record: 15-21

Box Score

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1. Swings at everything (Cue ‘Can’t walk off the island’ jokes)
2. Not the most physically confrontational guy around
3. Warm-weather hitter

All of them seem like stereotypes, but the last one was so ingrained in statistics that event the most sober statistical analysts had to wonder what the hell happened to Alexei Ramirez’s swing in sub-50 degree weather. From 2008 through 2010, Ramirez did this (AVG/OBP/SLG):

• March/April: .200/.229/.278
• May: .285/.322/.418
• June: .305/.348/.474
• July: .331/.347/.498
• August: .291/.313/.471
• September: .256/.317/.385

Getting through impotent early weeks was made easier knowing a middle-of-the-order masher would be around come July. And when he started out 2011 like this:

• March/April: .265/.318/.382
• May: .313/.380/.513

People rightfully got very, very excited. Ramirez followed it up with three-straight sub-.700 OPS months, including a season-worst .220/.309/.317 month of July and a mild recovery in the chill of September just to be as against type as possible. What to do with such a season? He produced a nearly identical season line, but went against all notions of warm-weather dependence.

Then things got complicated.

2012 brought a return of summer-month peaks for Ramirez, but it’s hard to couch a complete collapse of Ramirez’s offensive abilities alongside his typical tendencies. May was a trainwreck one year after it was the best stretch of his career and his power didn’t arrive till the second half of the season.

• March/April: .207/.233/.264
• May: .245/.263/.318
• June: .292/.314/.365
• July: .323/.344/.462
• August: .290/.321/.480
• September: .234/.248/.299

Ramirez himself even tried to pin last season’s struggles on a lingering sore wrist, stemming from his July 27 collision with Alejandro De Aza. But while he struggled in the immediate days after returning, August was one of the best months of his season. For the past two years, Alexei has slipped into a far more normal pattern of not having a set pattern, rather than being a would-be All Star who can’t handle the chill.

At age 31, decline obscures every notion of Ramirez’s offensive behavior. Any comfort taken in his odd patterns is likely misplaced as we enter a stretch of uncertainty for how Alexei’s bat will be able to hold up through the life of his contract (through 2015). Chances are a player with four years of average production and one season in the dumps is likely to return to the former, but we’re entering new territory as far as Ramirez’s tendencies, for better and for worse.

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Darrin Jackson was commenting on Adam Dunn’s pledge to be more aggressive, and more or less predicted doom in his polite and sunny way of talking.

He also casted doubt on the flip side of the equation, and admonished attempts to force patience on hitters that were more comfortable being aggressive. The essential idea is simple. Most of these established veterans have gotten to the major leagues hitting a certain way, and having the talent level to switch approaches mid-stream is rare.

That idea certainly applies to Alexei Ramirez, for whom Robin Ventura tepidly suggested that more patience would be useful but is probably not coming.

“You can tweak (Ramirez’s aggressiveness) to a certain extent, but I don’t see him all of a sudden taking a bunch of pitches and walking 60 or 70 times a year,” manager Robin Ventura said. “You can move it around. He got to a point last year where he was pulling the ball only and was susceptible to off-speed stuff. And when he did have spurts when he was going well, he was going the other way and covering the strike zone better.”

To which, Alexei replied…

“My game is not going to change,” said Ramirez, a career .276 hitter with a .316 on-base percentage. “But I’m aware I need to hit the ball the other way a little more and try to do that. But my game is not going to change.”

Later Ramirez admitted that he needs “a little more patience at the plate. That’s something I’ll continue to get better at.”

Alexei, of course, has already run the gamut with alterations to his approach, and never been able to combine patience and power beyond a two-month stretch in 2011. His exhaustion with the concept is justified. The way pitchers react to Ramirez’s strengths and weaknesses (fastballs) does not jive with the idea that he should simply take more pitches.

As another right-handed hitter prone to pull-happiness, impatience and contact, the overhaul of Alex Rios that took place last year comes to mind. As much talk as there was of Rios’ focusing on his approach, that had more to do with working all fields than discipline. The end goal after all, still remained to “look for a pitch to drive, then put a good swing on it.”

Rios, who like Ramirez flashes above-average ability making contact, would simply be wasting those skills by passing on strikes earlier in the count. He can cover the whole zone, and should use that ability to remove options for pitchers.

This year, the transformation that the offense desperately needs–in addition to hoping for more from Alexei–is Dayan Viciedo.

Viciedo’s an undisciplined hitter who is among the tops in all of baseball in pitches swung at outside the strike zone, yet it seems like a fallacy to think that his progress will come in the form of more patience.

Cleaning up his swing path, using a leg kick to keep him from flying open, lunging and jamming himself are more immediate problems that need to be addressed before quibbles about how much better he would be if he weren’t naturally aggressive can be raised.

If Ramirez and Rios are any indication, maintaining balance in focus, and keeping the contact clean enough to prevent all these danged pop ups, will be a consistent battle for Viciedo. His strengths, his meal ticket, is going to be his bat speed, and the protection of the zone it can provide in addition to prodigious power. Until that comes to fruition, Viciedo has too much on his plate to worry about what he’ll never be good at.

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