Not a good chance, since Robin Ventura thinks Jake Peavy’s possibly yoga-related back issues will clear up enough for a start this weekend. But since it hasn’t cleared up yet nor received an in-depth examination, 25-to-1 odds on Danks would be a worthwhile bet.

The minor league rehab start Danks went through in Birmingham Thursday had an interesting mixture of indicators going on. Most were steps forward, but it’s the beginning of May already and “steps” not being “arrivals,” grows increasingly troubling.

• Good! – 7 IP, 5 H, 2 ER, HR are good macro results since Danks couldn’t get through a spring training outing without getting hammered and an encouraging workload for someone who was only scheduled for six innings.
• Bad – Only one strikeout and it wasn’t swinging, only six swings and misses overall. Punishment for contact gets worse by level, so his ability to miss bats has to return.
• Bad –  Initial reports of velocity ranging from 84-87 mph
• Good! – Initial reports of velocity refuted and bumped up to 87-90 with a 91
• Bad – That’s still pretty reduced
• Good! – No complaints or setbacks

But the biggest news of the night is the increasingly dire language around Gavin Floyd, who appears at this point to be looking for an opinion that will tell him his season isn’t over.

“An MRI taken on Saturday showed Floyd didn’t have any structural damage in his right elbow but a second on Tuesday revealed a tear, he said. Tuesday’s appointment with Dr. Keith Meister also revealed Floyd has an unstable ulnar collateral ligament.

Floyd said he plans to visit Dr. David Altchek in New York on Monday to receive a third opinion and see if he can possibly skip a trip to the operating table and a long recovery.”

It’s not the straight-up UCL tear that was worried about a day before, but the odds remain starkly against Floyd pitching again this season.

If Gavin Floyd’s second opinion was with Dr. Meister and it was that bad, less hope for what Altchek might find.

— Will Carroll (@injuryexpert) May 3, 2013

Irritatingly, plenty will cheer that news, with restraint because it’s an injury, but still. Floyd had a “maddeningly inconsistent” tag back when he was delivering four-WAR season that has only ramped up along with his more sincere struggles have set in. With Hector Santiago dealing Thursday night and even Dylan Axelrod holding his own this year thus far, touting Gavin Floyd as one the top five starting pitchers in the organization is a hard sell.

But also and irrelevant once.

Floyd’s talent level, previous track record, bat-missing ability are all nice features to have in an argument, but are unnecessary for explaining why the Sox losing him hurts. In fact, the argument hasn’t changed much since the debate on whether to pick up his option ended–Would it never be a help to have him around? Since when did a starter with six years of experience of racking up ERA in the mid-4.00′s in U.S. Cellular Field become useless? You can always trade him or kick him out of the rotation, but you can’t always bring him back.

Last season, Gavin Floyd headed to the disabled list in August after two-straight starts were he failed to make it out of the third inning. Sympathy for his injury and interest in his return was even more muted then, if you can believe. Yet by the third game of final Detroit Tigers series, with Francisco Liriano a trainwreck and Chris Sale in need of a rest, Floyd was suddenly a rescuer, striking out seven over 4.1 innings without a rehab start to prepare him and allowing three runs rather than two because Hector Santiago came in and added one to his tab.

It kept the Sox in it, it was risky and self-sacrificing in a big situation, but it was also Gavin Floyd looking brilliant in the early parts of a game then petering off, which was a more common trope. His next start–seven innings with only two runs allowed for the only White Sox victory in the disastrous Kansas City series–was more explicitly great, but understandably was drowned out by later events.

It’s May 3. If Jake Peavy’s back doesn’t come around, the White Sox rotation could have their first major league debut out of necessity by the end of the week. Even if they don’t, they’ll get there eventually, and when they do, will probably regret that they can’t turn to a pitcher for whom “Has stuff good enough to get through major league lineups multiple times” is one of his attributes, or for whom heights as high as what “Good Gavin” is capable of reaching is even a possibility.

Injury has been the means by which the window of opportunity has been opened for many players, and here’s hoping that Hector Santiago leaps through it and never has cause to look back. But to view Santiago as a reward for losing Floyd would be false. There was always enough work to go around.

JJ at CSN:

“[Danks] expects to pitch every five or six days while in Arizona. Once the White Sox feel he’s accomplished what they want in Arizona, he’ll move on to a minor-league rehab assignment. If that goes well, then Danks will return to the White Sox.

General manager Rick Hahn doesn’t have a timetable for Danks’ return, but stressed he wants the left-hander to take a bigger-picture approach to his recovery.”

Danks is in extended spring training until some miles come back to his fastball and even then will have to get his sea legs against Triple-A competition before he’s in the rotation. Assuming, as always, that the velocity returns at some point, it’s hard to see how this shakes out with Danks coming back before mid-May, with obviously plenty of potential for even more waiting than that.

That’s a lot of Dylan Axelrod and a fair amount more than I accounted for when I initially resisted fretting about having a replacement-level starter at the end of the rotation. Fifth starters are typically terrible, but nothing yet has dismissed the presumption that the White Sox pitching staff needs to be exceptional to carry an unremarkable offense.

That awful video

I went a full 24 hours without re-watching the White Sox’ cringeworthy lead-in video to their Opening Day broadcast after seeing it live. With the initial shock of “Why why why why how did they think this would be received?!” and “One sketch making fun of Peavy and they think they’re auteurs” gone, it’s surprising how normal the middle section looks.

There’s a bunch of standard photo day poses–hard stares at the camera, gripping a bat, miming looking in for a sign–and even the din of seven year-old nu-metal/hard alternative/whathaveyou is standard for these type of pump-up videos (just the list of professional teams that have already used this same song is surprisingly long, even if they all took place closer to its actual release).

This whole thing probably could have simply faded into the abyss of local TV mediocrity if the players had merely had not lip-synced (which is sort of a universal truth in regards to being caught in public listening to bad music). As Jim Margalus reasoned, this is likely just the cost of letting the exuberant youth have a say (unless it was Peavy’s fault, or gasp! COOPER!). Obviously the days of centering commercials around grizzled veterans can’t last forever, even if the continued use of Gordon Beckham only underscores the disappointment that his performance doesn’t merit the franchise-player treatment his personality is ready for. Which is another reason no one’s laughing with him on this.

Civil Rights Game

On Saturday, Aug. 24, the White Sox will be playing host to the seventh annual MLB Civil Rights Game, where they will face the Texas Rangers. As a result, we have our first insight into what Kenny Williams is doing with his freed-up schedule, since he actively campaigned for Chicago to be the hosting location.

Positioned on a Saturday, the game has traditionally been the centerpiece of a weekend of festivities celebrating both the integration and expansion of African-American influence on the sport and the American civil rights movement itself. For example, last season’s game in Atlanta honored greats like Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Frank Robinson and Don Newcombe, but also Rep. John Lewis and Earth, Wind & Fire.

Chicago’s rich civil rights history lends itself very easily to such an event. Off the top of my head, the Chicago Defender–the nation’s second black-owned and operated newspaper–and its role in the Great Migration, Minnie Minoso acting as a trailblazer for black Cubans and the impact Chicago-native Emmett Till had in galvanizing national outrage are all welcome targets for recognition.

Looking forward to it.

Follow James Fegan on Twitter @JRFegan

The Sox appropriately finished 14-14 for the spring in the games that actually counted toward the spring standings, which I had to look up. The Angels went 9-20 and the Reds went 13-20. I’m sure they’re flipping out.

This spring…

• Nearly every lineup fixture cleaned up on the less-than-on-the-level pitching they faced, so much that Alexei Ramirez hitting .279/.323/.377  constitutes struggling. As if Alexei returning to a life of on-base percentages above .300 would not be worth a small, but fervent parade.
• Despite persistently denying that his wrist feeling better is relevant, Paul Konerko hit better with a repaired wrist. His teammates noticed and said it probably had to do with his wrist. Hmm…wrist.
• Tyler Flowers, Alex Rios, Jesse Crain and even Alexei Ramirez all accumulated injuries that caused them to miss spring training games, but cleared up in time for the season to start and might never be thought of again.
• Gavin Floyd flashed top-notch breaking stuff, had an excellent strike0ut-to-walk ratio and was completely hammered. He was Gavin Floyd, and people are frustrated about it.
• John Danks dispelled all notions of an accelerated and conveniently timed recovery from major shoulder surgery, and will either spend the next several weeks working his way back to 91 mph or start learning how to invite some real Mark Buehrle comparisons.
• Chris Sale allowed an alarming number of home runs, but he along with the rest of the pitching staff more or less demonstrated physical readiness for a season where they will asked to be dominant. Addison Reed even threw a few sliders.
• Alejandro De Aza beat Alex Rios in the World Baseball Classic
• Management used Rule 5 picks, trades and free agency to kill every single position battle in its tracks.

The only element of our thinking about the White Sox that was significantly altered by this session was the idea of  John Danks sliding in gracefully to some sort of super-rotation. But the hopelessness of that endeavor and the ease to which the White Sox have slid into their auxiliary options made it questionable how realistic that dream ever was. With it, went an easy angle to argue why the White Sox will be exceptional, but what remains is a team that promises…competence.

There was no excited buzz of dream team getting its first taste of playing together, nor were there scouts predicting 100-loss seasons nor early hints of manager-GM tire fire. These are all good things. It’s good that management is not demonstrably unhinged, Spring should never be the basis for a decision as important and data-heavy as a position battle, and time spent self-congratulating in March is wasted. Even at it’s best, job training is not supposed to be fun nor eventful and this reliably uneventful process is still supposed to the breath of fresh air a Ventura administration provides.

Still, thank goodness this longest of spring training is over. This unfinishable extra-large tub filled with the empty calories of fake baseball seemed like a passable solution to starvation at the time, but I can’t even bear to look at it anymore.

Follow James Fegan on Twitter @JRFegan