May 12, 2013; Chicago, IL, USA; Chicago White Sox first baseman Paul Konerko breaks his bat as he grounds out against the Los Angeles Angels during the first inning at US Cellular Field. Mandatory Credit: Jerry Lai-USA TODAY Sports

Robin Ventura has enough problems to deal without his quotes being sifted through as if they had some secret treasure buried within. Yet while downplaying his decision to sit team captain Paul Konerko for back-to-back days–an action that would have been a stunning act of self-sabotage in any of the previous three seasons–Ventura cited his time in New York as precedent.

On Monday evening, the White Sox manager relayed to his veteran slugger how later in his playing career he benefitted from Joe Torre’s practice of giving him multiple days off to recharge.

“The way he’s been feeling there’s nothing wrong with giving him two days off just to kind of reboot and feel better,” Ventura said. “It’s happened to other guys and when you feel that way, and you’re a little bit older, sometimes it’s better to kind of take a step back, get back in there tomorrow.”

Obviously, it’s impossible to really assess the effect of such a strategy. The benefit would theoretically be cumulative and there’s no way to know how bad an aging player would be without rest being offered. The only evidence available is anecdotal from the player, and Robin’s word is as good as anyone’s. Only he’s not drawing from a lot of evidence.

Former Yankees manager Joe Torre did give Robin a couple of multi-game sits during his 1 2/3 seasons in the Bronx. He gave him four, to be exact, and none of these breaks extended more than two games.

In 2002, Robin’s last truly superb season, he didn’t get one of these breaks until August, and each of the two breaks also had an ‘older player has nagging pain’ explanation running alongside of it. Ventura was good in 2002, made an All-Star team and never had to entertain any notions of pacing himself unless he or the trainer pushed for them.

It was only the next season when a massive June swoon hit Ventura (.202/.280/.298 for the month after starting the season with an .868 OPS) did his age suddenly become a consideration. And as much as Robin might have found multiple days off a revitalizing force, the Yankees sure didn’t. They traded him at the deadline and picked up Aaron Boone on the same day in a separate deal to replace him. It’s odd that Robin Ventura has fond memories of what could have been construed as the process of phasing him out, but his recollection of his playing career these days is long on perspective and very short on grudges.

If you have the opportunity, try to ask him about leaving Chicago in free agency, or the “leftovers” t-shirts.

Obviously Konerko being rested is the product of struggles, but the rest is a bit stronger statement than that. This goes beyond the notion of preserving an aging player to displaying that it’s not worth it to play him in this state, and he might as well rest until something changes. Plenty of other players have reached this sort of breaking point in their performance, but only Konerko can nod to age-related fatigue as a resolvable issue.

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Apr 11, 2013; Washington, DC, USA; Chicago White Sox second baseman Jeff Keppinger (7) hits an RBI single during the fourth inning against the Washington Nationals at Nationals Park. Mandatory Credit: Brad Mills-USA TODAY Sports

It’s not much fun to watch Robin Ventura helplessly resigned to his seat in the dugout while his conceptions of sound, fundamental baseball are bastardized before him.

Nor is it fun to watch him blow through the “coach of a bad team” playlist and skip ahead to “team meeting” and “ominously hint at lineup changes” before the midpoint of May. It doesn’t suit anything we’ve heard about his style very well and it highlights how sometimes there’s very little a manager can do to alter performance through intervention.

Here we have the same manager who made more of a show of focusing on the fundamentals than anyone and reaped the rewards last year being party to the most amateurish looking outfit in the league via the same process. Worst yet, even if he could demonstrate control over this defense, he still can’t fix the White Sox.

Hitters who are drifting beyond help

So, Jeff Keppinger is unplayable. It really slipped under the fence for a while since a sputtering hitter who ‘s based his career on barely-above weak contact is harder to pick out than, say, what Adam Dunn was doing in 2011, or what Brent Morel was doing last season.

Yet it’s worst than both. No one’s touching a .183/.180/.198 batting line. Beyond the rapid deterioration in Keppinger’s batting eye and contact rate or the mystifying inability to draw a walk, what could have been more troubling that this moment from Sunday?

It’s a hitter’s count, Keppinger gets a fastball elevated on the inner half from a lefty, squares it up and BLAMMO

…or not.

Courtesy of TexasLeaguers.com, that may not have been the hardest Keppinger has hit a ball all season, but damn if it’s not a contender.

Keppinger’s nine home runs last season was a career-high, so he’s not expected to be crushing dingers into the stratosphere, but his utter lack of any pop whatsoever is just another massive trouble sign for another guy who has managed to time out completely losing all ability to be a major league hitter upon his debut season on the South Side.

Thanks to Keppinger–and also Tyler Greene–questions about the quality of Gordon Beckham’s adjustments, or the degree of Conor Gillaspie’s ongoing regression become irrelevant. If the Sox have any notion of trying to keep the ship afloat, they can’t play this guy until they’re disavowed of said notion. The standards for starting in the infield are posting an OPS over .400 and throwing the ball to first base, or at least it should be

It’s all been enough to hide from people that Alexei Ramirez is hitting just as poorly as last season.

Dunn’s adjustment

Speaking of guys who started depreciating the moment they went South of Roosevelt Rd., Adam Dunn was supposed to have spent Sunday installing an adjustment to move his hands up according to Buster Olney. Here’s what he looked like at the end of April.

Now, Monday night

The gist of it is that Dunn was already holding his hands so close to his head that it’s hard to imagine how there could be much improvement, let alone spot it in crude game film.

Adam Dunn spent his entire career on the margins of acceptability in terms of strikeout rate. Since coming to Chicago, he’s been solidly 5% or more above that previous career average the entire time.

The only time at which Dunn seemed capable of compensating for this development is when he start punishing the few balls he could make contact with at a vastly higher rate for the first three months of last year. Since that was never sustainable, he appears to be cooked, and with Paul Konerko piling up garish reviews (Olney called him “overmatched” on Sunday) in addition to one of the worst starts of his career, Robin Ventura is trying to switch around the complimentary pieces of a lineup that has a rotted-out core.

Tyler Flowers

The beauty of the Flowers’ situation is that until the White Sox get legitimately curious about what Josh Phegley is doing in his third year of Tripla-A, there’s really no other plan of action but to play him until the grass dies and the infield dirt blows away.. Hector Gimenez is around almost specificaly because he cannot challenge him, Flowers took a while to get going last season–albeit more due to sporadic play, and until a certain hitting coach convinces him to snap out of his newly found, misplaced aggression at the plate, we’re not really seeing what he can do anyway. A.J. Pierzynski has an OBP under .300 and strained his oblique again, if you’re curious.

It’s not a full picture, but here are three lineup black holes that Robin Ventura has pretty much no recourse to solve, unless being able to slide in Casper Wells against lefties and hope that he and Dayan Viciedo can provide middle of the order production counts as a brilliant counter-move. It’s crafty and inspired, but still might not have the horses to be successful, which is a line that could be use to sum up many good managers.

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*Shades of ‘James’ trip to St. Louis Beerfest 2012′ on White Sox Observer!

However, recaps certainly haven’t been much fun of recent. They’ve often been losses, which doesn’t help, but while every team has a way they typically go about losing games, the White Sox have established their type early and it’s an unpleasant one. Their offense provides a razor-thin margin of error for their run prevention crew, the pitching either fails to uphold the standard despite a competent effort, or is betrayed by grating defensive tomfoolery.

Few recaps differentiated from the larger slide of the team toward a difficult set of decisions, so in those terms, the White Sox needed this game. Chris Sale stretching a perfect game to the seventh inning, throwing the first shutout of his career and making it a one-hitter to boot–was easily the most superlative performance and exciting night of the season–something rousing to arrest a disquietingly quiet descent into the bottom of the division.

But it also comes in the wake of a team meeting hosted by Robin Ventura that was quickly followed by another sloppily-played loss on Saturday. Despite Paul Konerko, a veteran of struggle-inspired team meetings at this point in life, insisting that a lack of an immediate, inspired result was not an indictment of the meeting’s effect, an emphatic triumph on the back of Chris Sale washes away some concern Ventura’s pleas went ignored, or were above what his group was capable of fulfilling. The team needed a win to stop more inevitable conversations from happening immediately.

ESPN isn’t scheduled to cast its eyes upon the White Sox again this season and its unlikely that they’ll go out of their way to amend that. But while a good White Sox team usually seems unjustly denied of attention, this seemed like an awful time to shine a national spotlight on their state of affairs. Their league-worst offense is the fodder that damning statistical graphics are made for, their fielding errors–while overemphasized–make for particularly terrible television, especially during a showcase for the league. Sale didn’t just run interference on these issues, he commanded attention for the White Sox in a positive way that went past the results of the game. He even led some version of SportsCenter or ESPNews or whatever is on at the gym at 11 pm, an put those sleek 1983 uniforms on display for everyone.

Probably the least pressing concern that was addressed Sunday night was the actual work of Chris Sale. He dropped his ERA by over half a run to under 3.00 in one night. He’s a month removed from his nightmare in Cleveland and has had quality outings in his other seven starts, even if his most dominant form has been absent all season. It may still be absent, at least in terms of strikeouts (seven over nine innings), but Sunday was the strongest indication that everything is OK with the pitcher the Sox have tabbed as their ace since they inked his extension

Sale’s velocity was outstanding, easily sitting 93-95 and topping out at 96 mph. More importantly, he was throwing it by hitters for swinging strikes at those rates and his changeup was so dominant that it converted his slider into a luxury item. It goes without saying that May is too early in the season to say anything about Sale’s ability to hold up, but it looks fine and highly enjoyable right now. As much as the occasional rough patch and regression is deserved for Sale, the White Sox certainly don’t have anything else working strong enough to endure such a period.

There were certainly troubling elements remaining. Removing the highest-paid hitter from the lineup is not something you want to have to do to jump-start the offense, Jeff Keppinger put his entire physical force into a ball and it resulted in a looping 285-foot ball to left field and a thoroughly out of sorts C.J. Wilson was dueling Sale to a draw for most of the night, but a fully-working ace enabled the Sox to put their best face on for the rest of the world.

It doesn’t change anything about the White Sox reality. The offense remains in a state that makes previous years where the run support for Jake Peavy and John Danks was maligned seem like the salad days, but Sale makes team legitimacy appear closer than it might really be.

Follow James Fegan on Twitter @JRFegan