Hardball Talk's Craig Calcaterra took exception with Mark Parent's comments from a seminar Sunday at SoxFest in which the new White Sox bench coach said "You hit our guy, well hit your guy."
In a vacuum, I don't blame Calcaterra for his disdain at the comment and fan reaction (applause). But in reality, White Sox pitchers haven't done much to protect their hitters in recent years under Ozzie Guillen.
Jim over at South Side Sox outlined that issue in a two-part series back in September after Indians' reliever Josh Judy hit Alexei Ramirez and Gordon Beckham in a Sept. 20 appearance. The whole discourse is well worth a read (or re-read), but the astonishing point I took away is that Judy hit one batter in over 50 innings at Triple-A ... and then hit four White Sox batters in 4 23 innings last season.
Maybe none of those were intentional, but as Jim writes, Judy was probably told that the inside corner was there for the taking since Sox pitchers weren't expected to retaliate. And when a young, wound-up guy is told to throw inside, inevitably, he's going to hit some people.
Back to Parent's comment. It wasn't made to start a beanball war between division opponents, or predict a bevy of future brouhahas. In reality, perhaps the Sox coaching staff will make it a point to make it harder for teams to freely throw inside in the coming seasons.