Ladies and Gentlemen, Your 2018 Chicago White Sox

 There we were Sunday afternoon on the living-room couch, father and daughter, two “authentic fans” if ever there were, watching our beloved White Sox on their unstoppable march to 100 losses.  It took the last game of the season to get there, but never say “never,” right?

Does 62-100 qualify as darkest before the dawn in a rebuild?  I wonder.  The pessimist, no, the realist, in me can look at any number of areas to see cause for worry over the chances of yet more losing seasons into the distant future.  You need go no further than the coaching staff.

Everyone is slated to come back, pending job offers from other organizations (yeah, that’s going to happen).  But why, exactly, do pitching coach Don Cooper and hitting coach Todd Steverson deserve another year of employment on the South Side.  What exactly have they accomplished?

Cooper mostly sits in the dugout working on his grumpy-old-man routine; he’s been doing this for seventeen years now.  For the life of me, I can’t see what he brings to the table.  The Sox have collected a bunch of young pitchers for Cooper to work with, and all he does is meander to the mound when one of his pupils gets into trouble, which they did a whole lot in 2018.

Lucas Giolito had a 9.27 ERA in September and finished with a 6.13 ERA to go with a league-leading 90 walks in 173.1 innings.  That season ERA, by the way, is the worst for any starter in either league.  With a little more time, Carlos Rodon might have matched Giolito.  Rodon certainly seemed like he wanted to.

The lefty gave up 14 earned runs in his last two starts, which totaled all of 3.1 innings.  That was long enough for Rodon to yield 15 hits and four walks.  Oh, and he struck out five.  So, again, I ask, what did Don Cooper do this year—or basically, any year—to deserve retention?

The same goes for hitting coach Don Steverson.  All you need to know here is that the Sox set a major-league record with 1594 strikeouts on the season. Yoan Moncada “led” in that category with 217 Ks in 578 at-bats followed by Matt Davidson with 165 in 434; Daniel Palka with 153 in 417; and Tim Anderson with 149 in 567 at-bats.  It pains me to say this, but I doubt Davidson is ever going to hit above .230.  It’s time to look for your right-handed power elsewhere.

But Moncada and Anderson are considered cornerstones of the rebuild, so they stay, in which case, get them a new coach.  The same goes for Palka, who came out of nowhere to hit a team-best 27 homeruns with 67 RBIs, good for second behind Jose Abreu.  Palka also hit .240, higher than either Moncada or Davidson and tied with Anderson.  Again, what we need here is a new coach.

And might I suggest people with a pulse?  Better yet, how about people with stats to back them up?  Both Cooper and Steverson were cup-of-coffee major leaguers.  That just won’t cut it.  Young players especially need to get instruction from coaches who succeeded at the major-league level, not as HOFers necessarily, but as solid contributors over nice, long careers.

But I won’t hold my breath.