Crash and Burn

Last night’s 12-3 White Sox loss to the Rays had it all—a no-hitter through six innings by Lance Lynn; an epic—and isn’t that redundant?—collapse by the Sox bullpen; atrocious defense; head-scratching moves by manger Pedro Grifol; and an incident involving Luis Robert Jr. that indicts an entire organization. If Commissioner Rob Manfred has the authority to look out for the “best interests of baseball,” he should force a sale of the team, immediately if not sooner. As for the game, Lynn ran out of gas in the top of the seventh. No shame there. After giving up a homerun to Wander Franco, he was still up, 3-1. That’s when he should’ve been pulled. Instead, Grifol left him in for another four batters. The Sox might’ve minimized the damage had Yasmani Grandal held on to a relay throw from Elvis Andrus, only Grandal doesn’t do relays. No sir, he frames. The score was 3-2 Sox when Grifol replaced Lynn with Aaron Bummer. Need I say more? Bummer and Jimmy Lambert combined to allow seven runs to score. The Rays tacked on single runs in the final two innings to reach a dozen. Now, to Robert, who didn’t run out a grounder in the bottom of the first and was benched an inning later. It seems that Robert was experiencing tightness in his right hamstring before the game and decided—on his own, without telling a soul—to pace himself unless the game was on the line. Where to start? How about—you tell your coaches and manager you’re hurting. This is Robert’s fourth season with the team, and the Sox have invested $100 million in him, for what? Does he think the “go easy” approach employed by Tony La Russa last year still applied to him? Does he even know the name of bench coach Charlie Montoyo? He needed to be reminded of it during a postgame interview that did nothing to endear him to Sox fans. There was a pretty decent crowd of over 28,000 at Guaranteed Rate Whatever, although it’s hard to say how many were left when chants of “Sell the team” started in the seventh inning. Maybe the commissioner could phone the White Sox owner and see what’s up. He might even want to appoint a study group to report back to him on the situation. I’ll be happy to testify that what’s gone around for decades at 35th and Shields is now come around to land at the feet of Jerry Reinsdorf. Finally, bad things are happening to the right people.