Bad Thoughts

On a hunch, I tracked the number of pitches Michael Kopech threw in the first two innings of his start against the Guardians yesterday. To get out of the first, Kopech needed nineteen; contrast that to Cleveland starter Aaron Civale, who disposed of White Sox hitters on ten pitchers in what would be a 5-0 Guardians’ win. Alas, there’s more. Kopech walked the first batter in the second, then got two outs, then went completely off the rails, walking the next three Guardians. Kopech ended up throwing thirty-four pitches in the second, which come out to fifty-three to record six outs. Five innings on four hits sounds OK, until you factor in the back-to-back homers in the fifth inning to go with the run on four walks. Five walks vs. two strikeouts. By Kopech’s own admission, his performance qualified as “pretty pathetic.” The thing of it is, he was brutally honest as to what he needs to do to win. So, if he knows what to do, why doesn’t he do it? Because deep down, Michael Kopech doubts not just his stuff, but himself, to the point he doesn’t feel worthy to be a major-league ballplayer. If he’s not careful, the fear will turn into reality.

The Power

Oh, the power of the pen. After I criticized Jake Burger and Andrew Vaughn the other day, they both go on a tear. Burger had a stretch of four home runs in three games while Vaughn had a homer and two RBIs in the White Sox 7-2 win over the Guardians last night. And, yes, there’s more. Tim Anderson and Yoan Moncada, just a day after I ripped them in the extreme, both responded. Anderson collected three hits, including his first homer of the season, last night, and Moncada had two RBIs. Of course, it’s possible so many of the Sox have gone so cold for so long some of them had to come out of it eventually and I just happened to pick the right ones. I’ll stick with the powerful-pen explanation. Meanwhile, down at Double-A Birmingham, Ky Bush debuted for his new organization. The twenty-three year old lefty, part of the deal with the Angels for Lucas Giolito, went 3.1 innings, giving up seven earned runs on twelve hits. Ky, I will now subject you to the power of my pen.

Four-A

Goodbye to Lucas Giolito; Reynaldo Lopez; Lance Lynn; Joe Kelly; and Kendall Graveman. Hello to a bunch of prospects. Goodbye, please, to Tim Anderson and Yoan Moncada, but that’ll never happen. And neither will the White Sox rolling back ticket and concession prices. Forget gutting the pitching staff as part of a rebuild, though Rick Hahn is loath to call it that. Triple-A or Four-A, the team on the field will continue to charge big-league ticket prices to watch minor-league talent. And my daughter, for one, is none too pleased. Clare and Chris went to the game yesterday, as much to hear country-and-western star Jake Owen sing after the game as to watch the without-a-staff Sox play the Guardians. Oh, trust me, she liked seeing Jake Burger hit his fourth homerun in three games, and she didn’t mind Luis Robert Jr. go deep for the twenty-ninth time, either, in a surprise 3-0 Sox win. It’s just that she bought the tickets back when the Sox were a different, ostensibly contending team. Oh, well. Clare being Clare, she found a silver lining—she got to go on the field for the after-game concert. “I touched the grass,” she marveled when they got back home (we were baby-chasing our grandson), and would’ve touched the infield dirt, too, if it hadn’t been covered with the tarp already. She did make eye contact with Roger Bossard, the “Sodfather” of groundskeepers, busy preparing the field for today’s game. And that my daughter considered almost worth the price of admission.

So It Goes

This is the world Jerry Reinsdorf created and Rick Hahn operates in: Hahn, having failed with one rebuild, gets to embark on another. Know this about Hahn’s grasp of baseball. To replace the departed Lucas Giolito, the Sox called up lefthander Sammy Peralta. The reliever has a 3-5 record along with a 5.34 ERA. What does that say? Well, for one it says something about Triple-A Charlotte, which has a 38-60 record. I guess we should be happy Hahn didn’t call up anyone from Double-A Birmingham. The Knights are 33-59 so far on the season. Sox manager Mickey Mouse is another bit of Hahn’s handiwork. Back on Tuesday, Mouse talked about instilling a winning culture on the South Side. That was three losses ago. The Mouse-Sox now have a six-game losing streaking, falling 6-3 to the Guardians at home last night. Jake Burger hit two homers, though, and one the night before. That gives him twenty-four on the season, or ten more than Yoan Moncada has RBIs on the season. But guess who gets to stay at third base and who has to shift over to second? Burger is listed at 230 pounds, which is fine for a corner infielder. In case you were wondering, Nellie Fox weighed 160 when he played second base, oh, so long ago. Moncada is listed at 225, and I’m guessing that’s at least twenty pounds of muscle too much, given all the oblique problems he’s had. But what do I know in comparison to Jerry Reinsdorf and Rick Hahn?

Proof's in the Pudding

Poor Mickey Mouse. Before last night’s game with the Cubs, the White Sox manager offered a stout defense of beleaguered starter Lance Lynn as someone who’ll get to the seventh inning no matter what. Mouse was wrong, again. Lynn coughed up a five-run lead and had to exit in the fifth inning of his latest start, which turned into a 10-7 loss to the Cubs courtesy of Joe Kelly. Nothing like watching a reliever throw a wild pitch for strike three, hit a batter and then walk in two runs. Wait, there’s more. Rick Hahn has traded Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo Lopez, part of an earlier rebuild, for two prospects from the Angels. Sox fans are supposed to believe that Hahn will get it right with this move (and several more expected to follow) where he’s gotten it wrong so many times before. Going into the season, MLB.com ranked the Angels’ system second from the bottom. So, you know Hahn got quality. Again, I invoke Lee Dorsey by way of Devo: How long can this go on?

My Bad

And here I thought it would be Rick Hahn blowing smoke and talking gibberish to reporters yesterday. Nope, it was White Sox manager Mickey Mouse, trying to take responsibility for his team being nineteen—twenty a few hours after he spoke—games under .500. “There’s a culture we want to build,” he told reporters before last night’s game with the Cubs. “It hasn’t happened, and that’s on me. On me, nobody else.” [story in today’s Tribune] No argument there. Mouse went on to say, “This is too good of an organization, too good of an owner for it [winning baseball] not to happen. We’re in the process of that.” Exactly how Mouse failed to elaborate. He did mention “cultural changes” and how “we’re going to be headed in the right direction.” When would that be, I might ask. It certainly wasn’t last night, with Michael Kopech giving up five runs in five innings, four of them coming on three Cub homeruns. Same old same old with Kopech, who needed 102 pitches to make it through five innings in what would be a 7-3 loss. Same old same old for Yasmani Grandal, who had five baserunners steal second base; it can’t be the pitcher’s fault all the time. Same old same old for Luis Robert Jr., too, with two strikeouts on the night and 124 for the season. Soon to enter the same-old same-old will be Andrew Vaughn and Jake Burger. Vaughn is hitting .226 over his last fifteen games, Burger .189. The only cultural change I can see is the Sox embracing the idea of regression. They haven’t been twenty games under since 2019, and that was a rebuild season. What would you call this one?

Says It All

The headline in today Tribune sports’ section—top of the fold, no less—says it all: Sox squander late lead, fall to 19 under .500. And here I thought the Mickey Mouse Club was all about fun. But where’s the fun with Kendall Graveman blowing a 3-0 lead in the ninth inning? That’s misery plain and simple, as well as a sign of just how bad this team is. The Sox delayed the inevitable until two out in the bottom of the twelfth, when Ryan Jeffers walked it off for the Twins with a single off of Jesse Scholtens. Manager Mouse plays by a different set of rules than most baseball people do. He uses contact pitchers in extra innings, even thought an inning starts with a runner on second and nobody out. Not that Sox hitters can take advantage. Unwritten rule left over from Tony La Russa—don’t try to bunt runners over until there’s one out. After the game, Mouse told reporters, “We’ve got to find a way to have that killer mentality to where we’re going to put people away, put teams away.” Excuse me, Mickey, but you’re four months into the season. If you haven’t found that mentality, it’s not there. Wait, there’s more. Mouse also said, “When you do a good job of pitching and you do a good job of manufacturing some runs and put yourself in a position to win and then you lose it, they sting. That’s just a part of it.” [both quotes in today’s Tribune] Part of what, a terrible season the result of an incompetent front office hiring an equally incompetent manager and coaching staff? In that case, right you are.

Mothers, Don’t Let Your Sons…

Two-plus weeks short of his second birthday, my grandson Leo can hit a ball, hard, off a tee. Granted, sometimes he hits the ball with his hand, but the idea is to start young. Grandchildren allow us to focus ahead, to that game or recital or play coming up. This is important because there comes a point when the past threatens to consume a person; the older you are, the bigger the threat. Right now, I’m gearing up for Leo’s birthday and for his first at-bat in T-ball. That should keep me going for a few more years. How sad if my grandson grows up to be a White Sox fan, like his mother and grandparents. This team is never going to do anything but lose. The owner is simply incapable of admitting mistakes, which means they multiply while going unaddressed. A team that was supposed to challenge for the division crown instead looks likely to lose somewhere between ninety and a hundred games. And it won’t get any better next year, not if the same general manager and manager return. Last night in Minnesota, the Sox gave up two runs in the bottom of the seventh inning to lose 3-2. Would they have won had Elvis Andrus held on to the throw from Seby Zavala that had Byron Buxton out trying to steal second base? That, or at least delayed the inevitable. With Mickey Mouse at the helm, the team exists in a cartoon. No one gets better, the fans get an anvil to the head for daring to watch. I seem to remember Bugs Bunny on the mound once pitching against a bunch of Bums. We could use Bugs. We’ve already got the bums.

Pathetic

Heading into their game last night with the Twins, the White Sox stood nine games back of Minnesota in the worst division in all of baseball. The Sox had to sweep, or all pretense of competing for the postseason would come to an end. Guess who lost, 9-4? Manager Mickey Mouse deserves to be fired. Period. A good manager has his veterans ready to lead the way in a game like this, but not Mouse. Instead, second baseman Elvis Andrus dropped a relay throw from left fielder Andrew Benintendi that had baserunner Edouard Julien out at second by a good four feet. Instead of two outs and Alex Kirilloff up, it’s a two-run home run for Kirilloff. Wait, there’s more. Andrus bobbled a grounder from Max Kepler that was ruled a hit. A walk later, Byron Buxton homered for a 5-1 Twins’ lead. Did I mention Lance Lynn was pitching? Lynn gave up four long balls on the evening. He now has given up twenty-eight homers on the season. No one in either league has yielded more. After the game, the thirty-six year old righthander went all Dallas Keuchel, telling reporters, “I didn’t have bad stuff. I just didn’t execute pitches, that’s part of it. When I did execute a pitch, it didn’t go my way.” Lance, at this point you’re only fooling yourself. And let’s not ignore this gem from Mouse, that Lynn “could have very easily walked out of there with seven innings pitched.” [both quotes from today’s story on team website] Excuse me? If Lynn had managed one more out, he’d have given up seven runs, six earned. And that’s cause for celebration? Hire a clown, expect a clown show.

Exhale

The White Sox brain trust—hey, no laughing—can breathe. Michael Kopech didn’t implode on the mound yesterday afternoon at Citi Field. The confounding righthander went 5.2 innings, giving up one run on two hits in a 6-2 Sox win over the Mets. And so it goes. The twenty-seven year old flashes a glimpse of talent; people get excited; and then he spends weeks, if not months, in egg-laying mode; Kopech recorded his first win since May 24. In the immortal words of Lee Dorsey (with a shoutout to Devo), how long can this go on? As you’d expect, Sox manager Mickey Mouse enthused over his pitcher’s performance during his postgame press conference. “He really worked hard these past five days with” pitching coaches Ethan Katz and Curt Hasler. [story today on team website] “They made a ton of adjustments both physically and mentally. He went out and executed.” You don’t say. Of course, Mouse implied that Kopech wasn’t working hard before that. He also left unanswered exactly why all these physical and metal adjustments were necessary in the first place. We are, after all, getting close to August. How long does a team wait for a player to figure it all out?

Too Smart by Half

Casey Stengel thought catchers were important because, without one, you’d have a lot of passed balls. What did he know? The White Sox think you don’t need a catcher (see: Grandal, Yasmani) because you don’t need pitchers. They’re getting ready to ship off Lucas Giolito for the same reason they let Mark Buehrle walk—they don’t want to pay the money. Too bad no one in the organization knows how to develop pitching. Unless the combined 69-107 record of the AA and AAA teams is from an onslaught of bad-hop and seeing-eye hits. Last night was patch on a patch, Touki Toussaint vs. Justin Verlander. Toussaint gave up five runs in six innings as the Sox lost for the second straight time in New York, by a 5-1 margin. Today it’s Michael Kopech. You can feel the coaching staff holding its collective breath. Will Michael be OK? In the White Sox grand scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter.

Just Crap

The White Sox are a crappy team, something I can admit even if Rick Hahn and Mickey Mouse can’t. Last night in New York, Lucas Giolito, hands down their best pitcher, gave up five runs in the first. It proved a hole too deep, and the Sox lost, 11-10. Core-wise, Andrew Benintedi went 2-for-4 with three runs scored and one knocked in while Jake Burger hit two doubles and drove in three. One double missed being a grand slam by no more than six inches, and a flyout to the wall in left fell just short of being a three-run homer. Which leads me to ask: If and when Yoan Moncada returns, where does he play? It shouldn’t be third base; Burger has played too well to have Mouse sit him down or rotate him between positions. I’d even rate Burger C+ to B- as a fielder. Moncada’s best year was 2019 when he hit .315 with twenty-five homers; seventy-nine RBIs; and eighty-three runs scored. Burger is hitting .226 with twenty-one homers; forty-seven RBIs; and thirty-eight runs scored. Keep in mind there’s a good 2-1/2 months left in the season. Throw out 2020, when everything was weird, and Moncada had sixty-one and fifty-one RBIs in 2021 and 2022, respectively. This season, he has thirteen. All these numbers point to Moncada playing behind Burger, not the other way around.

More of the Above

Jake Burger looks to be coming out of his slump. His two-run homer yesterday started the scoring in a 8-1 White Sox win over the Braves. The visitors take the series against the best team in baseball. Truly, who knew? I suspected, or at least hoped, Burger would bounce back. Unlike other Sox hitters, who will remain nameless here, he has been making both regular and hard contact, without much to show for it the last six or seven games; the ball he hit yesterday was measured at 461 feet. Impressive, like Andrew Benintendi going 3-for-5 and Luis Robert Jr. picking up four hits, including his twenty-seventh homerun. What else could you ask for? How about Dylan Cease going more than five innings? I mean, ninety-nine pitches? Manager Mickey Mouse said Cease’s stuff was “electric.” [story in today’s Tribune]. Too bad it keeps shorting out.

Picking and Choosing

How nice of the White Sox to win a game against the best team in baseball last night. Lance Lynn only gave back the lead twice, and, jumping ahead a third time proved the charm as the Sox won 6-5 over the Braves. Jake Burger had a double and the go-ahead homerun; Zach Remillard singled and scored a run; Andrew Benintendi got himself three hits on the night; no doubt, Rick Hahn slept well. He shouldn’t have. Why? Oh, a thousand reasons, not least of all the pitcher his team beat. That would be Spencer Strider, who leads the MLB in strikeouts. Atlanta took Strider in the fourth round of the 2020 draft, well after the White Sox made their pick. Our selection has appeared in fourteen games since then, amassing a 0-2 record with a 5.67 ERA. That’d keep me up nights.

Nowhere to Hide

Rick Hahn’s idea of how a good general manager operates was on full display last night in Atlanta. It was sad to the point of funny. Michael Kopech, rebuild cornerstone whose innings must be forever managed, started. Kopech walked the first batter; hit the second; walked the third; then grooved a 1-0 fastball to Matt Olson for a grand slam. Two outs and two walks later, Kopech was done for the night in what would turn into a 9-0 humiliation of a whitewash. Kopech threw thirty-eight pitches in .2 innings, fourteen for strikes. Wait, there’s more. Sox “hitters” grounded into four double plays, two by Yasmani Grandal, Hahn’s idea of a great free-agent signing. Scrapheap acquisition Touki Toussaint did pitch 5.1 innings of one-run ball, only to be replaced by another Hahn pickup, Bryan Shaw, who allowed four runs in two-thirds of an inning. Shaw’s 14.54 ERA should mean that he’s safe in the Bizarro Land of Hahn and Jerry Reinsdorf. After the game, manager Mickey Mouse displayed a bit of irritation at a reporter who positioned his tape recorder to close to Mickey’s face. No such irritation over his team’s performance, though. Why, Kopech threw “[s]ome good pitches” Pitching coach Ethan Katz and Curt Hasler will get “back to the drawing board, look at the video and look at all that stuff, talk to him.” In the end, the pitching coaches will figure it out “somehow, someway.” As in a hope and a prayer, right, Mick? [story in today’s online Tribune] Funny thing about the Braves. They consistently finish better than the Sox, which means they draft lower, yet, not only do they pick better players, e.g. Austin Riley and Michael Harris II, they have enough talent left over to trade for youngish players like Olson and catcher Sean Murphy. Does any team out there want the likes of Seby Zavala or Lenyn Sosa? I thought so.

Yeah, Right

I think the commercial was in heavy rotation during the All-Star Game, showing a father and daughter playing catch—with a baseball, not a softball—in various places. Of course, what caught my attention was the type of ball being tossed around. I wonder if they played it during the draft, held Sunday through Tuesday. The White Sox drafted a pitcher born in France and an infielder born in Japan. No female players selected, though, not by the Sox or any other MLB team. No reason to expect that game of catch between father and daughter to lead to anything.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

I don’t like Home Run Derby because it doesn’t mean anything, and oftentimes screws up the winner’s second half of the season. We’ll see how things go with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. And, proving to me at least the contest made for an ill-wind that blew no one some good, Luis Robert Jr. of the White Sox tweaked his right calf during the first round of pretend longball. Day-to-day, nothing to worry about. I guess the silver lining is it’s not as if the Sox were in the mix for a playoff spot. I feel better already.

A Swing and a Miss

Usually, when I ride my bike, I like to break down the previous day’s White Sox game. But, this season, why bother? Still, it was a nice forty miles. Later, we went over to Clare and Chris’s to watch the Home Run Derby; this is more a mother-daughter than a father-daughter thing; I just don’t get it. Still, better to keep peace in the family. Maybe my grandson will see a swing that he’ll make his own. In fact, maybe that’s what happened with his mother. We talked about Pat Fitzgerald over hotdogs. How does someone screw up so badly? Here was a man who had a shot at being the head football coach at Northwestern in perpetuity, and he apparently turned a blind eye to team hazing. In life, it’s not only what you know, but also what you should know, and a coach should know what’s happening in his locker room. At the very least, say something, either in defense or admission. Bu nothing from Fitzgerald, outside admitting surprise at his termination and announcing he’s secured legal counsel. How profoundly sad.

Heaven Save Us

Hell must be like this, perpetual suffering, one loss after another after another with more coming as far as the eye can see. Such is being a White Sox fan in the 21st century. The first half of the season ended the way it started, with a loss, this one 4-3 in ten innings. Tim Anderson struck out to end the game with runners on second and third. Anderson is now batting .223 on the season and should be south of the Mendoza Line provided manager Mickey Mouse keeps playing him. Oh, that Mouse has a way with words. After the game, he told reporters, “We’ve played a lot of tough ballgames. We’ve lost a ton of them. There’s nothing I can say about that. We’ve just got to keep going.” [story in today’s Tribune] Why? Mouse went to say his players need to “Learn from these [losses] and continue to play.” Will someone explain to me how players are supposed to learn from losses their manager has nothing to say about. Why am I not surprised the general manager who traded for James Shields is the same one who hired Mickey Mouse for his first big-league managing job? Wait, there’s more. The Sox open the second half of the season in Atlanta. Like I said, one loss after another….

Look Out Below

The White Sox under Jerry Reinsdorf treat pitching as a necessary evil. Good pitching, bad pitching, it’s all the same to Reinsdorf and Co. Look no further than the fates of Jack McDowell and Mark Buehrle. This might be tolerable if the organization developed a steady supply of young talent, only it doesn’t. Michael Kopech is McDowell-light, at best, and Mike Clevinger is a patch on a patch. Now, they’re both on the IL, which forces GM Rick Hahn’s hand, so to speak. Think Tanner Banks, Jessie Scholtens, and yesterday’s losing pitcher, Touki Toussaint in a 3-0 Cardinals’ win. After the game, Mickey Mouse addressed the media, saying Toussaint “looks the part” and has the ”potential” to be “one of the five guys” who make up a staff. [story today on team website] Whether or not Mickey meant the second coming of the ’62 Mets’ rotation was unclear. Mouse also noted Sox hitters “missed a few pitches that we probably should have hit. We chased a little bit. We've got to get back to the drawing board and continue to work.” Note to Mouse: Today is the last game before the All-Star date. At ninety one games and a 38-53 record, the Sox are more than halfway through a miserable season. They don’t need a drawing board as much as they do a bunch of pink slips.

Everything is Relative

Wow. The Cardinals may actually be worse than the White Sox. That’s saying a lot. Last night, the visitors took a five-run lead against Sox starter Dylan “Alfred E.” Cease, only to give it all back in an eventual 8-7 Sox win. Anytime Jake Burger and Zach Remillard want to drive in three runs apiece is fine by me. Remillard has eleven RBIs in forty-nine at-bats to thirteen for Tim Anderson in 265 at-bats, BTW. Sportswriters this time of year love dividing teams into sellers and buyers. If the Sox trade away Lucas Giolito and Lance Lynn, Rick Hahn will be raising a white flag—again—on the South Side. But what if they were to trade Anderson and commit to Colson Montgomery next season? Wouldn’t that be the stopped clock actually getting it right?

The Truth Will Set You Free

The sad, undeniable truth is that my White Sox stink. The fish rots from the head down, starting with ownership; into the front office and coaching staff; and, without a doubt, the roster of players. Last night in the first game of a doubleheader, Lance Lynn and three relievers shut out the Blue Jays on one hit over ten innings. Only Sox hitters managed all of two singles over that same span. In went Aaron Bummer for the eleventh, and the skies opened for six runs to pour down. After the game, this is what our Mickey Mouse of a manager had to say about his pitcher’s performance. “A few balls that found the holes.” [story in today’s Tribune] A few? Considering Bummer gave up five hits, how many constitutes “a few”? I guess I should realize, “That’s going to happen to Bummer, just because he’s a groundball pitcher and they found some holes.” Well, my friend, you’ve just admitted you don’t know how to handle your bullpen, putting in a groundball pitcher in extra innings with a runner starting off at second base. A 6-2 loss was followed by another in game two, this one 5-4. You know how you can tell your general manager is clueless? Look at the players he callss up. As in relievers Bryan Shaw and Nick Padilla. Why do you think they were free agents, Rick? Because other teams want to let the Sox stockpile arms? All I know is, it’s a good thing Joseph Stalin wasn’t a Sox fan.

Difference of Opinion

Nothing like getting into a fight with your daughter over the phone. Clare called yesterday to say that Luis Robert Jr. was going to participate in the Home Run Derby next Monday and then asked what did I think. She knew full well what I thought, that it’s a bad idea. “I knew you’d say that,” said the Smug One. What she didn’t expect was me using her own performance as proof, but I did. Fathers are a wily lot. We were in the steamy environs of southwest Missouri for nationals in July of 2008 for an end-of-season super tournament that fastpitch-softball travel teams had to earn their way into. My daughter was hellbent on winning the homerun derby, and she did, almost. The nine balls she put over a fence in ten swings netted her a share of the crown. Here's the thing. For the tournament itself, it was mostly singles and the occasional double. All in all, the five homers Clare hit in thirty-six hours during a tournament the next summer were a lot more satisfying, if only to me, because they helped win the tournament. I don’t remember there being a homerun derby at nationals that summer. But I do recall Bobby Abreu of the Phillies winning the contest in 2005. Abreu had twenty-four homers that season, only six of which came after the All-Star break. I don’t want to see the same power outage happen to Robert.

Neither Nor

Before yesterday’s 4-3 loss at home to the Blue Jays, White Sox manager Rick Hahn talked some gibber about whether he’s going to be a buyer or seller at the trade deadline. Outside of Joe Kelly, who’s turned into an arsonist out of the bullpen, it doesn’t matter, unless we’re talking about Lucas Giolito. Giolito gave up two runs in six innings against Toronto. He has a 6-5 record with a 3.51 ERA and 1.17 WHIP in105.1 innings so far on the season in eighteen starts. How will the Sox replace that? I wouldn’t be surprised if Giolito gets traded and Hahn says he wouldn’t be opposed to trying to resign him as a free agent. Right, and he’ll sign Shohei Ohtani in the offseason, too. Hahn would be better off in the short run finding himself a hitting coach who can communicate the importance of situational hitting to Sox batters. Last night, Tim Anderson tripled with one out in the eighth and his team trailing by a run. Luis Robert Jr.—yes, I know, he hit a three-run homerun in the sixth—popped out and Eloy Jimenez flied out. I won’t even mention the three strikeouts that ended the game.

A Traditional Fourth, By and Bye

No old-fashioned, Fourth-of-July doubleheaders on the MLB schedule today, not in this century. White Sox host the Jays in a night game, with Oscar Colas rumored to be on the bench if not back in the starting lineup. And no Sox story in today’s print Tribune; all the news that fits to print, right? I went online at 8:12 AM to check for anything hiding on the website, but nothing there. Plus Alden Global Capital is jacking up the subscription price. Not that they’re going to expand news and sports’ coverage. No, Alden needs to show a tidy quarterly profit. Sort of like John Sherman, majority owner of the Royals. Unless you’re a Royals’ fan or follow stadium issues, you wouldn’t know that one of the worst teams in baseball wants to build a new stadium, with public help, of course. Sherman proposes to ante up half the projected $2 billion cost, which must be the going rate these days for a stadium plus the obligatory surrounding entertainment district. I almost wonder if Sherman and the McCaskeys are trading emails on the subject. Lucky for the Bears they don’t play in Missouri. There’s a sales-tax that helps fund Kauffman Stadium (we love it, but it’s at the end of its useful life, blah-blah-blah). Sherman wants it transferred to his new project, pending approval by voters in whichever Missouri county the Royals can extort the better deal from. Can you imagine anything attached to the McCaskeys put up to a vote in a referendum here in Illinois? How do you say No, in a landslide?

Consolation Prize

The White Sox avoided getting swept by the worst team in baseball, holding on for an 8-7 win yesterday in sunny Oakland. The game was my reward for working a six-gallon Shop Vac in our basement during a rainstorm that dumped just under nine inches of rain on us. The stopped clock that is the reign of Rick Hahn worked just how the Sox GM dreams it should—twelve hits on the day, with four of them coming from Hahn’s Big Three of Luis Robert Jr., Eloy Jimenez and Andrew Vaughn, six if you throw in the two, homer included, from Jake Burger. What more could you ask? Oh, right, pitching. The Sox put starter Michael Kopech on the IL with right shoulder inflammation. Indulge me here as I question Kopech’s viability in the rotation—the twenty-seven year old needs his innings managed, even though three starters have pitched more than he has. The only starter who’s thrown less than Kopech is Mike Clevinger, who seems to be living on the IL thse days. Yesterday was mix-and-match, just like it’ll be when Clevinger’s turn rolls around. Hahn and manger Pedro Grifol have lucked out with the callup of infielder Zach Remillard, who went 2-for-4 on the day with two RBIs. Alas, there appear to be no pitching versions of Remillard in the system. Which goes to figure with a stopped clock in charge of things.

The Great Pretender(s)

Nobody with the White Sox puts any pressure or expectations on Dylan Cease, least of all Cease. Facing the worst team in baseball, Cease failed both to get through the sixth inning and hold a two-run lead. The Keystone Cops went on to lose 7-6 in 10 innings. Joe Kelly balked in a run, Elvis Andrus booted a ball that allowed the winning run to score. After the game, Cease did his best Alfred E. Neuman “What, me worry?” imitation, telling reporters, "It's a tough one. We battled to the end. But unfortunately, just one of those [games] that didn't go our way.” [story on team website today]. Really, that’s it? Nothing on giving up three extra-base hits to the worst-hitting team in baseball or failing to make it into the seventh inning, again? Scott Boras is going to have a tough time getting his client a big contract with that attitude coupled with those stats. I can’t wait to see him try. And then we have Sox manager Pedro Grifol doing his own version of “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow.” According to Grifol, “We play tomorrow, that’s the message. Just come back out, put the uniform on and go bust your ass out there.” [story in today’s Tribune]. Because the only thing worse than losing two out of three games to the worst team in baseball would be losing all three.

Phenomenal

If White Sox manager Pedro Grifol could declare Lance Lynn’s mediocre outing on Thursday to be “phenomenal,” what would he call last night’s 7-4 loss to the A’s? I have a few choice words, but noting fit for polite company. Grifol’s decision to stick with two pitchers was definitely worthy of comment. Starter Tanner Banks had nothing, as evidenced by his giving up four runs in the bottom of the second to the worst-hitting team in all of baseball. So it goes for a team that can’t develop pitching and its patch—Mike Clevinger—goes down with a sore right bicep. Oh, and it looks like Michael Kopech will miss a turn because the team wants to manage his workload. Yeah, that’ll help. Did I mention that, going into the eighth inning, the Sox offense had scored all of one run against the worst pitching staff in all of baseball? Yup. Then, with two outs and the bases loaded, Andrew Benintendi doubled off the right field wall, only Elvis Andrus, the runner on first, didn’t score; Andrus kept looking over his shoulder, which slowed him down considerably. And all this time I thought runners are off and running as soon as a ball is hit with two outs. Silly me. That third run would’ve made the score 5-4, which might have led Grifol not to send Jesse Scholtens out for a fourth inning. But out Scholtens went, only to give up two runs to the worst-hitting team in all of baseball. Of course, Andrus’ baserunning mistake would’ve been negated had Tim Anderson come through after Benintendi, with runners in scoring position. Nope. Anderson struck out for the fourth time in the game, all against the team with the worst pitching staff in all of baseball. But nothing wrong with the erstwhile minister of fun. He’ll have it figured out any day now. With the game tied, Luis Robert Jr.’s homerun leading off the ninth would’ve give the Sox the lead. Instead, they lost by three, to the worst team in all of baseball. Phenomenal.