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?