Oh, So Now You're Upset

Oh, So Now You’re Upset

The Tribune has a sports’ columnist who revels in snark, which is to say he displays plenty of attitude if not smarts.  Up until today, he’s lauded the White Sox for losing because, in the new math of major-league baseball, losing is winning.  Then, out of the blue, today he jumps on Reynaldo Lopez’s clown-comment from yesterday.

“Players on a bad team, one of the worst in baseball, don’t seem overly interested in calling upon [the] necessary intensity to make up for the talent shortfall at the major-league level,”writes Snark, who went on to add, “There’s nothing wrong with losing games if you’re trying, but there’s everything wrong with approaching the job in the inexplicably unprofessional manner Lopez seems to be talking about.”  No, here’s what’s wrong—teams tanking.

“Rebuild” is losing by another name.  Very few of the White Sox players on the major-league roster know if they’re there to help lay a foundation of winning or contribute to the losing, which in new-math baseball means cashing in on next year’s draft.  Manager Rick Renteria was able to pull off a relatively successful 67-95 record in 2017 by getting players to believe in two things, themselves and their role in the future.

By refusing to promote minor leaguers like Eloy Jimenez and Michael Kopech to the parent club, general manager Rick Hahn undermined Renteria with the message that, No, you guys are here to lose.  The real talent is still down on the farm.  Ladies and gentlemen, your 2018 Chicago White Sox, all 24-49 of them.

Instead of alternating between cute and upset, Snark could have, should have, for years been asking questions like why Adam Dunn and Adam LaRoche, why so few homegrown players, why all the trades that don’t help?  At some point, though that would’ve required Snark to look up the name of the Sox farm director, and that would’ve taken too much time from snarking.