Consistency

What did Ralph Waldo Emerson write?  Oh, yeah, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”  On that basis, White Sox general manager Rick Hahn must be blessed with one big mind, because he sure is inconsistent.

 

One day after Lucas Giolito’s gem in Houston, Reynaldo Lopez laid an egg against the Twins.  Lopez gave up eight earned runs in 3.2 innings on eight hits (only three of them homeruns) and two walks.  Where Giolito threw 107 pitches over nine innings Lopez threw 82 before being lifted in the fourth.  Giolito threw 77 percent of his pitches for strikes, Lopez 61 percent.  Figures don’t lie.

 

So, tell me this—if Dylan Cease is better off learning whatever it is he’s learning in the minors, why not Lopez, too?  After Friday’s outing, he has a 3-5 record with a 6.03 ERA.  Either he’s not listening to Don Cooper, or our pitching coach has gone mute.  Oh, and Lopez comes with a personal catcher.  That would be Welington Castillo with his .176 BA.  That’s a real daily double.  Throw in Yonder Alonso at .177, and we’re talking serious trifecta.

 

Daniel Palka gets sent down because he wasn’t producing, fine.  Now explain why Castillo and Alonso are different.  Palka with his 27 homers as a rookie generated what I would call minimal goodwill with the front office commitment.  Contrast that to Castillo, who served an 80-game PEDs suspension, and Alonso, who’s in his first—dare I say only?—season on the South Side.  To my small mind, this is arbitrary decision-making

 

Early on, rebuilds feature retreads—think Castillo and Alonso—to hold down spots while a team amasses enough young talent to compete.  At some point, a rebuild is supposed to involve prospects performing at the major league level, only the White Sox refuse to bring up Cease or his battery mate, Zach Collins.  No, we’re going to pull off a rebuild by sticking with the old guys.

 

Then again, what do I know?  I try to be consistent in thought and action.