Getting the Right Read on South Side Tea Leaves

I mean, it could be a whole heck of a lot worse, right? White Sox players could be acting like Javy Baez, Francisco Lindor and Kevin Pillar of the Mets, who are now giving the thumbs-down sign to Mets’ fans for daring to boo their crappy performance since the All-Star break. White Sox Nation is in a slightly better frame of mind, fans and players alike. Cubs’ fans might be feeling differently—ex-farmhands Dylan Cease and Eloy Jimenez continue to excel against their former team. Cease beat the Norths Siders again yesterday, Jimenez homered against them again, and the Sox come away with a 13-1 win to take two out of three against the visitors from Wrigley over the weekend. But it should have been three out of three. I know, nobody’s perfect, no MLB team has ever run the regular season schedule. I should be happy my team scored thirteen runs while Tim Anderson sat (yet again). And Anderson had company in the person of Yoan Moncada. Him I wouldn’t sit, I’d bench for a few games. And there you have it. Manager Tony La Russa leads a charmed life with the decisions he's made so far this season. Let’s just hope it carries over into October. The most positive takeaway from yesterday is that the Sox hit three of their five homers off of Cubs’ starter Kyle Hendricks, who’s a real pitcher. Luis Robert hit two homers on the day, and he looks to be on his way to becoming a real hitter. I keep wondering about Cease, though. Yes, he struck out eleven in six innings while giving up just one run on four hits, but remember, this is the Triple-A (plus?) Cubs, and Cease probably would’ve been taken out after five innings if not for his teammates’ seven-run outburst in the fifth. All of which is my way of saying you shouldn’t need to throw 108 pitches against a team of that caliber, unless it’s for a complete game. Next up are five games against the Pirates and Royals. I’ll be just as unreasonable as ever. Really, anything less than four wins is unacceptable, at least to this unreasonable fan.