Outplayed, and Outmanaged

After the White Sox lost their third straight game to the Orioles yesterday, this time by a score of 6-2, manager Tony La Russa admitted that his team lost because they were outplayed. Outmanaged, too. La Russa relented and started rookie Lenyn Sosa, batting him leadoff. Only Sosa didn’t play in place of Leury Garcia (1-for-3 on the day , now with a .191 BA). La Russa played him instead of Tim Anderson, who was resting because…somehow, the Sox have five players La Russa doesn’t want to risk injury by going full-out on sure outs. Anderson, Jose Abreu, A.J. Pollock, Luis Robert and Andrew Vaughn all have this special dispensation, so, fans need to understand what they’re seeing isn’t a lack of hustle, except maybe when Robert didn’t appear to go after a bases-clearing double in the seventh inning of what had been a 3-1 game. But I seem to be the only observer who saw that. And La Russa seems to be the only manager who would call on Jose Ruiz to pitch out of a bases-loaded situation. At one point in the seventh inning, starter Lance Lynn had two outs, one on, in a 2-1 game before he ran out of gas. In comes Ruiz, he of the 4.78 ERA and 1.70 WHIP, and there went any chance of winning the game, assuming, of course, that the walking wounded could’ve found a way to score some runs. You might ask why La Russa didn’t instead go to Joe Kelly or Kendall Graveman, two major offseason acquisitions meant to give the Sox a killer bullpen. Or you might ask why the Sox are having all sorts of injury problems after switching conditioning coaches. La Russa could offer a gibber answer to the first (he was going to use Kelly in the eighth if it were still a one-run game), but the second remains a painful mystery to us all. The 2021 Orioles lost 110 games, by the way. This year, they have thirty-four wins, one more than the Sox.