Same Old Same Old

There are lots of ex-White Sox players in the postseason. Why? It’s not because the front office can’t find talent. It’s because the front office doesn’t know what to do with talent once it finds it. Of those players who saw action yesterday (not including extended cup-of-coffee Tommy Pham), Yankees’ reliever Tommy Kahnle and Padres’ right fielder Fernando Tatis Jr. performed well, the Padres’ Dylan Cease and the Dodgers’ Michael Kopech not so much. Kahnle threw .2 scoreless innings in New York’s 6-5 win over the Royals in the ALDS while Tatis went 2-for-4 with a double and a run scored in San Diego’s 7-5 loss to the Dodgers in the NLDS. That leaves former teammates, now adversaries, Cease and Kopech, both of whom looked like they were still with the Sad Sox. Cease couldn’t hold a three-run lead his team gave him in the first inning, instead giving up a game-tying three-run homer to Shohei Ohtani with two out in the bottom of the second. Bad Dylan was on display with a walk that made possible the homerun, on a 2-1 pitch. Walks, pitching from behind—not how you cash in come free agency, Dylan. Cease was up to his old, frustrating tricks in the fourth after his teammates gave him a two-run lead the inning before. Two one-out singles ended his night and put on the tying runs. Cease’s line reads 3.1 innings; five runs allowed, all earned; six hits; two walks; and five strikeouts. Which brings us to Kopech. The wild one entered the game in the eighth inning, sandwiching two walks around a strikeout. With the Sox, that would have been enough to lose, but the Dodgers are a major-league team, so Kopech escaped without giving up any runs. I wouldn’t want Kopech back; just too much can go wrong with him. Cease, I don’t know. He went 14-11 with a team that won 93 games, and he’s never won more than fourteen in a regular season. If I’m robbing the bank to sign a topflight pitcher (see Zach Wheeler), I want better stats than that. Like the Sad Sox are going to sign quality players, right?