Chicago White Sox: Is It Time to Give Up?
By Ian Acosta
Almost halfway through the season and nine games under .500, is it time to officially wave the white flag on the 2015 Chicago White Sox season?
Before I give a definitive answer I want to recap how the season has gone this far just from my personal viewpoint in terms of hitting, defense, the coaches, adjustments, etc.
I’ll begin with the offense.
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If I can come up with one word to describe what I have seen so far this year it would be “underwhelming.” No one is hitting over .300. No one can hit with runners in scoring position. No one is seemingly able to do their job on a daily basis and that has translated to just under four runs per game average which is second to last in the American League.
This team even went an entire week without even scoring at least five runs! Another offensive woe has been the lack of clutch hitting which is a direct correlation to the pitiful offense.
According to Dan Hayes of CSN Chicago, the Sox between June 4-22 were 18-for-105 with runners in scoring position. With that sort of production spanning almost three weeks it baffles me how some offensive change or coaching change wasn’t made. Recently Melky Cabrera and Adam Eaton have started hitting and getting on base but I feel it may be too late.
On the other side of the ball, as a whole the fundamentals for this team seem to be completely nonexistent.
Jun 23, 2015; Minneapolis, MN, USA; Chicago White Sox second baseman Carlos Sanchez (5) throws the ball to first base for an out in the first inning against the Minnesota Twins at Target Field. Mandatory Credit: Jesse Johnson-USA TODAY Sports
If it were not for Gordon Beckham and Carlos Sanchez this team would routinely look like a little league teams in terms of catching the ball and making routine plays. Specifically, Conor Gillaspie and Alexei Ramirez are just having awful defensive years.
When the left-side of your infield has combined for 19 errors (before Friday’s loss) and what seems like countless other non-statistical mistakes it makes it that much tougher to win ball games especially when your team has trouble scoring runs in the first place.
I recently heard commentator Hawk Harrelson say the other day during one of the games that in all of his time with the White Sox this is most he’s seen a team work on fundamentals. If that is the case, why does it seem like this team is lost on defense sometimes?
This brings me to the coaches. I never got to see Robin Ventura actually play because I was too young, but from what my father told me he always hustled, grinded, and gave his best out there.
While I am sure many fans appreciated him as a player, he has shown that he is not a Major League manager by any stretch of the imagination. His handling of this season in terms of when to make adjustments, motivating and teaching the players, and just handling in game opportunities just seems to be absent in all areas.
If the upper management is still serious about trying to turn this season around, I believe a change needs to be made and it needed to be made yesterday. As for hitting coach Todd Steverson, some blame needs to be put on the players for not pulling their weight, but where does the accountability for the coaches come in?
I personally would love to see either Harold Baines or Jim Thome take over the role and see what they can do with the potential that is here with this team. I just want change and what is going on now is clearly not working. I want the upper management to at least give the impression they care about the rest of this season as much as the fans and I do.
Now to answer the question posed earlier: is it too late to salvage this season?
In my honest opinion, yes it is. This team has underperformed all year and has given no signs of turning that around in the past week and a half. It would be better to effect change now and sell what we can from this team and ride out the rest of the season.
With all of the expectations and hope I had from this season, it really pains me to have to say that but again we must look toward the future.