Chicago White Sox: Tony La Russa deserves the critiques he’s getting
The Chicago White Sox are a wildly talented baseball team. They might cruise to a division title just based on that alone. They have good pitching and good hitting. There are times, however, where being put in a failing position will lead to failure. That has happened twice so far this year. Out of ten losses, two of them can be based on Tony La Russa. If that 20 percent clip keeps up, there are going to be some major issues.
Hiring Tony La Russa was an incredibly unpopular decision that they made over the offseason in the first place. Jerry Reinsdorf didn’t really care who Rick Hahn wanted to hire and forced them to bring back his friend. We know the roster is going to win a lot no matter what but how far can they go if Tony La Russa continues to sleep at the wheel? He deserves the criticism he is taking right now.
The Chicago White Sox needs Tony La Russa to be better when making decisions.
He took a lot of flack for the way things went in Tuesday night’s loss to the Detroit Tigers. Detroit is still a Major League team and deserves respect but they are not very good right now. They are in the middle of a long rebuild and the White Sox should pound them every time. The Tigers made five errors and walked two in the first five innings and the White Sox came away with two runs. That part of the game is mostly on the players.
The part of that issue that can’t be put on the players in the lineup. Jake Lamb started and so did Leury Garcia. Luis Robert went down with an illness before the game so they had to have a lineup like that but they didn’t do it right. For one, there is no reason that Andrew Vaughn shouldn’t be in the lineup. They also used Billy Hamilton to pinch-run with two outs early in the game. Later in the game, Garcia and Hamilton (neither of them very good at hitting) were relied on to finish a late-game rally.
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A major reason that the White Sox even needed a rally is in large because La Russa fell asleep at the wheel. Lucas Giolito was clearly out of gas in the seventh inning. Giolito even admitted it to the media after that game. That is something that Tony needs to recognize and take care of before it is too late. We are still so early in the season but he deserves all of the criticism that he is getting right now. It is up to him (and his staff/players) to fix it.