The Chicago White Sox have a lot of issues going on right now

To say that the Chicago White Sox have been playing poorly recently is an understatement. At times, it appears that a little league team could play better. After a solid 6-2 start, they’ve lost seven straight games which is something they didn’t do all of last year.

They’ve fallen from fifth to fifteenth in The Athletic’s power rankings ($). In each game, you think they’re finally going to stop the streak only to see the team put up another loss.

Sunday’s loss to the Twins was especially disappointing because it’s hard to know what the White Sox did wrong. They had Lucas Giolito back pitching on the mound. They put together a decent lineup, one that did feature Leury Garcia but had him down to seventh in the batting order.

Infielders Tim Anderson and Danny Mendick hit home runs. Liam Hendriks pitched a scoreless 9th. Yet, the Sox still lost the game 6-4. Nothing seems to go right and the Chicago White Sox are just bad right now.

The even worse news is that left fielder Eloy Jimenez is probably out for the next two months. The Sox should probably consider free agent Justin Upton as a replacement but they still have Andrew Vaughn there.

There are a lot of things wrong with the Chicago White Sox right now. 

It’s hard to know what’s exactly wrong with the White Sox. Many point fingers at Manager Tony La Russa. La Russa used to be the best manager in baseball but the game has caught up to him and arguably passed him up.

He should have intentionally walked Byron Buxton in the 10th inning of the loss to the Twins, but even if he’d done that I’m not sure the Sox would have won the game anyway.

The problem with blaming Tony La Russa is there’s no one to replace him with so the Sox are stuck with him at least through 2022. Who do fans expect him to be replaced with, Ozzie Guillen? That’s definitely not going to happen with Kenny Williams in the front office. I’d like A.J. Pierzynski to be the White Sox Manager one day but he currently has no MLB coaching experience.

You can say they should have hired A.J. Hinch instead but that’s only one of many things the Chicago White Sox should have done differently. They also should have signed Manny Machado. They shouldn’t have traded Fernando Tatis Jr.

They should have drafted Jonathan India instead of Nick Madrigal. They should have made a qualifying offer to Carlos Rodon. They should have hired a different hitting coach or not fired the last one.

They should have made an actual attempt at signing Seiya Suzuki. They should not have wasted resources on Josh Harrison and Vince Velasquez, neither of whom have been good since 2017, and even then weren’t that good.

The biggest problem with the Chicago White Sox is their cheapness. They spent only $66 million in the offseason while claiming to be trying to win a championship. Meanwhile, the rebuilding Cubs spent $70 million on a single player, Seiya Suzuki, who has more WAR than anyone on the White Sox at this point.

They couldn’t even make a qualifying offer to last year’s ace Carlos Rodon because they were scared he might accept it and put them over their “budget”. That’s not how a team that has any intention of winning the World Series acts.

You could say that between Lance Lynn and Carlos Rodon, the White Sox kept the wrong guy but it would be nice to have an owner that would allow them to keep both of them. If they had no intention of keeping Rodon, they should have upgraded the rotation by adding an ace. Instead, they instead chose to downgrade it by signing Vince Velasquez.

Right now, the White Sox haven’t been able to hit either. It has been truly awful with an 83 OPS+ and 13th in the league in scoring. They now have question marks at third base, second base, and the outfield.

Hopefully, when Yoan Moncada comes back to play third base the team’s production will improve immensely. Moncada has been inconsistent over his career but the team needs him to reach his star potential for them to turn this season around.

As for second base, the best option is Danny Mendick. Danny Mendick is only 28 years old, younger than Harrison (34) and Leury Garcia (31). He is also the only one with a home run this year so I’d like to see him play the most at the keystone going forward.

As for the outfield, they could probably survive with Andrew Vaughn in left field, Luis Robert in center field, and A.J. Pollock in right field with Gavin Sheets as the DH. Still, I’d like for them to add Justin Upton in the mix, who had a good spring training and would only cost the league minimum.

For starting pitching, the Sox do have three young aces, Dylan Cease, Michael Kopech, and Lucas Giolito. That’s a really good starting point so it’s too bad the team is too cheap to spend on an additional ace to lead the way.

They have Dallas Keuchel as their fourth starter who isn’t good. Vince Velasquez is their fifth who is even worse. At some point, the Sox will have to add another starting pitcher, maybe by reacquiring Jose Quintana who has looked decent so far. Lynn will be back soon enough.

Overall, it’s been a bad stretch of White Sox baseball and the players need to start performing at a much higher level. If they don’t, then we need answers as to why this team didn’t spend money on getting better players.

And you can forget about the World Series, as the playoffs are increasingly random, it’s a legitimate question as to whether the White Sox will even make the playoffs at this point.