Grading the first half of the 2022 Chicago White Sox season

The Chicago White Sox loss to the Detroit Tigers on Thursday night ended what has been a pretty brutal first half of the season. Despite a miraculous performance from Dyllan Cease on the mound, they lost 2-1 because their offense was absent from the game.

That was game 81 so we are halfway done. Nobody expected the White Sox to be 39-42 at this point but here we are. They are three games under .500 and sit in third place in the AL Central Division. They are 1.5 games behind the Cleveland Guardians and 6.0 behind the Minnesota Twins.

Expectations are the context for whether or not a team is having a good year or a bad one. Coming into 2022, the White Sox looked like a team poised to be in the conversation for the American League champion. Because they are not even over .500 at the halfway mark, they are failing.

There are a lot of reasons for this. Rick Hahn did not make the necessary moves needed to push them forward over the offseason. Having first basemen in the outfield on a consistent basis is a problem and that’s just where they begin for the White Sox.

Tony La Russa is also having a disaster of a season so far. He makes bad lineups, constantly makes bad strategy decisions and has no clue how to manage his bullpen anymore. The White Sox are being held back by him in many ways.

Everyone deserves some blame for this bad Chicago White Sox first half.

The players also deserve a lot of blame. Outside of like four or five players, none of them have played to the caliber that we know that they can. There are times when they just look tired and uninterested in being there. Nobody can hit the ball and the pitchers decide to be horrible when they find ways to score runs.

Overall, this has been a massive disappointment so far. It is obvious that they are going nowhere unless they start to turn things around soon. They really can’t afford many more long losing streaks otherwise their hopes of reaching the postseason are going to be gone.

First Half Grade: D-

To be honest, there isn’t another team in Major League Baseball that has been more disappointing than the Chicago White Sox. They aren’t even close to being a bad team but failing to be a good team makes it feel worse than it actually is. That is what expectations can do to you.

They get a D- for all of these negative reasons. The only reason that it isn’t an F is because of the fact that they are still close enough to turn it around in terms of the standings. If they figured out a way to rattle off a long winning streak, they’d be right back in the mix for first place. Hopefully, something happens in the second half that gets them going because this isn’t it.