If only we could say the great White Sox meltdown has begun, that the bullpen is no longer useful, that the team has chosen to commence its annual death rattle and we could all just wash our hands of this mess.
Sadly for those of us still refusing to acknowledge the obvious, what’s happening is not the annual suicide; what’s happening is merely the order of things. Think about both of these teams for a second:
The Red Sox are in playoff contention. The White Sox are, for all intents and purposes, out of it.
The Red Sox have a powerful, well-rounded lineup. The White Sox have a lineup high on talent but low on ability.
The Red Sox have useful, focused speed that gets on base. The White Sox have a couple guys who can run fast.
The Red Sox have a bullpen currently able to deliver the goods. The White Sox’ bullpen delivers tasty flash-fried meatballs, hot and fresh.
And on and on it goes, but the question isn’t really one of in which specific areas the Red Sox are outdueling the Good Guys, but one of by how much the Red Sox as a whole can (and do) outplay the South Siders. The line-item, matchup-type approach might work splendidly when you need you needed to call in Charles Barkley and KJ to take out Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant in NBA Jam, but in baseball one player’s strength against another can be easily neutralized with something as simple as an intentional walk, rendering that whole line of thinking obsolete.
We all know this, and we know it’s foolish to think there’s some trick to what the Red Sox are doing, just as it’s foolish to think one facet of the White Sox is allowing them to get away with it. What we really need is to simply acknowledge that the Red Sox, like pretty much every other team in the American League, are the better team. Once we make peace with their true position in the world, we can accept the 2009 White Sox for not just who they are, but for who we always knew they were: just some team. Just some team. Just. Some. Team.
Truth told, there are worse positions in which to find your team.