Have we all caught our breath? Stepped away from the ledge? Rediscovered the will to live in the face of epic shaming and total sporting embarassment?
No?
Well, too bad. We’ve still got 87 more games to ulcer our way through.
Putting aside the self-perpetuating hype and opinions of the talking heads and self-appointed experts, it’s important to look at what actually happened this weekend: the Chicago White Sox, as they have against pretty much every other decent team in either league, lost to a team better-equipped than they. Decent pitching went unsupported; mediocre pitching became cannon fodder. The long ball became the only means of scoring, because once a runner actually got on base the inning was as good as over. Even lighting up opposing pitching for a hearty seven runs was not enough. And all the while the Twins, as they are wont to do, keep winning.
At the risk of sounding excessively negative, could it be time to start reconsidering if this team is actually any good?
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The refrain from a few too many Sox fans on message boards, blogs, radio call-in shows and the like over the past 48 hours has generally centered on a certain event that happened three years ago. This particular event seems to have absolved Ozzie Guillen from accountability in not getting runners ahead of the double play ball. It seems to have also made Jose Contreras infallible, even though he is notorious for pitching in halves of seasons and seemingly entering the bad half of this one. This event has granted eternal forgiveness to Kenny Williams for building a team whose composition forms the antithesis of the game he talks up.
This event has also, unfortunately, become a kind of adopted and pathetic comeback to the taunts of the opposition after what happened last weekend. A young Chad or Trixie in their Sammy Sosa Mark Prior Nomar Garciaparra Alfonso Soriano jersey will say something like “Sox suck,” to which Big Ed in his Mark Buerhle jersey (with the 2005 patch on the sleeve! Just like Mark wore! Awesome!) will respond “Yeah, well, when was the last time YOUR team won the World Series?”
It would be laughable it it weren’t all so tragic, the Cubs fan boasting about a string of wins that, in the scheme of things, will mean little and a Sox fan still clinging to a title that’s been taken away twice now. They may have little to brag about, those Cubs fans, but we need to realize that at the moment we Sox fans have even less.
I actually don’t think Ozzie has never been better than this year. He’s gotten away from the bunts, steals, hit and runs, all the stuff that has proved to be overused by people like Bill James.
A lot of people are pissed he pulled Danks, but there’s nothing wrong with protecting 22-year old pitchers. I’d rather have him do that then overwork them like Dusty does. Uribe led off that inning with a hit too, just no one could get him in.
I’ll concede that those things might be overvalued, but not without qualifying that this bunch isn’t capable of playing that kind of offense.
The debate over the Danks call will probably never end. But what about Contreras on Saturday? Even the most casual observer could see he was dying out there, and Guillen let him drown anyway. That one still bothers me, especially since that game would have been winnable if the damage were limited to, say, five or six runs.
Totally agree.