Well, that was uneventful. Jesus Christ Superstar Shortstop gets the call to the big club and what happens? A whole lot of 0-fer, that’s what, unless you count that TOTALLY AWESOME fielder’s choice or that routine grounder. Man, those were AMAZING!!!<\/p>\n
And remember that one popout? THE FUTURE IS SO BRIGHT I HAVE TO WEAR A RADIATION-PROOF SUIT!<\/p>\n
More importantly, beyond fueling the inexplicable hope and psychotic expectations of an increasingly bewildered fanbase, Gordon Beckham’s non-spectacular debut probably tells us more about the 2009 White Sox than we think it does.<\/p>\n
For one, the Sox may very well be throwing in the towel. Sure, the division is easy and Blackout Game and grinder\/grit\/2005, but that’s exactly the point: if the division is so easy, why are the Good Guys having such a hard time staying afloat in it? and why do they think huge upside is the answer?<\/p>\n
Yes, okay, the Tigers just took a thorough and serious beatdown<\/a> from the Boston Red Sox. This would normally be encouraging were it not for the fact the Red Sox are currently the second-best team in the sport’s most dominant division, a division so solid its fourth-place team (Tampa Bay, 28) has as many wins as the Central’s first (Detroit). Couple that with the woodshedding the last-in-the-American-League-they-probably-thank-God-for-the-Nationals A’s just handed the Sox, and suddenly the day just grew a little darker.<\/p>\n Playing a weak team while your division leader plays a strong one; this is when gaps are supposed to be narrowed, not stagnated.<\/p>\n But what we also know by Beckham’s arrival is that someone among the White Sox infield is inevitably leaving (Wilson Betemit doesn’t count<\/a>). Alexei Ramirez is too marketable and too highly-marketed (and actually playing well) while Chris Getz is just about as acceptably average as a rookie infielder can be, leaving either scrappy lil’ Jayson Nix or Josh “Jim Thome, Jr.” Fields relegated to trade bait, bench duty or manning the hot corner for Charlotte’s fearsome ace<\/a> right-hander.<\/p>\n Smart money says Fields, as Beckham’s glove makes his fielding obsolete<\/a> and Thome’s whiffing makes his bat superfluous<\/a>. Which is too bad, because once upon a time Josh Fields was supposed to save us all<\/a>. Good thing we have Beckham!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" And other nonsensical conclusions we can draw.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[35,458,194,66,460,89,459],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=971"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":978,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971\/revisions\/978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}