Your 2022 Chicago Spite Sox
If the Sox are going to win this season, it's going to have to be despite their Hall of Fame manager.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: The White Sox will need to overcome some significant injuries to be successful this season.
As with the 2021 season, the 2022 White Sox are also putting the IL to good use early in the year. They also have some sluggish starts on offense (we’ll get to that in a minute) that are bogging down the team that is currently on a seven-game skid, but the biggest obstacle they will need to overcome to succeed in 2022 is Tony La Russa.
This is not an overreaction to a rough two-week stretch to start the season. This is a trend that the manager has shown starting in the second half of last season and continued into the ALDS where the Sox were exposed by the Astros.
We have a roughly 70 or so game sample size of the La Russa’s faults at this point and you could certainly throw in some baffling things from the start of 2021 – including not understanding the Extra Inning rules and defaulting to James Fegan to fully interpret them.
The job of a baseball manager isn’t as complicated as an NFL head coach. You basically need to do three things:
Keep a clubhouse sane. 162 games is a loooooong season. You keep your players loose and having fun (winning certainly helps that) so they’re not at each other’s throats all summer.
Put the best team on the field every day. You make sure the best 9 players on the team are starting every day. This can change as the season progresses and it’s up to the manager to direct that ebb and flow.
Put them in the best position to win. Known when to pull a pitcher when things go awry, choose the right bullpen pieces to bring in and align the defense to best help the pitcher. They should also lean on their coaching staff for any of the above.
When he was hired in late 2020 we assumed the latter two points were all be assured. La Russa could do that in his sleep, the real concern was that he might have trouble adjusting to a younger, brasher group of players. Turns out the opposite was true.
The last two points have been highlighted with the brightest spotlight during the first two weeks of the 2022 campaign.
Line-up construction – Leury Garcia has batted 3rd TWICE as well as hitting in the 2 hole, essentially leaving Anderson hanging out to dry. Andrew Vaughn has been reduced to a weak side platoon player even after La Russa has stated many times that he is NOT a platoon player. Vaughn is only SMASHING the baseball and has hit 2 of his 3 home runs against RHP, but Adam Haseley needs playing time because he hits left-handed and 100% would have been a cult fan favorite on a St. Louis Cardinals team circa 2003.
Sloppy Defense – The White Sox haven’t always been the best team when it comes to the fundamentals for my entire lifetime, but they have fallen off the rails so far this season, seemingly right after two straight rainouts in Cleveland. I don’t ever remember La Russa’s Cardinals teams looking this lost doing the basics.
Consistently letting the best player(s) beat you – You can’t let Jose Ramirez hit with RISP. I honestly think you could have considered walking him with the bases loaded instead of his hitting the most predictable grand slam in history. It was absurd pitching to Byron Buxton in extra innings with a base open. These are the best players on the two biggest division rivals – they also just signed long-term contracts so they will have PLENTY of chances to break the hearts of the South Siders. You can’t just let them do it.
I truly believe this team is very good. I hope these nagging injuries are a result of a lock out, followed by short spring training and cold weather in April in the Midwest. They should win the division. It might mean only winning 87 games because, despite back-to-back sweeps from Cleveland and Minnesota, the AL Central is again one of the worst divisions in baseball.
This team is hitting the ball HARD. Good barrel % and Exit Velocity. They just aren’t getting the luck to bounce their way:
This also isn’t just a White Sox problem. Offense is down league-wide:
It’s becoming very clear that the Sox hired a Hall of Fame manager well past his sell-by date. A decade away from the game certainly helped his tan, but it didn’t do him any favors to jump back in and win in this modern era of the game. He’s rusty, and he doesn’t seem all that interested in shaking that rust off. Expecting him to change the way he’s been managing this team on his second go around in Chicago so far is a fools errand. He’s not going to get better at near 80 years old, the team is just going to have to step up and win without him.
His bestie is the owner of the team, his seat will never, ever be hot as long as both men reside on this mortal coil. It’s up to the Sox to rely on staying healthy and the talent that they have actually playing up their their standards.
Buckle up. It’s going to be a long successful season.