By Andrew Reilly

So Sox brass is upset with the team’s performance, and that’s all well and good, what with the whole “don’t lose control of your club” thing generally being an admirable way to run a ballclub.
But.
The thing is, when this is over, the heads that roll will probably not be those of the Mark Teahens and Randy Williamses of the world. Those players in particular may go but we will see again what we have seen before. They’ll bring in fresh cannon fodder and wonder why the guy with a history of terrible fielding can’t contribute defensively. They’ll build a bullpen out of swiss cheese and wonder out loud why no lead is safe. They’ll stock up on guys of dubious offensive merit and wonder why the bats can only deliver just enough runs to lose.
On the plus side, their newly-acquired ace is well on the road to becoming a great six-inning pitcher and two-thirds of the new outfield could finish first and second in comeback player of the year awards; I hesitate to throw “MVP” out there because teams this bad tend to not produce players of serious consideration in that category.
So with that, they brace for showdowns with three models of everything the Sox are doing wrong. The Angels’ player development and clinics in fundamentals showing how to lay down bunts that aren’t popped up and how to advance runners beyond second base. The Tigers showing how much fun you can have when your owner is crazy enough to not care about losing money. The Marlins giving a veritable master class on drafting and how to really win on the cheap, rather than just filling in the gaps with low-rent second-tier players.

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Posted on May 17, 2010

By Andrew Reilly

In a way, they’re doing everything exactly according to plan.
They have two great starting pitchers.
They have a woefully underachieving designated hitter.
They have two lousy outfielders.
They have a pair of major problems in the bullpen.
Except, you know, none of those are the right problems executed in the manner expected of them, instead entirely misplaced and made all the worse by leaving nothing better in their wake. That should’ve been Andruw Jones costing the team run after run after run, not Carlos Quentin. That should’ve been Scott Linebrink and Randy Williams softly tossing clay pigeons, not J.J. Putz and Bobby Jenks. That should’ve been Alexei Ramirez regressing as both a hitter and a fielder, not . . . wait, scratch that one.
But really, all they have to do is keep doing exactly what they’ve been doing, except do it even less. Move Alex Rios to the leadoff spot to get that much-needed speedy on-base percentage action at the top. Upgrade the infield defense by moving Juan Pierre to third, because he can’t possibly be a bigger liability than Mark Teahen. Bat Paul Konerko second so there’s someone on base once the theoretically powerful heart of the order comes up. Move the newly unreliable Gavin Floyd to the bullpen, the newly finesse-devoted Jenks to the rotation, the newly abysmal A.J. Pierzynski to Charlotte – shake it up! All of it! Because, come on, what’s the worst that could happen? Humiliation? Defeat? Abysmal attendance? Please. Those things have tried to stop these White Sox and those things have failed like so many corner outfielders flailing desperately towards a fly ball just out of reach. Let those other teams have their pointless runs and hollow victories; these White Sox have moved on such pedestrian endeavors.

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Posted on May 10, 2010

By Andrew Reilly

It’s nice to see the Sox returning to their roots. After so much bluster about “grinding” and “Ozzieball” and “not being a total disgrace,” they’ve finally acknowledged what we all have been saying for so long: the Sox are not a well-rounded, fundamentally sound team, but one that will live and die with its in-house power company. And why should they be anything else?
Why move a runner over when you’ve got an early contender for Comeback Player of the Year launching late-inning anti-aircraft weapons?
Why make routine plays at third when Alex Rios might have a trick up his sleeve?
Why close out an inning when Paul Konerko has more home runs than anyone?
And lo, when they embrace that, look what happens: they win. Yes, they look ridiculous and half of their wins for the season are now totally transparent but that’s worlds better than looking like, say, the Royals, who only own the basement thanks to a miserable defender so pivotal in bringing the Sox out of the darkness so long ago.
So they can win with home runs, and they’ve embraced this just in time, as none of the next few series are likely to act as clinics in old-school, play-it-the-right-way baseball any time soon. They seemed so hopeless, and yet they’ve found hope; they looked doomed to lose forever, and yet they enter the week on a fantastic little winning streak. These good times probably won’t last but, by surprising us all by merely existing in the first place, maybe they don’t have to.

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Posted on April 26, 2010

By Andrew Reilly

Yes, but what do four wins and nine losses really mean?
Maybe this is the plan all along, to lull the rest of the American League into a false sense of confidence by throwing away inconsequential games, later winning just enough to make it into the postseason through the Wild Card, then torching their way to an 11-0 postseason built upon legendary pitching and hitting so timely, so productive, so perfect the team can turn it on and off at will.
Maybe they’ve simply been up against this year’s inevitable champions, with Toronto poised to overthrow the evil dictatorship at work in the East and Minnesota and Cleveland set to stage a Central race for the ages.
Maybe they’re just getting all the bad baseball out of the way now, so they can enter the 2010 playoffs riding six months of unprecedented momentum, six months spent alternately clawing their way to unbelievable triumphs and crushing the opposition with their hammer of superiority.
Or maybe they’re actually worse than we imagined. Four and nine. There are two teams faring more poorly, and of those two, the Astros have at least won a series and the Orioles have the exact same road record as the Sox. On the other hand, the Sox are only 5.5 out of the Wild Card with 149 games left to play. That should not sound so insurmountable so early but with these White Sox, as we are quickly learning, nothing is truly impossible. Nothing, that is, except winning.

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Posted on April 20, 2010

By Andrew Reilly

Losing four of your first six games isn’t really that big a deal, so long as a team isn’t doing it:
A) in a park in which they should dominate.
B) against teams they really, really need to beat.
C) in a fashion that suggests the team’s vulnerabilities are even greater than previously imagined, including an alarming number of strikeouts by the batters, an offense so hilariously one-sided it’s launched seven home runs yet plated only 21 runners, not to mention the reliance on players performing amazing feats of glovework that, in all likelihood, will never be repeated ever, as long as any of them wear a White Sox uniform, and this nagging idea that yes, this season is going to be one long series of gems tossed by the starting staff ultimately squandered by a shaky bullpen and a lumber company that simply cannot deliver.

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Posted on April 12, 2010

And so, armed with only a staff for the ages and no bats to immortalize it, the White Sox enter 2010 a little wiser and a whole lot older.
Mark Kotsay batting fifth. Alex Rios coming off an absolutely Swisherian season. All the optimism in the world suggesting Andruw Jones will, at best, get on base 30 percent of the time. The oldest player in the American League backing up the most reckless. Mark Teahen replacing Gordon Beckham replacing Chris Getz. Their best players in decline, their eventual best not yet there, and the whole thing just reeking of another season spent envying the competition. But it’s only April, so let’s not yet dwell on things which might not happen.

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Posted on April 5, 2010

By Andrew Reilly
Winning? Keeping division rivals from advancing through key moments? Who do these White Sox think they are? How dare they not sputter out and die like any self-respecting loser would?
Oh, sure, there are those lovely sound bites about fighting to the end, respecting the game, et al et cetera, which all certainly sounds cool but you know when fighting and winning would’ve sounded even cooler? August.
So we leave this season on a relatively high note the way we want to, so full of hope at what this recent burst of baseball vitality suggests, but also down and out because, you know, they were terrible. And they pretty much always were, even when they were good. Yes, there were those few days they spent at the top, but what good did any of that get them?
Mark Buehrle didn’t throw a perfect game because the 2009 Sox were a good team.
Gordon Beckham didn’t shine as a rookie because the 2009 Sox were a good team.
Jake Peavy didn’t end up in Chicago because the 2009 Sox were a good team.
But the Sox, those marginally useless and mostly non-spectacular Sox we just spent the past six months cheering and cursing, showed us once and for all that, in baseball, teamwork trumps all. Because while any individual good came about in spite of the Sox, they ended up with nothing to show for the season for the exact same reason: the 2009 Sox didn’t finish in a sub-.500 third place by being a good team. But you know that already. And, I suspect, so do they.

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Posted on October 4, 2009

By Andrew Reilly
If the White Sox run the table from here on out, history will inevitably add variants of “just another .500 team” to the litany of alternately bland and damning terms needed to talk about this club.
“They were terrible, but at least they didn’t have a losing record.”

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“They couldn’t hold a lead to save their life, but at least they didn’t have a losing record.”
“They couldn’t put up a fight when they needed to, but at least they didn’t have a losing record.”
And to this, let us collectively ask, “who cares if they didn’t lose 82 games?” At best, they can only finish in a tie for second place, and the Sox themselves have not just shown but also told us just how much a near-miss is worth. So why bother? Why not just tank the rest of the way and take that 10th pick in next year’s draft for all it’s worth?

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Posted on September 28, 2009

By Andrew Reilly
It’s unfortunate Jake Peavy threw a good game Saturday, because now we Sox fans can play the game of “what if?” while the Sox themselves go on playing “strike out looking” and “load the bases and score zero runs.” And as the season enters its desperate final weeks, maybe this is how we can stay interested while we stay home.
What if Carlos Quentin hadn’t done exactly what he’s done every non-2008 year of his career? With another 50 RBI to their credit, the Sox could be watching the out-of-town scoreboard seriously, like a team for whom other teams’ fortunes count, rather than pathetically, like a certain broadcaster’s ruminations during Sunday’s “big” game against the last-place Royals.
What if Josh Fields didn’t wait two years to have his sophomore slump? Even if he’d been merely adequate, the Sox wouldn’t have needed to call in Gordon “Calvary” Beckham, whose initial burst of brilliance once suggested October but has since cooled off into that same mere adequacy Fields could, nay, should have provided.
What if Nick Swisher hadn’t been such a disaster last season? Perhaps his poop jokes and needlessly elaborate high-fives would be exactly what the South Siders need to stay loose down the stretch instead of relying on more tired, conventional methods. Like winning, for example, which is obviously out of the question.

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Posted on September 20, 2009

By Andrew Reilly
For reasons still not entirely known, I joined a fantasy football league last week. Perhaps it was for the thrill of low-stakes gambling, or perhaps it was for the simple pleasure of worrying how many points the Oakland Raiders will give up to the Eagles in Week Six.
But oh, what great surprise when I looked this morning at our league’s standings, saw I was in a respectable third place, heard some supposedly awful news about my players’ sad performances and simply did not care. At all. Not that I wanted to lose ground so early or anything, and not that I didn’t expect greatness out of Messrs. Johnson, Turner et al, but having no real attachment to any of these players I could let their missteps slide. At the same time, viewing these greats of the gridiron not through the prism of who they are (or how I relate to them) but in terms of simple output made it easier to not worry about the fate of their teams – just the fate of my collective.
And it got me thinking about a way to enjoy the tail end of this year’s White Sox tailspin. Not quite fantasy baseball, but fantasy bad baseball.

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Posted on September 15, 2009