With the World Series set to begin Friday at Minute Maid Park in Houston, you can’t help but wonder what could’ve been for the Chicago White Sox.
What if they had changed managers in midcourse, as the Philadelphia Phillies did while fixing their mojo in June by replacing manager Joe Girardi with Rob Thomson?
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What if they had re-signed Carlos Rodón, who won 14 games for the San Francisco Giants and finished second among starting pitchers with a 6.2 WAR, according to Fangraphs?
What if management made a significant move at the trade deadline when the American League Central was still a winnable division?
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What if more of their players had battled through injuries like Cleveland Guardians third baseman José Ramírez, who played almost half the season with a torn UCL ligament in his right thumb that would require offseason surgery?
Many teams can lament the “what ifs” at the end of a disappointing season. But when you enter spring training with a World Series-or-bust attitude and don’t come close to making the postseason, it suggests a total breakdown from ownership to management to the players.
Everyone had a hand in the bust, but only a select few received most of the blame.
Wednesday marked the 17th anniversary of the 2005 championship, an anniversary the White Sox Twitter account ignored through the day, probably knowing the kind of replies they would get for reminding fans of the momentous occasion.
Ozzie Guillén, who managed the team to its only title in the last 105 years, tweeted about the anniversary in English and Spanish because he’s rightfully proud of his place in franchise and baseball history.
The 2005 Sox went 11-1 in the postseason and swept the Houston Astros in the World Series, a dominant display the ‘22 Astros are hoping to emulate as they take on the Phillies with a combined 7-0 record in the American League Division Series and ALCS.
It’s doubtful this year’s Sox could’ve stopped the Astros in the playoffs even if they had continued their brief hot streak in early September after the departure of manager Tony La Russa for health concerns. Still, they were only 1½ games behind the Guardians on Sept. 11, when Miguel Cairo was being heralded as the difference-maker. But an eight-game losing streak from Sept. 20-28 left them 11 games back by season’s end, and La Russa announced during the final homestand he would not return in 2023.
That was the best news angry Sox fans could hope for, though they also have to trust that management will make the right moves to ensure next season isn’t a repeat of the debacle of 2022.
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General manager Rick Hahn has conducted a stealthy search for La Russa’s replacement, and while some names have been rumored to have interviewed, including Astros bench coach Joe Espada and Kansas City Royals bench coach Pedro Grifol, there have been no real clues on which direction the Sox might be headed.
It could be an experienced manager who has won at this level, an up-and-comer who has paid his dues as a bench coach or a close friend of Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf.
Let’s assume Reinsdorf learned his lesson and will bow out of the decision-making process, leaving it to Hahn to make the final call, which likely removes Guillén from the picture. It’s difficult for Reinsdorf to admit he was wrong, as we saw when Michael Jordan said at the end of “The Last Dance” that the core of the Chicago Bulls dynasty didn’t have to be broken up after their sixth title in 1998, changing the team-approved narrative 22 years later.
“I was not pleased. How’s that?” Reinsdorf told NBC Sports Chicago’s K.C. Johnson. “He knew better. Michael and I had some private conversations at that time that I won’t go into detail on ever. But there’s no question in my mind that Michael’s feeling at the time was we could not put together a championship team the next year.”
So would Reinsdorf admit the La Russa hire was the wrong decision? Not in this lifetime. But he might admit to himself that Hahn should get to pick the next manager.
No matter who replaces La Russa, it’s going to take a lot more than a new manager to convince Sox fans things are going to turn around quickly. The probable departure of free agent Jose Abreu might open up the first-base spot for Andrew Vaughn, but glaring holes remain at second, third and catcher. And who knows if Lance Lynn and Michael Kopech can stay healthy for an entire season or whether Lucas Giolito will rebound in his walk year?
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Barring massive changes, this remains a team with poor defense, a lack of baserunning instincts and too many DHs and bloated contracts to count on one hand. Backing up the truck wouldn’t be the worst game plan.
“It’s easy at the end of a disappointing season to say you’ve got to burn it to the ground,” Hahn said during his end-of–season autopsy. “That’s not where we’re at as an organization. There’s a good amount of talent there. There’s talent that’s performed at an elite level. We’ve got to figure out a way to get them back to that level and augment accordingly.”
There is indeed talent, but perhaps we overestimated the amount of it in the Sox clubhouse. And yes, sometimes you have to learn how to play through key injuries, as the Phillies did this season, going 32-20 in the two months Bryce Harper missed with a broken left thumb.
A new manager can do only so much. It’s going to take a whole new attitude and perhaps several new players to get to that World Series the Sox believed was possible when spring training began in Glendale, Ariz.
The Sox are deluding themselves to think otherwise.
