The White Sox are getting worse at describing their health despite all the practice

2022-07-30 05:20:00 By : Ms. Christine Wu

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From Tim Anderson sitting the second game of the second half to Andrew Vaughn resting his legs in the fourth, Tony La Russa’s lineup cards wasted no time hogging all the time under the microscope.

Even Hawk Harrelson added his baritone to the frustrated chorus during last Friday’s Mully & Haugh Show on 670 The Score, except he directed his ire at outside agitators.

“The guys are on the DL all the time,” Harrelson said. “I told a good friend of mine a long time when they first brought in the 10-day DL rule, I said the agents are going to stick it up your ass with that 10-day DL rule. And boy they have done it. It’s just that simple. It’s turned into an agent’s game now. You take a guy like Scott Boras, his combined stable last year, their salaries were ($1.2 billion). And he just turned down a 23-year-old player (Juan Soto) for a $440-million contract. You know, when I broke in, you could’ve bought every team in baseball for $440 million.” […]

“(I like their outlook), if the guys will play, which they haven’t so far,” Harrelson said. “If they’ll play, hell, all they’ve got to do is they come up every day, ‘Well, my legs are sore’ or ‘I hit the wall, and I’m going to go on the DL.’ And a lot of this is coming from the agents. Because what they’re trying to do is prolong the shelf life of their clients, especially the pitchers. I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s just an agent’s game today, and it’s getting worse and worse and worse. And I don’t know what they’re going to do to stop it. They’re maybe going to have to take that 10-day rule out of play because of the fact agents have abused it. And I don’t blame them that much. Because if you were an agent or I was an agent, we’d be doing the same daggum thing. We’d be trying to prolong the shelf life of our players, especially the pitchers.

I’d be more open to indulging Harrelson here because when it comes to the 2022 White Sox, yes, every day is spent seeing what condition their conditions are in. The problem is that agent-blaming is one of the last rants he overdubbed into his Fidelipac of grievances over the last years of his broadcast career. In one of the flatter moments of his send-off season in 2018, he needed fewer than two full innings with fellow septuagenarians Steve Stone and Tom Paciorek before he started randomly going off on the scourge of guaranteed contracts. He could very well be right here; it’s just hard to regard it as a carefully considered opinion when it’s far more likely a convenient opening for Corporate Hawk to rehash a tirade.

That said, the guaranteed nature of a couple contracts — those issued to Eloy Jiménez and Luis Robert — have captured my curiosity over the last two seasons. I’m sure many of you have sensed that, mostly because I keep wondering aloud why a copycat league didn’t follow Rick Hahn’s unprecedented pre-MLB contracts for both of them.

The leading answer seems to be “because it’s not worth it.” As frustrating as Robert and Jiménez have been, they’re far more successful than Scott Kingery and Evan White, the only other two players to have signed such deals in the same area code.

At least with Robert and Jiménez, the answer is simple — they just haven’t been healthy to fully realize the value.

They’ve been great when fully functional. Jiménez won a Silver Slugger in 2020, but he’s required early-season surgeries in each of the last two years. He belted a pair of homers to help the Sox turn an 0-2 hole into a four-game split, but he’s trying to thrive while working around the most defined kind of vague leg to date:

But before Jimenez can regain redemption, the discomfort in his surgically repaired right hamstring must subside or allow him to curb the freedom that baserunners have displayed on hits to either side.

The pain “is going to be there for a while,” Jimenez said before Sunday’s game. “It’s normal, but it’s something you don’t want to feel when you’re playing. But I’ll try to do my best, go out there and help the team.”

Robert’s last two seasons amount to one very good one …

… but it’s felt short of sensational because he’s missed chunks of time for reasons big and small, with the big one (hip flexor surgery) occurring on a random baseball play. His latest hot streak was halted by a bout of lightheadedness, which is a new sort of invisible enemy holding the Sox down. Rick Hahn hopes he’s back for the weekend series in Oakland, but this seems well short of expecting:

More Hahn on Robert: "Ideally his symptoms are fully resolved in the coming days, we ramp him back up and he’s back when we start the next homestand."

Especially when La Russa alludes to a life outside baseball, or after it?

‘‘Keep your fingers crossed — and more for him personally than professionally,’’ manager Tony La Russa said.

The maddeningly opaque descriptions have exacerbated frustrations, and part of me wonders if this is a product of them having signed big guaranteed contracts. Had they been working on year-to-year deals, minor league options would present a pressure release valve for the most troubled times, giving a player to fully recover while stopping the clock.

But considering these are supposed to be the bargain years that afforded Hahn to splurge (after a fashion) elsewhere, the meter keeps running, and everybody can keep looking at it. That generates an sense of ni shagu nazad, no matter how punishing the present. Success through such determination is possible, but this franchise’s recent history is one of actions leaving words hanging.

Except Andrew Vaughn pokes a hole in that whole theory, doesn’t he? The White Sox are guiding him through the second year of an up-and-down career with his neck free of anything resembling an albatross, and he somehow ends up with the craziest descriptions of his mud-clear condition.

On Sunday, Tony La Russa offered a lengthy explanation as to why Vaughn couldn’t play a fourth consecutive day in the outfield, even before a two-off-day week. I transcribed Vinnie Duber’s screenshots, including La Russa’s brief detour into bar soap slogan A/B testing.

“In Andrew’s case, he’s (been playing) out in the outfield. I talked to him this morning and talked to (White Sox trainer James) Kruk and thought it would be a good break. We were careful with his legs there for a while, and he’s starting to feel himself. So it’s a good day to back off.

“Sometimes you need freshness of mind, and (sometimes) you need freshness of body. The case here, it’s freshness of body. The guy’s not going to go out there when he’s all tight and hurt, and he plays and pulls something, tears something. What’s the point? He had four days off and three rugged days here. He ran a lot. Believe me, if there wasn’t a good reason, Andrew’s as good a hitter as we have in our lineup, he’d be in the lineup. There’s a good reason.” […]

“(If) you want to C.Y.A. (cover your ass) and write someone in that shouldn’t play, that’s just not sensible. Vaughn, physically, would be a push we would regret if something happened and then he’s out for two or three weeks because he pulled something. The easy one with him is that he just went through a period where he was running at 75 percent. So sometimes it’s not a tough call. This was an easy one to give him a day off. And believe me, against anybody, we want Andrew Vaughn in the lineup.

If the rationale were limited to the last paragraph, I’d get it, at least to the extent that I’ve gotten the umpteen other injuries the Sox have similarly characterized. But when they talk about him having a limited amount of full-speed activity before he needs to recharge, he sounds less like an outfielder and more like a nitro-burning unfunny car.

As a result, whenever he has to exert himself in the field and on the basepaths, I can’t help but picture the Excitebike heat gauge melting in seconds.

Except in Excitebike, overheating cost you about five seconds. With Vaughn, it costs him a day or three. The White Sox have had a veritable smorgasbord of leg ailments, but I don’t recall one that was so sensitive to the efforts of a given day.

This issue doesn’t get any easier the next two days, what with the White Sox’s ragtag band of outfielders having to cover the vast expanse of Coors Field. I’m holding out a slight hope that all these confusing, conflicting, confounding combination of audio, visuals and text is just an intricately constructed cry for help that will go heeded. The Sox only have a couple outfielders who don’t cause any reflexive amount of concern with basic exertion, and one of them is Gavin Sheets.

The only issue is that once the White Sox acquire a guy, that player becomes a White Sox. There’s no way around it. In the one universe where they have the four or five young players Washington reportedly wants for Juan Soto, he’d have to wear the uniform, go to the training room, sit in the dugout, walk and run on the same surfaces, when they’d really be better off having Soto play for the Nationals, import his performances and adjust the results retroactively.

Until that happens, the White Sox are going to have to work on their health. Failing that, they’re going to have to improve their health-care communication, because it’s never great when Harrelson’s conspiracy theories sound just as cohesive as anything the team is putting forth.

Writing about the White Sox for a 16th season, first here, then at South Side Sox, and now here again. Let’s talk curling.

The Robert situation is the most annoying for me.

Was he sent to a specialist or did the initial look over by team doctors render that unnecessary?

We have our first case of vague eyeball.

He was supposedly seeing specialists, and I couldn’t imagine otherwise

https://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/sportsxchange/white-sox-of-luis-robert-to-see-specialist-no-il-decision/article_e775439f-c25f-5594-a33b-e4119bee225c.html

It might fall somewhat other White Sox secrecy, but health is also a personal matter. In this case, it seems reasonable not to get detailed, daily updates.

I’m glad he saw a specialist.

There’s no way he wouldn’t see a specialist for something this serious. Reading between the lines with La Russa’s comments, it sounds like it’s potentially serious (neurological) or potentially open ended (like vertigo). I’m guessing they may not have a diagnosis narrowed down yet. It’s more vague than diagnosing a knee injury.

Yeah, this isn’t a baseball injury like a hamstring. Will cut the Sox slack for not saying much. Though, the longer this goes, the easier it becomes to get more concerned.

Thanks, Jim! This is one of my favorite Margalus headlines of the year…right up there with “failing to understand, and then understanding the failure” of the 8-5 triple play.

Corporate Hawk seems to hate that the players are doing so well, while Player Hawk once threw a tantrum and briefly retired because he was traded somewhere he didn’t want to go. Would be interesting to hear those two Hawks have a conversation; they seem to have very conflicting views.

It’s definitely annoying to me to see the way our roster is used compared to teams that rotate guys in from the minors constantly and as needed. I’m not sure what is achieved by having a team full of hurt guys riding the pine, but I also think giving minor leaguers stints in MLB here and there helps their development, further motivates them, and also allows mgmt to paint a more accurate picture of the player and what they can do for the big league club. I think Zavala is a good example of what can happen when someone is coming up to the show here and there.

In that same interview Hawk mentioned that he was the second player to ever have an agent.

I haven’t heard the Hawk interview and I certainly won’t seek it out. I can’t think of any reason I would pay any attention to Hawk’s views on anything. I view Jason Benetti as the reward Sox fans have received for enduring decades of Hawk.

The last few years were meh but Hawk was great for decades before age caught up with him like it does to all announcers.

What’s the team’s obligation to give a straight answer on health to fans? I remember when hockey teams starting saying things no more specific than “upper body” or “lower body” injury. I also don’t think HIPAA strictly applies, but I wonder if players (or their agents – to ride a Hawk hobby horse) are asking for more privacy just because they like privacy but also because they don’t want more information affecting their free agency than necessary (although a missed game is a missed game no matter the reason).

I mean, to me the most obvious answer is that fans want to team to win, so when our best payers aren’t playing it would be nice to know why.

In other sports, probably especially hockey and football, could definitely believe that there’s a competitive advantage to know where a guy is injured so I kind of get it.

I don’t know what competitive advantage there is in baseball if another team knows why Luis Robert is having vertigo / concussion type symptoms (although pretty scary what options are out there, so hopefully the kid is alright and it’s nothing super serious).

Can’t vouch for the strength of the argument, but a friend of mine who is a hockey fan suggested the upper/lower body injury move also helps reduce potential targeting of a specific injured area when a player is back on the ice. On the other hand, the NFL offers pretty clear injury reports – at least which specific body part is the issue so maybe the “targeting” logic isn’t part of it.

Considering the level of violent contact that can occur in hockey or football, I’d understand organizations trying to keep injuries close to the vest. The Sox acting so cagey about their injury situations and decisions is just odd. Are we worried the other team’s catcher is going to try to take a dive at Andrew Vaughn’s knees if we disclose an injury?

I’m not sure what the official MLB policy requires for disclosure, but the Sox have created a PR problem with this. We’ve got a lot of injuries and fans are expecting the team to be a contender. As such, we reasonably want to know what’s going on with the health of the players. And trying to just give us the “well, hopefully he’ll be back soon” or “yeah, it’s just a day off for freshness” approach when timing becomes odd or concerning is making it worse.

The way the injuries and time off have been handled this year is nothing short of weird. I appreciated commenters on this here site pointing out that Eloy was doing an awful lot of DH’ing when he was on his previous rehab assignment, which seemed strange if he was supposed to get healthy enough to play the OF. It’s enough to cause engaged fans to wonder if the org knows what they’re doing on the injury front….

I think all of MLB’s gambling partners want teams to be transparent about injuries. Pretty sure that’s why the NFL has been the most transparent (even before they had official partnerships, they know that a huge chunk of the interest in the NFL was related to gambling).

A team can be generic for their reasons on why Player X is now on the 10 or 15-day Injured List.

7-day has to be specific with a concussion or COVID symptoms.

Now, it’s really about who is controlling the message. The White Sox like to be vague.

The Tampa Bay Rays this week were very specific on what happened to Kevin Kiermaier and Mike Zunino, who are now both out for the season.

Whether it’s reporting injuries, roster explanation, or pretty much about everything concerning the organization, the White Sox are cloak and dagger. It’s very odd.

Good example of NFL injury reporting

https://twitter.com/RapSheet/status/1551970594975096837

MLB version would be “Joe Burrow is experiencing abdomen soreness.”

“Sometimes you need freshness of mind, and sometimes you need freshness of internal organs.”

Also as Jim made clear, you’re not fully clean unless you’re zest-fully clean.

The result of building a roster with 6 DH’s and position players with long injury histories.

+1 to this. Who would’ve guessed that building an extremely fragile starting OF, backed up with a 4th OF who is also highly breakable in Engel, could’ve been an issue?

And their self-inflicted backlog of 1B/DH types comes from an inability to sufficiently develop and/or flip those players in a timely manner. There’s nothing wrong with drafting a bunch of bat-first guys who may end up as 1B/DH types, but you need to accept the limitations of the players and use some as trade chips instead of just shoving them awkwardly into corner OF spots.

I’m pretty sure I’m in the minority, but the 1B/DH glut is mostly (not entirely) one of them good problems to have. It means that Abreu played up to his contract (that was almost universally considered an overpay when it was signed) to the point that he might get the same AAV again. It means that Vaughn developed quickly enough to be a major leaguer almost immediately.

If Abreu was washed up and Vaugh was still in the minors (two situations no one would agree is better than what we have now), then you’d be able to rotate Jimenez and Grandal at 1B and DH, while Sheets would either be a PH/26th man type or in AAA…and the team would be worse than it is today.

So yeah, sure, now some decisions have to be made to clear the logjam but the logjam was created as much by good luck as bad.

Sure, it’s a good problem to have. You’d always rather see your prospects and players deliver value. But this team hasn’t demonstrated an ability to take advantage of that, and the relative lack of success the Sox have had developing prospects is likely the main reason they couldn’t capitalize on their collection of DH/1B guys. As sad as it is to say, Jerry’s Heroes don’t generally create situations where prospects are blocked at the MLB level.

Part of me wanted the team to flip Gavin Sheets last offseason. While it may have felt counter-intuitive to move a young lefty bat, he was coming off a surprisingly strong year that included a .900 OPS against RHP. And given the presence of Abreu, Grandal, Jimenez, and Vaughn, the FO knew there were going to only be so many 1B/DH at-bats to go around. Even with Grandal and Jimenez missing time, there’s still a logjam. And that’s without the possibility that Burger could fit the same role as his bat has shown value and the fielding (unsurprisingly) is not great at 3B.

I’m with Paulie Paulie and Torpedo Jones on this one. Teams that are able to compete every year see this sort of problem coming and re-allocate assets. The Sox just don’t operate that way. As examples, I think the Rays, A’s, Cards, Braves and Padres (who all operate in different ways) might have traded from that glut in the off-season.

Also, the Sox as a franchise just do not place value on defense in the outfield corners. See e.g., Springer, George.

I highly doubt anyone would trade their only catcher after the second half he had last year.

Sheets shouldn’t be in the conversation of “too many 1b/DH” as he shouldn’t be on a major league club. The real problem is they’ve refused to sign any legit outfielders. There’s been so many free agents available (Springer as you noted would have been great) and the Sox refuse to bring any of them on.

If you re-sign your aging first baseman…draft two first basemen…sign Eloy to a guaranteed contract…and have an older catcher who was unable to get through the year last year with a full workload… then you go and trade for a guy who played more DH than CF or RF in recent years to be your RF…then you gotta be willing to move somebody….Anybody…they should not have started the season with this mess.

Older guys who play 1B and C usually age to DH. And guys who are drafted acquired to be 1B/LF/DH rarely end up being good defenders at any other position.

… then you go and trade for a guy who played more DH than CF or RF in recent years to be your RF…

Who’s that? Pollock? It’s even worse than that as he only started 1 game in RF in the 10 years before this year….and that was back in 2013….1 game in RF.

Not gonna lie – I actually thought flipping Kimbrel for Pollock was a huge win. I assumed we were stuck with that albatross of a contract and we got a guy who was, at least at some point, a legitimate professional outfielder. Which is more than can be said of sticking Andrew Vaughn out there.

Yeah, I am pretty forgiving of not playing Vaughn much in the OF. One, he is awful there and two, his body probably just isn’t designed to handle it

Related to this whole Hawk rant re agents is also just the question of whether some of these players and their agents, justified or not, sense that the organization (Jerry, Tony) doesn’t have their backs.

You can see how they might come to question that. As a recent example, the leaked Nightengale thing about a lack of leadership in the clubhouse indicates an organization that sometimes positions itself in opposition to the players. And Jerry is notoriously (see what I did there) anti-labor, and coming out of the lockout that may be on the minds of some of these guys.

Eloy says he’s playing while hurt, Vaughn clearly is, it looks like both Pollack and Harrison are, and they’ve almost all come back within the expected amount of time from their respective injuries, I don’t think there’s a lack of urgency or sense of responsibility from the players. They just seem to get hurt.. all the time.

I don’t know if that’s bad luck, bad training staff, bad preparation or what but it doesn’t seem to be an unwillingness to play / tough it out from the players.

Since they started handling running differently, we haven’t seen injuries running the bases. Knock on wood. I agree there isn’t any lack of effort keeping guys off the field. They seem to be out there playing.

I also am not sure they have been especially injured, aside from the nagging injuries. Robert, Mendick and Burger are the only IL position players right now, and their entire rotation is intact. That looks better than many teams.

I don’t doubt that they are hurting. Many players are at this point in the season. It’s just a question of how willing they are to play hurt for this org.

But they literally answered that question for you, they’re doing it, they’re clearly willing.

Maybe what everyone says is accurate and everyone is playing as hard as they can and the clubhouse is a happy place and Tony LaRussa is widely beloved. Or maybe people who say things to journalists are thinking about how what they say will sound. I can’t imagine anyone on the active roster saying “look, we’re all half assing it this year because this is a shit show.” So I wouldn’t take their public statements to the bank.

As fans we kind of have two choices, we can believe everything they say and never second guess anything, which would make this a boring site/community (Jim could literally just print the press releases, which is frankly what a lot of coverage of local politics has become). Or we can speculate and try to fill in some blanks with our own observations. People who know how to talk to the media sound like Rick Hahn – they never say anything meaningful, they just make sure that they come off smelling like roses.

Being a Sox fan is like having an eagle eat your liver every day….

…and pluck your hamstrings for dessert

But what good did we ever bring to humanity?

See you at the game today. Not sure what I was thinking with my 1AM flight thereafter.. I might be dead to the world by the time I reach my final destination tomorrow… Like a white sox player with dead legs.

Maybe it’s because I work in information security, or because if I was Robert I wouldn’t want any more of my medical information then necessary getting out, but this is not anywhere on my list of concerns for the White Sox. While it is nice getting good information on what’s happening with injuries, I don’t care at all if I don’t get it.

I assume you don’t wager on baseball then?

I think someone’s medical privacy takes priority over the vices of the masses.

Thank you for this article Jim. A masterpiece of yours we take for granted every day.

The White Sox seems to have an ensemble of players that during a 7 games playoff will find some of the key players sitting in some games to keep them fresh for the ….for some reason.

Szymborski proposed a trade on FG: Happ to CHW, for Kelley, Colas, and Vera to CHC. Happ is a useful player but I think that’s a steep price due to Colas and Vera improving their stock a lot this year. Jose Rodriguez + Matthew Thompson + maybe Kelley, maybe a lesser pitcher would be preferable to me.

Wouldn’t be preferable to the Chicago Cubs.

For a year and a half of Happ, I think that’s probably the appropriate cost.

I also don’t think the Sox should do it…the team isn’t good enough to justify trading prospects to try to patch holes.

I think the trade is acceptable if it happens before the season, or particularly before Vera debuts. He’s already fairly polished and is now sitting 95-98, touching 100. Him OR Colas, you think about it, but not both.

For me, Colas and Vera is too much. Not for a year and a half of Happ. Happ is a decent player but not enough of a difference maker to justify.

You know he wouldn’t even play every day with our manager. They have a logjam of players for corner OF and DH… Eloy, Pollock, Vaughn, Engel with Grandal as the alternate DH.

I don’t think they are within striking distance of the Astros, Yankees, and probably Jays to give up their best minor league players. Unless it was for 2+ years of Soto, which is a pipe dream. Soto changes their chances in the playoffs by enough to justify a big trade, Happ is not a big enough player, my opinion. I’d much rather have Vera and Colas around to see what they do in 2-3 years, especially Vera.

I would be more than content with them not doing anything stupid than doing something to improve marginally.

I wonder if a pretty close analog is… Craig Kimbrel? And Madrigal + Heuer feels a little lighter to me than this package. So, I do think the package Z suggested is a bit much. But it’s probably not far off. How about Colas and Mena?

I think the Cubs would be pretty happy with that. I’m just really resistant to trading Colas, or Ramos or Montgomery for that matter, because they have such brutal depth issues and the farm system is the way to solve that. It’s especially difficult say right though, because several of these dudes have scouting reports from spring training that may already be pretty outdated. Montgomery obviously has exploded, Mena was really effective at Low-A but I don’t know if he’s throwing harder, this is Vera and Colas’ first years stateside, Sosa some kind of change and tore up AA, etc.

Yeah, that’s fair. I think this is roughly fair value, but I’m torn. I’d be more interested if the Sox didn’t already have something of a glut at OF or Happ were a better fielder. But I guess if you think Pollock is toast and never want to see Sheets/Vaughn in the OF, it still makes some sense.

I think Pollock’s been playing hurt, maybe oblique, or maybe just legs like everyone else is what’s up. He hasn’t been turning on balls with authority most of the year, hence the power and BABIP missing. That first series in Detroit he was turning on pitches and driving them pullside in the air with authority, but I haven’t seen that much at all until maybe this last series, where he took Bieber deep to left obv but I recall that earlier in the series, he also turned on and hooked a ball just foul pullside that woulda been gone if fair.

It’s a little counterintuitive, but I think it’s also why he’s seeing a ton of righty sliders in/around the zone this year. There’s two ways to attack a same-handed slider in the zone. The first is the 20th century classic method: keep your weight balanced and just use your hand-eye shoot it the opposite way. Usually that’s gonna be for singles; this is what TA is great at.

The modern method is to load up, keeping the weight all back in order to push hard off it, with the goal of almost lunging with a power cut, to go meet the ball ‘out front’ before it breaks much, with the aim of hitting the pitch in the air into left-center or so. Abreu’s pretty good at this. The catch here is that if the ball’s not too far over the plate, it requires a lot of strength to hit it hard enough to be a 2B/HR and not just a fly ball out. If you watch Pollock’s swing from the side, he’s totally set up for this approach, but he’s not been healthy enough for it to work.

I get that baseball is a 162 game, nearly daily grind. Travel, soreness, bumps, bruises are just a part of the grind.

BUT we’re not talking about a ton of physical exertion. Jim’s clip or Vaughn sprinting in RF was 10 seconds of which he may have been exerting himself for 4. Then he goes back to standing in RF for the majority of the time or sitting in a dugout waiting to hit. It’s frustrating to see professional athletes get treated with kid gloves. If Vaughn sprinting after a ball or running the bases causes the need to constantly rest or soreness, something is wrong with how he is preparing his body or Hawk is spot on about the 10 Day IL/agent conspiracy theory.

I think players work a lot harder when not actually in games these days than Hawk and his contemporaries did. Those old timers mostly just ran or rode the exercise bike a lot and rarely looked at a weight; indeed, until the 80s it was thought that lifting weights was detrimental for baseball players. Guys today are doing stuff in the weight room that is on par with NFL players, and they have to maintain that in-season for months on top of the grind.

Games are also much longer than during Hawk’s time. Guys used to stand for half of a 2 hr game. Now they play 3-4 hr marathons. All that additional standing, especially in the heat, over the course of a season has to take a toll on a body.

I agree with you, lifelongjd. I consider myself to be more sympathetic to players/millionaires than owners/billionaires (hence the Zapata picture)…and that in spite of the fact that I spent years in management and have not been represented in a bargaining unit.

I watch a lot of baseball games. Other teams’ outfielders will lay out for a screaming liner. Other teams back up plays and run harder on the bases.

I get and sympathize with all the travel, being away from home, sleeping in hotels, etc. And I blame the owners and not the players for the lockout and shortened spring training.

…But I think it is fair for someone watching this team to wonder what is so hard about charging a ground ball in the outfield, or running for a couple of seconds to chase a line drive in the gap, or trying to stretch a single to a double every now and then. But this year those things seem to be hard for this group of guys more than in any recent season that I can remember.

There is a lot more movement than we see. Every infield ground ball or play to 1B needs some reaction by the RF who may need to back up or doesn’t know if that ball reaches the oufield.

The White Sox #1 problem is, was, and always will be a lack of quality player depth.

This is July and the Sox are resting players due to tired legs? Anybody else see that as an issue? October will bring the playoffs and tired legs will not work then.

I was really struck the other day when the Sox lost track of the number of outs IN THE TOP OF THE 9th INNING. After they threw the ball around the infield, Tom Hamilton (Cleveland radio) reacted with something like “that more or less sums up the 2022 Sox”. Which I think is true.

I, for one, sure miss Hawk. Wimpy too. They were he best in baseball. DJ wasn’t bad either. Time marches on but not always for the better.

Looks like a Robert update was posted to the injury report yesterday:

“He seems like he’s improving every day, except he’s still getting tested,” manager Tony La Russa said of Robert. “But there has been improvement. He’s doing more baseball stuff.”

https://www.mlb.com/whitesox/news/white-sox-injuries-and-roster-moves