When Teams Are Sellers

As I write this, Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo Lopez, Lance Lynn, Joe Kelly and Kendall Graveman have all been traded away. Others, like Tim Anderson, have been rumored to have many inquiries and may go at any time. Or everyone may stay. It's really hard to tell what potential trades work and which fall apart until they get to that stage.

While this sell off signals the failure of the rebuild, it's also a time of hope and wonderment. One could drive themselves crazy analyzing everything that didn't work out the way it expected to. Whether it was injuries, laziness, sleeping managers or pod people, the end result was two years of soft playoff appearances and a huge cliff dive.

Ultimately, it comes down to the ineffectiveness of the Cerberus that is Jerry Reinsdorf, Kenny Williams and Rick Hahn. The talent was there, but there seems to be a missing ingredient that left the White Sox more comparable to a yeast-less dinner roll rather than a robust fluffy pillow of bread that compliments a cinnamon butter spread perfectly.

There seems to be major flaws in scouting. This hits all facets of scouting. Drafting is especially heinous. How else can so many high draft picks flame out? Assessing proper value on trades is spotty at best. Even in the actual games that all of this is building towards, the White Sox can't seem to capitalize on mistakes and weaknesses. When they actually do, everyone seems so distracted that things went well, that they give those runs right back with interest.

Does blame fall on upper management, the coaching staff, or the players themselves? In a word... yes. There are a lot of decisions that have to happen right above the players for them to be in the best position to win. That includes assessment of talent, training regimens, preparation of games, proper motivation and in the moment game decisions. That does not let the players off the hook. Chemistry is very important, but when the chemistry leads everywhere except the win column, it is not charging towards the task at hand. Friendships are awesome, but this is also a job. Individual accomplishments are great motivators, but it should not be the only one. Championships do not rely on team chemistry, but it goes a long way in helping.

At the end of the day, the players are responsible for what happens on the field. They have the immediate impact on the team's success. When players lazily run out ground balls, don't have good reads on balls in play or completely waste at-bats, it makes winning that much harder. Carlton Fisk would drop dead from an arrhythmia if he were coaching this team. Deion Sanders may actually have his back on this one.

There are no easy fixes for this. I love the fact that Jerry Reinsdorf prefers to keep most people in the fold. It's great to see the ambassadors and former players as coaches and in other positions within the organization. I love it, but it's just not working that effectively anymore. Neither is the maddening random decisions on when to open the pocketbooks and when not to. Let's throw $12 million at a problem pitcher who may not be effective (and was in danger of not pitching due to those problems), but be stingy at a proven player in his prime because he wants a few more million per year. It's also at this point that I realize that I will never sniff the kind of money even the most fringe athlete gets and even Seby Zavala will be at a financial level I will never get close to.

Now let's get to the upside, because there is an upside to all of this. The last time the White Sox did a major overhaul, they got back some really nice pieces that had a really great chance at gelling and making the team a force to be reckoned with for years to come. That didn't exactly pan out, but the move was bold and exciting. I was genuinely interested in the future of the team. I was invested. Refresh and renewal is an admittance of failure, but it is also a time of eternal optimism. 

No team wants to go back to square one. I don't believe the White Sox will ultimately have to. They will have to have a long look at their organization and make some very hard decisions. If they can do that without rose tinted glasses, things will start improving fast. A mix of good rookies and solid veterans can be a glorious experience. 2023 is a lost season. So much potential wasted. It's not entirely their fault, but they definitely have not maximized the tools that they had.

Since this is essentially a baseball card blog, I'll end this with something card related. If the Sox play their cards right, I should have some new and exciting cards to collect in 2024.

The First White Sox Card Of 2023 Is...

 

Well... it's that time of year again.

Topps Series One is officially out, marking the first genuine 2023 cards on the market. One aspect of this release that I really enjoy is seeing what White Sox card will be the first to appear in a pack that I open.

Sometimes it tells me what kind of a year I'll have collecting. Sometimes it doesn't. Either way, it's pure fun and has become a tradition.

It can be full of intrigue and mystery, just like Ozzie Smith stuck at the Springfield Mystery Spot. The vendor at work was amazing at getting these out relatively on time. Compared to the last few years, one day after release was stupendous.

I picked a blaster box at random, checked out and took it home. There awaited surprises in each sealed pack. There's nothing quite like the feeling of opening a fresh pack ahead of a brand new season.

The first White Sox card of 2023 is...

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Davis Martin

I'm not sure who I was expecting, but this was the last name that came to mind. I didn't catch as many games as I would have liked to last season, so it was a familiar name, but I couldn't place a performance that I saw. As a rookie, there's tons of room to grow and I'm hoping that in 2023, Davis will take his 2022 experience and push to even greater heights.

That's the great thing about rookies. There's always potential. Each outing can be potential greatness. To be called up to the show, there has to be a need that is to be filled. There has to be a talent there. Why promote one guy over another? I will be looking forward to watching Davis in 2023. I have an extra incentive to hope he succeeds now, being the first card pulled.

A few cards later in the same pack, this pitcher loomed large.

Those were the only White Sox players that came out of that box. There will be many more that will make it into my collection, but these are the first. They will set the tone for the whole collecting year.

Here's to many more White Sox cards pulled this year and I wish that all of you pull the cards you collect. Happy hunting!

Cancer Sucks

 

I will start off by saying that I wish Liam a very speedy recovery. Any type of cancer is never a walk in the park. There will be rough times ahead. There will be ups and downs. If any player on the White Sox has the mentality and right attitude to head this face on, it is Liam Hendriks. The way he approaches every game and life itself, I have no doubt he will be fighting every step of the way.

In the past decade, cancer seems to have taken a lot of people from us. From family members to celebrities, there has been no shortage of people battling some form of this disease. Some succeed. Some unfortunately don't. 

I have been pretty lucky. I grew up with only a few members of my family passing away. As I've gotten older, that number has gone up considerably. As you age, the odds go up that someone you know will come down with a serious illness or even die. I don't mean to be such a downer, but disease is rarely a topic that's not serious.

My dad passed away from stage four cancer in October 2021. Every time I read about someone getting any form of that disease, I think of my dad. It wasn't something that was totally unexpected. Fifty plus years of heavy smoking really increases the chances of that happening. He was in pretty decent health for most of his life. Except for a horrible bout with pneumonia in the army reserves, he was only in the hospital once. That required intravenous medicine to be administered at home for a couple weeks after his discharge. The cancer diagnosis still came out of left field.

I don't get back to the Chicago area often enough. A family and work keep me pretty busy in Michigan. I try to visit a few times a year. In the summer of 2021, I tried to visit every other weekend. I was able to keep that schedule for the most part.

I cherish the extra time I got to spend with my dad. At this time, the minuscule filter he had was completely gone. I heard family stories from a perspective I had never heard before. I heard stories about him growing up and stories about me growing up. He swore up and down that I met a White Sox player in the eighties and got his autograph, but I was petrified at meeting one of my heroes. From the description, it may have been Daryl Boston, but I don't think I'll ever know for sure. I have absolutely no recognition of the event.

Every Sunday game we would go to, my dad would encourage me to get in the line and get an autograph and shake a player's hand. I always got in line and I always chickened out before I arrived at the players. I have no idea what I thought was going to happen. Maybe I was afraid I would be a rambling incoherent mess, like I was when I met Weird Al. I should probably mention that I met Weird Al at an after concert meet and greet that I had won through his website. I was twenty-two. I can only imagine what a single digit aged me would have done.

I skipped one weekend of visiting my parents in 2021. My dad was doing pretty good and I had a long work week. I decided to put off the trip until the following weekend. I did go out the next weekend, but it was to help my mom figure out what all she needed to do in the aftermath of his passing.

I kicked myself for a little bit for skipping that last weekend. I soon realized that an extra weekend didn't matter so much. I had got to spend a whole lot of time with him leading up to that. Time that I wouldn't have gotten had I not made the time.

There is a great chance that Liam will come out of this just fine. I'm sure he will. A scare like this forces one to stop everything, breathe and live in the moment. I don't always get to live in the moment. Most of the time I am buried in the past or looking to the future. When I focus and appreciate the moment, I never regret it. It's not somewhere I always find myself, but I'd like to get there more often.

Liam. You've got this. Live in the moment and come back better than ever.