And just like that, the White Sox’ American League record-tying 21-game losing streak is over and a manager who failed to discernibly move the team so much as an inch in the right direction has finally been fired. Two storylines that actually made the 2024 Sox interesting for a couple of strange, twisted weeks have gone “poof” in the night like home run shots off a rag-armed Sox reliever.
It’s back in the shadows for the Sox, whose pursuit of baseball’s modern-era record for losses in a season — 120 — could demand our attention all over again in the latter part of September. Until then? They have an interim manager, Grady Sizemore, whose work the rest of the way likely doesn’t matter because he’s a long shot to even be considered for the permanent job. They have a roster full of players whose individual progress doesn’t matter a whole lot because so few of them might still be in Sox uniforms when the arrow starts pointing up again, if it ever does. There’s just nothing to see here, folks.
That is, unless you count the sight of owner Jerry Reinsdorf making the rounds behind the batting cage Friday before a game against the Cubs. The old man slapped the shoulders of the new coaches who’ve replaced the ones fired along with Pedro Grifol. He hugged Ozzie Guillen and walked side-by-side with Harold Baines. He avoided eye contact with reporters, as is his custom. There went Reinsdorf — lord of all he surveys, including and especially the worst team on the planet’s galling 28-89 record. But enough about that.
It’s a good time to swing our collective baseball attention — the negative attention as well — back to the city’s other major league team. Did you almost forget there was one, too? That means the Cubs, who are 100 times better than the Sox but aren’t exactly killing it themselves. And it means manager Craig Counsell, who’s the furthest thing from a Grifol-like dead man walking but isn’t exactly having a successful go of it in his first season with the North Siders.
In terms of tension and excitement, this Crosstown series is way down the historical list. But the timing of it sure is good. The Sox have receded into a meaningless oblivion, but we can look right across the field and start getting properly bent out of shape about why the Cubs — still under .500 at 57-60 coming into the series — haven’t been better than this.
One could even argue that the Cubs have had the worst baseball season in town because theirs was actually supposed to be promising. Everybody knew the rebuilding Sox would be a losing team. A lot of us thought the Cubs — after adding Counsell to a team that missed the playoffs by a single game in 2023 — had an excellent chance to play in October.
But these Cubs, though ticking up offensively of late, still are subpar in far too many areas. They have the third-lowest team batting average in the National League, the fourth-lowest OPS, the fifth-fewest home runs, the sixth-fewest runs scored. There are no superstars in their lineup; far from it. And finishing tight games out of the bullpen — which has 21 blown saves, though the number hasn’t swelled much in recent weeks — remains a dicey proposition.
A look at the wild-card standings makes the playoffs seem almost an impossibility. Seven non-division leaders are ahead of the Cubs, who would have to run down and pass five of them in order to claim the last wild-card spot. Within the expansive realm of logic, there can’t be a single argument to be made about why that should happen. Is it possible? Sure. But even the scant 6.7% chance FanGraphs is giving the Cubs of making the playoffs is hard to buy into. Who’s running those numbers, Pollyanna?
A question for fans of both teams: What’s worse, your team being absolutely terrible or your team being stuck in the middle, too good to be with the dregs of the league but not clutch or talented enough to roll with the big boys?
It sure made for a hell of a juxtaposition to have Sizemore, never before a manager at any level, in one dugout and Counsell, the game’s highest-paid skipper ever at $8 million a year, in the other. Talk about representing opposite ends of the managerial spectrum. Counsell doesn’t know Sizemore personally, but he offered a bit of advice from afar.
“Look, we don’t know what’s going to happen, which is the great thing about sports,” he said. “He’s got a great opportunity to be himself and go at it with everything [he’s] got. Who knows what’s going to happen?”
With the Sox? Probably nothing of import unless they get to 120.
With the Cubs? If they don’t make a huge move in the standings, Counsell is going to become the manager in these parts people are griping about and sniping at. That’s just the way it goes.