Last year’s muddled American League race, lacking both a clear top–the entire league had less 90-win clubs than the NL Central–and a bottom save for the newly decrepit Oakland A’s, allowed for every middling, mediocre team to envision a version of themselves that plays in October. Even the 2015 White Sox, whose late-July hot streak never even saw them reach .500, were allowed to dream about making deadline additions to fortify their push over the last two months.
In a similar tortured context, the Sox are in the thick of it right now. They, like everyone one else in the known universe, are within five games of a playoff spot in the middle of June, their Chairman just reaffirmed their intentions to try compete in 2016, and it’s technically true that it’s the same 33-36 record either way, even if they are on a 10-26 kick at present.
But where 2015 had the Blue Jays and their looming, monstrous offense breakout from 50-50 in late July to 93-69, the Sox are not a juggernaut waiting to overwhelm inferior competition, but a fringe contender that needed a hot start to cover up the holes that needed patching.
Even sidestepping a rumination of how they had that hot start and watched it quickly vaporize, in aggregate the Sox have simply not gotten what they needed and are not where they need to be as the midseason market rounds in to shape. They are in fourth place in the AL Central with a poor 12-18 mark against in-division opponents, and have five teams between them and the final Wild Card spot. The Houston Astros, the archetypal team with superior core talent that trashed their chances with an awful start, have already overtaken them. Their slow start against the AL Central has been largely in a landscape removed of Michael Brantley, Alex Gordon, Mike Moustakas, and until recently, Carlos Carrasco. They have had the natural advantages they needed preseason to prop up this work-in-progress roster, and simply blown it.
Worse yet, their first step into patching the roster has been a step onto a landmine. Rather than a solution for a relatively small issue of a finding a No. 4 starter, James Shields is a crisis entirely of his own. Plenty of trade acquisitions have been bad, or struggled in the early going of a multi-year commitment only to normalize eventually. But Shields is struggling at an unprecedented level, because no one who pitches like they just got called up from High-A is typically thrown out to the wolves four consecutive times. No one would normally consider moving a pitcher with Shields’ resume and a commitment through 2018 out of the rotation, but he’s forcing the issue in a truly remarkable way. As bad as Mat Latos was, he wasn’t tasking the Sox with a 6-0 deficit every single night.
Losing two games in Cleveland where outstanding work from Jose Quintana and Carlos Rodon was not good enough to put the Sox in anything better than a tossup situation, is the product of an offense having slipped to 12th in the AL with a .252 TAv. They are not good enough to spend much time finding out how long Shields will make one out of every five games an automatic loss (barring seven-run comebacks), when they are still forcing Robin Ventura into using J.B. Shuck and Avisail Garcia as regulars, with only the low-ceiling aid of Justin Morneau immediately on the horizon.
If this seems negatively skewed, that’s on purpose. Jose Abreu has a an OPS over 1.000 for June, Rodon was thrilling for much of Sunday and could find All-Star level form soon, and Chris Sale is still in working order. They’re not hopeless, but the demands on the Sox have moved seemingly overnight from what they need to do to hold a lead over hard-charging competitors, to what makes them capable over overtaking the pack that they now sit behind.
Will they upgrade the scale of the roster upgrades they are seeking, and the talent and money they would have to cede, to match their sudden plight? Given what it will cost and the chances of success, do they even want to? It’s hard to envision a surrender with this roster, but is it any easier to see how they can do what’s necessary to transform this team over the next two months?
Lead Image Credit: David Richard // USA Today Sports Images