That fateful Saturday night in Cleveland in early August certainly wasn’t where the 2023 White Sox season went off the rails. That happened in April, when a ten-game losing streak left them fourteen games under .500 and nine games back before the first month of the season came to an end. Or at the trading deadline, when seven players, nearly 27% of the active roster, got sent away to other teams who still had dreams of making the playoffs. But that Saturday night, when Tim Anderson dropped his glove like a hockey player to square up with Jose Ramirez, broke open the floodgates of showing the organizational rot that has destroyed the contention window for the latest rebuild and sent the White Sox scrambling.
The clubhouse problems with the White Sox were kind of an open secret. Dallas Keuchel made mention of it when he was released last year, but those complaints were waved off as the grumblings of a player who no longer had what it took to pitch at the major league level. When Jose Abreu was interviewed prior to the season-opening series against his former team, he also spoke vaguely of feeling like he had finally joined a family. Then, the day following the fight, an interview with former White Sox pitcher Kenyan Middleton, traded the week before, was posted on ESPN.com, claiming there were no rules, players were allowed to skip meetings and practice sessions with no repercussions, and rookies were found sleeping in the bullpen during games. The next morning, Jesse Rogers, who wrote the ESPN article, appeared on the Score and went even further, saying Yoan Moncada is thought of as lazy and has no interest in being part of the team, Eloy Jimenez is happy-go-lucky but also considered to be extremely lazy, and Yasmani Grandal doesn’t work with the pitching staff and has lost their trust. Later in the day, a story broke, from a Score producer, of an altercation between Tim Anderson and Grandal after Grandal wanted out of the last game prior to the All-Star Break to get an early start to his vacation.
When new manager Pedro Grifol was hired back in November, he said that, given what he had seen from the White Sox in years past, he would ensure that they came out every night with “high energy” and would be “prepared to win a baseball game.” That didn’t turn out to be the case, as the White Sox were just as lackadaisical in their approach and their play as they were in 2022. He was also quoted as saying “You can’t win a pennant in April and May, but you sure can lose one… you really have to be careful how easy you take it…” This was rather prophetic, as the White Sox certainly managed to lose any chance they had at winning a pennant in April and May. They spent exactly one day over .500, and that was following an opening day victory. A ten-game losing streak from April 19-29 doomed them, and they’ve never been able to recover.
For once, the losing has forced change upon the organization. A good part of the pitching staff was sold off at the trade deadline. Executive Vice President Kenny Williams and General Manager Rick Hahn were relieved of their duties and replaced by Chris Getz. More changes. I’m sure, will come this offseason. Will this lead to a turn-around in 2024? Probably not, as this year’s free agent class looks to be awfully weak, and the team has many holes to fill. They also don’t have much in the way of trade capital, so it will be interesting to see how Getz is able to remake the team into one capable of contending.
Last week, the White Sox made the long-necessary decision to move on from Kenny Williams and Rick Hahn. As part of the announcement, the team plesdged to have a “single decision maker to lead the baseball operations department” and that they anticipate having this person in place by the end of the season.” They said nothing about having an exhaustive search for said decision maker.
