The easiest thing in the world to do — or at least the easiest thing to do in 79 of 123 games so far this season — is to write a recap that dogs the White Sox for sucking. And it’s especially tempting for me, not pulling a heavy recap load any longer but combing over most every one of these, to gently nudge our writing staff to find something positive interesting … OK, well something unique to say about the club we follow. One of my big questions in prepping someone to recap here is: Why are we reading your take on this game, our team, the performances or decisions?
Such higher-minded goals make sense, in a normal world, covering a normal team. But we are almost assured of a third straight 100-loss season (no, the White Sox had never lost 100 in as much as back-to-back seasons before 2024). Even better, when the club ends up, oh, 57-105 we’ll be spoon-fed some sunshine about a 16-win improvement or a rookie’s hot September instead of firings and spending and organizational mea culpas.
And all that to say, man, it’s tough to recap Loss 79 in any season, much less when it comes in mid-August, without mailing in a paint-by-numbers account of the pain.
I’m not going to do that tonight, and not only because I have four other affiliate losses to recap, as our org is just one big L FROM HELL this humid Saturday. Suffice to say the White Sox were very, very, very bad in Kansas City. As bad as in 2024? No, the team both managed to stop Kansas City from scoring in half of their batting innings AND managed to third the lead with two outs in the eighth, as Andrew Benintendi lobbed a 340-foot fly ball right into the right-center gap to plate two. Lenyn Sosa and Luis Robert Jr. both got on base, twice. Mike Vasil finished out the laffer with two scoreless innings.
On the other hand, the Royals were looking to TOOTBLAN like Chiefs fans itching to chop, so this game could have easily run into double-digit runs if K.C. wasn’t so very chronically a .500 team this season.
That’s about it. And I don’t have the time or energy to properly detail the bad, but there is a lot of it. This team is not going to get cured with matriculations to the majors, or with free-agent spending, or, dunno, better luck. Sean Burke was again both bad and inefficient; needing 85 pitches to get 11 outs is embarrassing even when you’re not coughing up three runs in doing so. Miguel Vargas is simply not looking like a guy. Mike Tauchman continues to get run on this team instead of riding the pine for a contender (or on a 78-loss team, heyo), an indication that for some goofy reason (or, wait, this just in the White Sox still have NO OUTFIELDERS in the system, so there is a reason) Chris Getz sees Tauchman as a building block.
There’s talk of the White Sox now being back to fun-bad, as if bad is ever fun (although yeah, I get the distinction even if I’m not enamored of my team wearing the T-shirt). I’m not so sure. The wake-up of the offense in July, pulling it definitively into the plus-WAR column for the first time in about 250 games, was heartening. There are some players to build on. But, uh, wait that’s it?
Are there enough players to build on to avoid a “lottery penalty” again for the 2027 draft? Enough hope to see playoff contention even in a fairly mediocre AL Central before 2030? Enough karma to outfit the front office into a lean, mean winning machine? I’m not so sure.
Anyway, Sox lost, 6-2. eat arby’s
