Naturally, within hours of this column on the offense disappearing being written the White Sox exploded for 13 runs, their most this season, with several of the players written about here having a huge night. Nice for them, and yeah, then the lineup scored another 10 runs on Tuesday. But the premise still stands. I think. Though if a draft of a piece about hitting collapse serves as inspiration, South Side Sox will do it on a regular basis, to help the team.

Remember the glorious days when the White Sox won 10 of 14 games, scoring roughly 293 runs in the process? Weren’t they nice? Well, hold that memory. It may be all you get this year except for hope.

Eight of those 10 wins came in July, before the trade deadline. The two in August were over the Angels, and one of those was against a starting pitcher who has given up four runs in every start but one in more than a month, and the other was a 1-0 win — and it’s the offense that we’re going to take a look at.

What offense?

Reasonable question, especially since this is being written right after scoring five runs in three games in Kansas City. Since those two wins at the start, the Sox are 2-11. For August, they’ve scored 51 runs in 15 games, despite one nine-run outburst, for an average of 3.40, even below their season average of 3.77, which is 29th in MLB — though well above last year’s 3.13.

Turns out irrational exuberance isn’t just a stock market thing.

So, what happened? Several things, but the trade deadline looms as a large reason, because position players up for possible swaps put on a very nice show for prospective employers in July, then went on a very deep slide.

They’re dogging it now?

Not at all. Nobody gets lazy with a rock coming at them at more than 90 miles an hour, and major leaguers don’t slack off. But concentration and confidence come and go, and so far this month, they’ve gone.

Who are we talking about?

The obvious focal point of trade deadline discussion is Luis Robert, Jr., whom Chris Getz somehow couldn’t find a deal for even though it leaves Getz having to pick up a $20 million option for 2026 — a probable huge overpay, because it would need roughly 4.0 WAR (we’re using Baseball-Reference numbers throughout this piece) to justify the cost, a level Luis has only reached once — or give up his erstwhile star for nothing and look even dumber than he usually does.

Robert put up a heck of a display for possible trade partners — an awesome .353/.441/.549 slash line in July that included a newfound willingness to slap outside sliders to right instead of flailing at them, plus his usual stellar defense and baserunning, And that was coming out of a hole where he was one of the worst hitters in all of MLB.

Luis should have been given a chance to help a contender try to head to the World Series, Instead, he went nowhere. And so has his production. For August, the slash is .255/.304/.353, producing a .657 OPS that is way below the MLB average of .719, even far below the OPS of every team except the pathetic Pirates.

Robert has always seemed a heart-on-his-sleeve kind of guy, vulnerable to emotional swings. The White Sox haven’t even left him with the sleeve.

But Luis is not alone

Not by a long shot.

Mike Tauchman was having a very good year both on offense and defense going up to the deadline, including a very nice final push of .306/.372/.471 in July. He was no doubt signed mostly to be flipped, then wasn’t, with Getz even spouting some art of the deal b.s. about keeping him for team leadership even though he’s on a one-year contract. Since no trade was made, Tauchman’s performance has taken a dive, and not the one in the photo above. For August, Tauchman is hitting a feeble .180/.339/.240. You can’t really get worse and stay in the majors as a corner outfielder. At age 34, he may be done if that keeps up.

While we’re in the outfield …

Austin Slater did get traded, of course, then got hurt after three games with the Yankees. The White Sox got pitcher Gage Ziehl in return — and Ziehl has a 9.64 ERA in Winston-Salem, so the trade looks about even.

But Andrew Benintendi’s name came up on occasion in trade speculation, mostly if the Sox were willing to eat maybe 98% of his salary for the next three years, and Benintendi follows the pattern. He had a reasonable July (244/.333/.397 for an above-average .731 OPS), but come August it was fall-off-a-cliff time — an absolutely abysmal .154 batting average and .450 OPS which have to be the worst in the majors.

As for catchers …

Edgar Quero and Kyle Teel are rightfully considered critical parts of some distant future when the White Sox could become competitive (how old is Jerry Reinsdorf?), but the name of last year’s backup, Korey Lee, got mentioned in some trade speculation. And even he collapsed, going from a .773 OPS in Charlotte in July to a miserable — even more miserable given the league — .467 in August.

And infielders ?

Well, the infield story was awful, awful Andrew Vaughn going to the Brewers and becoming awesome, awesome, Andrew Vaughn, but that was a while back.

The remaining infielders are all young and under long-term control except Josh Rojas, who has been useless from the get-go, so they were almost never rumored in any trades. And two of them, Colson Montgomery and Lenyn Sosa, have been important parts of what offensive surge has occurred the last two months.

Montgomery has had a plunge since the deadline anyway, his batting average crashing from .257 in July to .182 in August, mostly likely due to opposing teams learning his weaknesses and him not adjusting (yet, we hope). His OPS has stayed above-average at .741 thanks to the ability to hit a ball 450 feet, and his defense has proven better than expected, so there is reason for optimism.

Sosa has had a smaller fall0ff in average, from .294 in July to .241 in August, but has raised his OPS to a terrific .849 thanks to six homers in 64 trips to the plate. It’s a shame Sosa’s such a horrible fielder, both by analysis — his 0.8 dWAR is even worse than last year’s 0.7 — and by an eyeball test where he looks like he has no baseball instincts at all.

An aside on the nature of the game …

An ESPN list of the Top 50 players in MLB contains no White Sox, which is no surprise, but also no members of the mighty Brewers. An Athletic article this week shows why Milwaukee needs no superstars: It plays the game the right way, including getting men on base and moving them around quickly.

That’s a contrast to all the stupid hollering by White Sox announcers about hitting the most homers in the majors for some short stretch. Homers are nice and all that, but for the team to be good for much of anything but setting off the scoreboard it helps to have someone on base — even with his six dingers, Sosa only has nine RBIs this month.

So consider two scenarios:

In the first case, the team scores a run, but has one out and no one on, apparently a White Sox ideal (they’re 29th in average, OBP and runs scored, 24th in homers). In the second, the team scores one run, but with no outs and a man on.

Which one’s better? Ask the folks in Wisconsin.

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