Much of the pitching staff was traded away at the deadline. The architects of the roster were both fired this week. The veterans still with the team are seeing their playing time cut as the focus shifts to the future. Stadium banners featuring star players have been replaced with more generic team designs.
The White Sox’ 2023 season has already been acknowledged as a disaster in most of the obvious ways. But even after a 12-4 blowout loss to the MLB-worst Athletics on Friday night — a debacle that guaranteed the A’s the season series victory — the Sox have 33 games to go.
And new lows to reach.
The sight of the worst-scoring offense in baseball — by a considerable margin — putting a five-spot on Dylan Cease, last year’s Cy Young finalist, as the Sox defense blundered behind him for two errors in a torturous second inning proved that the Sox’ suffering fan base hasn’t been fully desensitized.
“It didn’t seem like much worked,” said Cease, whose record dropped to 5-7. “Lot of walks, lot of hits, lot of runs.”
Fans at Guaranteed Rate Field booed lustily at the low points of Cease giving up eight earned runs in 4⅓ grueling innings. They groaned when second baseman Lenyn Sosa couldn’t find a grip on the ball to complete the last turn of a would-be triple play in the sixth, allowing another run to score. They roared with dismay as Tanner Banks gave up back-to-back homers in the seventh.
“I rushed it,” Sosa said of the triple-play chance, speaking through an interpreter. “I didn’t have a good grip on the ball.”
Considering the matchup, fans showed up in decent numbers: more than 21,000 announced. But that probably had more to do with Vanilla Ice, Tone Loc and Rob Base being scheduled to perform after the game before their concert was canceled.
“The whole thing is frustrating,” manager Pedro Grifol said. “We’ve just got to get better. There’s no excuses. It’s not major-league baseball. We’ve got to tighten up.”
Last season, only one American League pitcher, Justin Verlander, had a better ERA than Cease, and he won the Cy Young Award. After Friday, only three qualifying AL pitchers have a worse ERA than Cease’s 4.87, and two of them play for the last-place Royals.
With five walks Friday, Cease also reclaimed the highest walk rate among qualified AL starters. He held that designation last season, too, while demonstrating just how effectively wild a pitcher can be.
But now, Cease’s slider earns fewer wild chases out of the zone. His mistakes over the plate are hit more often and harder, and every pitch has 2-3 mph less velocity than he was achieving during his best stretches of last season.
“For whatever reason, I’m just not quite getting into a rhythm,” he said. “But at the end of the day, you’ve got to find a way to get through it and get the job done. It obviously hasn’t been my best stretch or my best work. But I’m not giving up.”
Said Grifol: “He is just a little bit away, a tick away. But if he’s not finding his mechanics, that’s the outing that we’re going to get.”
The now-deposed Sox front office saw last season’s 81-81 record as Murphy’s Law playing out. They reasoned it was the worst possible result such a talented group of players could have — only to watch Cease and shortstop Tim Anderson pulled into the undertow this season, along with the rest of the team.
Anderson, for his part, had his third straight multihit game — a hint that his seasonlong slump could end soon. But his throwing error that allowed a run in the fifth (the Sox’ third of the night) muted the good feelings. Even on a night when Sosa homered, putting the Sox on the board in the second, newly recalled catcher Korey Lee walked twice.
