Examining the freefall ; Since a late July series with Minnesota, the White Sox season has taken a major turn for the worse; how and why it's gotten so bad;Bob Foltman, Tribune staff reporter. Chicago Tribune. Chicago, Ill.: Aug 25, 2004. pg. 10
What happened?
On the morning of Sunday, July 25, the White Sox were flying high. They had beaten the Detroit Tigers the previous night to move a season-high 10 games above .500 and were in first place in the AL Central Division with a half-game lead over the Minnesota Twins.
And then it all fell apart.
They lost that Sunday to the Tigers. The next night Torii Hunter ran over Jamie Burke and the Sox's playoff hopes.
The Sox wound up losing seven in a row, and by the time they stopped the bleeding they were five games behind the Twins.
It would be easy to blame the collapse on the loss of Magglio Ordonez and Frank Thomas. Certainly losing two big bats in the middle of the lineup is going to be noticed.
But Thomas and Ordonez were in the lineup earlier in the season, when offensive inconsistency was just starting to drive manager Ozzie Guillen crazy. And both have been in the lineup for most of the past four seasons, when the Sox failed to build upon or duplicate their 2000 division title.
So the question remains: Why has this season disintegrated? There are a number of reasons.
Lack of "baseball" skills.
1. The Sox can pound the ball with anyone. But they're woefully ineffective in some of the subtler aspects of the game that have more to do with winning and losing than hitting home runs.
"The reason is they didn't execute, move the guy over, drive the guy in, make the right pitch, throw to the right base," Guillen said. "If you don't do that, you have to have a bunch of good hitters to survive over the years. We don't do that this year, and we have to be prepared next year."
Taking the fifth
2. The Sox's longest winning streak of the season is five games. That is a very telling number, because it's hard to go on an extended run when every fifth day you're picking a name out of a hat to be the starting pitcher.
It's not just that the Sox's fifth starters haven't won games. They have been hammered early, putting the hitters in a deep hole and taxing the bullpen.
General manager Ken Williams has made some splashy trades in the last couple of seasons, bringing in Bartolo Colon, Freddy Garcia, Roberto Alomar, Carl Everett and Jose Contreras, among others. But his inability to find a consistent fifth starter has been damaging.
Whatever happened to all those strong young arms in the Sox's minor league system?
Arms race
3. Despite the trades for Garcia and Contreras, the numbers say the Sox's pitching staff has been in a slow decline. They're in the bottom half of the league in team ERA after ranking near the top in the first half. Garcia has struggled in his last two outings, when the Sox needed him most, and Mark Buehrle has been alternately brilliant and average the whole season.
Add to that a bullpen that early in the year was an adventure with Billy Koch as the closer and now has become an adventure trying to get games to new closer Shingo Takatsu. Damaso Marte's ERA is almost two full runs higher than it was last season. He gave up three home runs last year in 71 1/3 innings. This season he has allowed eight in just 57 2/3 innings.
Intangibles
4. Whether Torii Hunter's play on July 26 was dirty--he crushed Burke at home plate in a game that appeared to be decided already-- isn't the issue. The play sent a message the Sox failed to answer.
More importantly, though, Hunter is one of a handful of players on the Twins who will do that sort of thing, play the game that way. How many Sox players would?
Before the season Williams said he wanted more "grinders" on his team. It's a term popular in hockey for players who bring it every night, doing the dirty work and paying the physical price to win games. This season--and the last several, for that matter--have shown Williams needs to keep searching for his grinders.