The White Sox Coast-to-Coast Caravan of Losing wraps up its well-received tour with a three-game set in Tropicana Field against the Tampa Bay Rays. The Rays are so good at rolling with punches that it's hard to ever catch them at a good time, getting swept in a Yankee Stadium doubleheader the day before counts as one of those rare openings.
There was plenty of turbulence at Yankee Stadium, including an Aaron Boone rant that launched a thousand t-shirts.
Before that, CC Sabathia and Avisaíl Garcia had a less volatile exchange that involved more people when they stared at each other after a strikeout. It's classic baseball posturing, but it reminded me to check in on how García was faring this season, as I hadn't heard about him in a while.
There's a reason for that. After making a potential All-Star case in April and May, he's been in funk since June that looks familiar to White Sox fans:
- Before June 1: .301/.363/.522 over 204 PA
- After June 1: .252/.298/.338 over 151 PA
- Total: .280/.335/.443
That's a decent, average season for a right fielder, and one the White Sox would gladly take, at least at the price the Rays paid. It's somewhere in between his All-Star season of 2017 and his injury-marred 2018, as his fourth month away from the White Sox starts drawing to a close, he hasn't yet broken new ground.
However, there's always a chance that he rallies to finish strong, isolating his struggles to a 1½-month period and topping 20 homers for the first time his career. He's only at 12 entering the weekend, but a series against White Sox pitching might help get him unstuck. Just as there's seldom a good time to face the Rays, there's really never a bad time to play the Sox.
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James Fegan expounded on Jose Abreu's seemingly subtle call for Luis Robert in an article that's very much worth reading:
“We need them,” Abreu said of Jiménez and Anderson, through Russo. “We’re missing them. But we need to deal with what we have here. Until the organization gives us a chance to bring the people up that can help us here.”
General manager Rick Hahn said just Wednesday that he’s fine with increased calls for Luis Robert to be promoted, but ironically, Abreu is saying that the 25 men in the White Sox clubhouse need to be patient while another reliever or fourth outfielder shuffles through, and this painfully long rebuilding process continues to drag through another prime season of his career. The rest of his postgame availability, sagely discussing the necessity of passing through a rough stretch for the umpteenth time in his White Sox career, was about the necessity of stoic labor through the darkness.
He also makes the same point that Josh made on the podcast -- while there's a big prioritization over Luis Robert's team control period, and the general sense it makes to shift his seven-year window from 2019-25 to 2020-26, the window with Yoan Moncada only runs through 2023, barring an extension. Yes, you want some players to extend past 2023 in order to avoid everybody potentially hitting the market at once, but the easiest way to make the rebuild stick is to have a high talent concentration during the years Moncada is in top form. They've already wasted one of them this year, and they run the risk of pissing away a second one if they wait until May 2020 to call up Robert. Based on their track record, I generally think the White Sox front office needs more chances to get it right than fewer.
