By noon on Monday, the White Sox had the distinction of being the team atop every major MLB power ranking under the sun.
A day later, they were the laughingstock of baseball. Such is the duality of the White Sox.
It all goes back to the fundamental problem of hiring the Hall of Famer Baseball Person after nine years away while awaiting the resolution of a pending DUI case, which was such a unnecessary risk for a team talented and established enough to largely run itself.
The injuries between then and now make what they've accomplished through the first quarter of the season more impressive. But outside of a pleasantly flexible deployment of Michael Kopech's talents as they seek to ration his innings over the course of a six-month layoff, you can't really point to anything La Russa is specifically doing to help the White Sox win games.
You can find a lot more examples where he came up short. He's had two games pivot on his ignorance of 2021 baseball rules, and he's had two games get away because he couldn't read the mood on the mound. The defense isn't particularly sharp, and communication on pop-ups is lacking. The White Sox have already lost more games they led after seven innings in 2021 (four) than they did in Rick Renteria's first and last seasons (three apiece).
That paragraph basically tries to isolate La Russa's performance from all the unique baggage he brought into the job. If the Sox ever gave Renteria five starters -- and maybe the freedom to choose his own pitching coach, rather than saddling him with Don Cooper until they both went off the cliff -- would anything look different?
I suppose now you can point to the clubhouse after La Russa scolded Mercedes before Tuesday's game, occasionally in a profoundly paternalistic fashion:
... and defended the Twins after Tuesday's game for throwing at him during.
"It wasn’t obvious to me," La Russa said of Duffey's seventh-inning throw. "The guy threw a sinker. It didn’t look good. So I wasn’t that suspicious. I’m suspicious if somebody throws at somebody’s head. I don’t have a problem with how the Twins handled that.
"What did they do? The guy might have just been trying to get a sinker in. We don’t read minds. I’m not going to read their mind, and I’m not going to second guess the umpire when it’s his judgement. The ball was thrown at somebody’s head, and then you don’t give anybody the benefit of the doubt."
Before the game, it was fair to wonder whether La Russa was chiding Mercedes publicly in an attempt to protect his player from on-field tempers, however inelegantly and inappropriately. After the game, it sounded more like La Russa ordered the Twins at throw at Mercedes and was trying to avoid a suspension.
I'm sure there's a manager who did less for a player who was attacked by the other team, but if there is, he's not coming to mind. And it seems to run counter to everything everybody else around the team is saying and feeling.
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Five years and two White Sox managers ago, Tyler Duffey, the pitcher who threw at Mercedes, got pissed at Tim Anderson for pirouetting out of the box on a no-doubt homer. Later in the game, a different reliever threw at Anderson, after which warnings were issued.
This was Anderson's crime.
It was long enough ago that TA7 was TA12, but we know from other situations that we can't assume Anderson will forgive or forget. Let's go back to one manager and two years ago, when Glenn Sparkman was ejected for clipping the bill of Anderson's helmet with a changeup, an HBP everybody agrees was unintentional.
Then-Royals manager Ned Yost was irate at the umpire for ejecting Sparkman, saying the precedent that determined Sparkman's ejection -- Brad Keller's retaliatory plunking of Anderson -- "was forgotten." Yost was proven wrong, because after the game, Anderson said his feelings toward the Royals were going to be "forever beef."
I had that quote in mind while watching Anderson bid Duffey adieu from Tuesday's game:
Mercedes had Anderson's support before the game in Instagram comments. Mercedes also had backing from Steve Stone on the radio, Evan Marshall's Twitter likes, and Lance Lynn's postgame Zoom comments. They just needed a Yasmani Grandal Facebook Live, a Yoán Moncada Substack and The Leury García Podcast to complete the modern set.
La Russa doesn't seem to pay much heed to any of it. For instance, Lynn said that "all bets are off" when a position player is on the mound, a sentiment I share. The hitter is already at a disadvantage because anything short of Mercedes' kind of contact can be seen as a failure. Every hittable pitch he lets go puts him at the risk of being the butt of jokes later. As far as I see it, when a manager puts a position player on the mound, he assumes the risk that the game will devolve into an unrecognizable farce.
La Russa's reaction?
Indeed, it's possible that La Russa's shortcomings can be blown up beyond recognition because a lot of people predicted that it wasn't going to work out, and there's a natural temptation to want to be proven correct. From the other direction, there's a desire to paper over a first-place team's fault lines because it sucks to have to dwell on a troubling episode when there's so much else to like.
Regardless of the priors, I don't think anybody will deny that there's a tension between a White Sox team that markets itself with #ChangeTheGame, and a manager who wants to preserve the parts Anderson, Mercedes and others have intended to loosen up. In hindsight -- and foresight, and everything in between -- it probably wasn't a great idea to hire a manager who could so easily stoke divisions among its customers, especially one who is actively defending against allegations of worse behavior elsewhere.
And with this context, it makes Mercedes' unexpected breakout seem almost predetermined, because of course the White Sox's success would hinge on the emergence of Latin American rookie with iconoclast tendencies. In a story where La Russa is the protagonist, a guy like Mercedes is basically the final boss. In a story where Mercedes is the hero, La Russa is the guy who needs to get with the program or step aside.
Now, which one are we following? It sure seems like La Russa is outnumbered, but with regards to his second stint with the White Sox, the next time that matters will be the first.
(Photo by Joe Nicholson/USA TODAY Sports)
