In preparation for the 2021 season, the White Sox traded their best fifth-starter candidate for a Cy Young finalist. The deal worked out the way it should have -- Lance Lynn continues to be worthy of votes during award season, while Dane Dunning's had a nice first full season with the Rangers -- but any quibbles with the trade didn't have anything to do with that particular roster spot.
The use of resources felt a little bit like a payday loan, where the interest could start compounding rapidly and dangerously if the Sox still found themselves short two weeks later. The retaining of Carlos Rodón didn't inspire much confidence for restoring depth, mostly because the White Sox non-tendered Rodón to open the offseason, a move that automatically suggests you should bet the under.
Meanwhile, the Padres acquired Yu Darvish, Blake Snell and Joe Musgrove to augment a rotation that included Chris Paddack and Dinelson Lamet. Beyond that, the Padres also boasted plenty of internal depth. A San Diego Union-Tribune article before the season listed top-flight prospects Adrian Morejón and MacKenzie Gore among the first waiting in the wings, along with Michel Báez, Ryan Weathers, Jacob Nix, Pedro Avila and Anderson Espinoza as in-house options.
San Diego's relentless thirst for name-brand depth drew natural comparisons to the White Sox. They were linked in fortunes before hand -- back on the old site, I called them the sadder White Sox -- and they've been linked in mission and players since the James Shields trade. The frustration over Fernando Tatis Jr.'s meteoric rise led to griping over Manny Machado's free agency, and the idea that the Padres still had the farm capital to acquire Darvish, Snell and Musgrove despite graduating so many players themselves threatened to render the White Sox rebuild base-model by comparison.
Smash-cut to the stretch drive in September, and which team do you think would be forced to run out a scorched-sourdough version of Jake Arrieta in desperate hopes of keeping wild-card dreams alive?
Arrieta made four whole starts for the Padres, and he would've likely made more had he not departed the first and last of those outings with injuries. He posted a 10.95 ERA for San Diego when he did pitch, and the Friars lost all four games.
The Padres' fortunes have reflected these measures. On Aug. 10, the Padres were 66-49, three games behind the Dodgers for second place in the NL West, but with a 4½-game lead for the second wild card spot. FanGraphs gave them an 80.2 percent chance of making the postseason. They're 10-24 since, including a three-game sweep in St. Louis this weekend that knocked them 3½ games out of the wild card hunt. They got blown out in Game 1, then suffered a pair of one-run losses. In the first of those, Tatis struggled with a backward K that prompted Jayce Tingler's ejection, and then quarreled with Machado in the dugout over his lack of composure.
An article in The Athletic spearheaded by Ken Rosenthal painted a picture of a squishy hierarchy that is buckling under the pressure.
A team with an accomplished, veteran manager might brush past such incidents with relative ease. But Tingler, a first-time manager in his first full season, has not yet established the presence of say, Buck Showalter, for whom Dickerson coached and Machado played with the Orioles. First baseman Eric Hosmer, another prominent Padres veteran, arrived in San Diego with a reputation for leadership, but he is no longer performing at an above-average level and has been part of two second-half collapses since joining the team in 2018. Machado, meanwhile, is still prone to his own bouts of moodiness, occasionally becoming preoccupied with matters beyond his control, sources said.
The article goes on to say the Padres wanted to acquire Nelson Cruz and play him at first base in order to gain his clubhouse presence. It's hard not to get 2016 White Sox vibes from the whole mess, with the front office desperately trying to inject leadership into a clubhouse with combustible personalities and a manager who's in over his head.
There are differences of opinion among some of the team’s on-field personnel. But one thing virtually everyone agreed on in the hours after Saturday’s mini-brouhaha was that it was the culmination of an issue a stronger manager would have taken care of weeks ago.
There are some in the organization who believe this is an example of why the team needs a new voice and a greater influence in the manager’s office.
You could reverse-engineer the Padres' predicament to validate controversial White Sox decisions like stopping well short on Machado, or hiring Tony La Russa, whose 76-year-old spine hasn't lost the ability to absorb the occasional conflict. Both arguments have some merit, although I'd say this meltdown doesn't erase the original objections. If the White Sox didn't want Machado, they shouldn't have wasted resources on no-upside plays by signing Machado's friends and family. With La Russa, you wouldn't want the Sox to hire anybody else the way they hired him, disrupting an honest-to-goodness search and hiding details of an arrest.
But with the White Sox's a magic number of 4 away from clinching the division, there's not really a point in rehashing these arguments anymore. Even though I tend to favor process over results, the value of a single MLB season is mostly results, so I'm inclined to say "all's well that ends well," as long as I can tack on "... in the AL Central."
It's hard to separate the quality of division from the equation. If the White Sox were under the pressure to compete with the Dodgers and Giants, they might have cracked in a similar fashion, even if it would also be less volatile. The Sox had the luxury of an eight-game lead at the All-Star break, which allowed them to skip starts, reorganize the rotation and use the injured list liberally. If they needed every turn from Lynn, Lucas Giolito and Carlos Rodón, they might have needed an Arrieta type. Instead, they've only had to use a little bit of Michael Kopech early and a little more Reynaldo López later. Mike Wright's presence is a little bit of a cry for help when it comes to pitching depth, but he's relegated mostly to mop-up work.
The Sox can only play the schedule and standings set for them. When you get to "But how would TEAM fare in DIVISION?", you're mostly looking for an argument due to a lack of one. The nosediving of the Padres reinforces my belief that you should savor the White Sox's luxury of using September to prioritize health. And because I love me some reiteration, I'll also point to the importance of keeping Dallas Keuchel useful, even if it's not a whole lot of fun watching him. A baseball season seldom smiles on the White Sox like this, so smile back.
(Photo by Joe Puetz/USA TODAY Sports)
