White Sox fans stumping for Tony La Russa's firing can point to the Philadelphia Phillies after they dismissed Joe Girardi: 24-14.
White Sox fans who regard La Russa as a secondary concern can point to the Los Angeles Angels after they let go of Joe Maddon: 12-21.
Now here come the Toronto Blue Jays, who could act as a sort of tiebreaker because they fired Charlie Montoyo on Wednesday. And unlike the other two teams who changed the guy at the helm, the Blue Jays had a winning record (47-42) and were tied for a wild card spot.
The Blue Jays expected better before the season, and they were in acceptable shape before a 3-9 July threatened their postseason hopes. They're responding to the slide by making changes during the season.
Kaitlyn McGrath's story in The Athletic makes Romero sound an awful lot like Rick Renteria.
Montoyo, 56, was hired before the 2019 season partly because of his player development experience. His even-keeled demeanor steadied the team during two seasons of upheaval, in 2020 and 2021, when the club played home games in three different ballparks and had to move twice in-season. He led his team from 95 losses in 2019 to 91 wins last year. At one time, his optimism and positivity were the needed tone for a young team. But now, amidst underachievement on the field, it seems as though the club needed a firmer touch.
And that, according to sources, didn’t come as naturally to Montoyo, who was fired as manager of the Blue Jays on Wednesday with a record of 236-236 over three-and-half seasons.
“When you’re 1-9, you’re looking for someone to come in and either kick you in the ass or pump you up, just something, some guidance,” one player told The Athletic, making reference to the Jays’ recent skid. “And you could have it as players, for sure, and we did, but you really do need it coming from the top and that just wasn’t happening.”
Of course, there's plenty of room between 10 games over .500 and nine games under .500, so watch the Blue Jays tread water and continue to deprive White Sox fans of a consensus they really could use.
SPARE PARTS
Dan Szymborski details why ZiPS still likes the White Sox's chances to take the AL Central despite trailing the Twins by five games. I get it, but here's a case where an algorithm would struggle to account for players operating at 75 percent for an entire season. Eloy Jiménez leaving with an irritation of his leg situation doesn't help matters in this regard.
Ben Clemens looks at La Russa's ... curious ... decision to have Davis Martin intentionally walk José Ramírez before starting him off with a strike. La Russa's punitive response to a success reminded me a little bit of Ozzie Guillen shredding Sean Tracey in the dugout because strikes were the opposite of what he wanted. Speaking of which...
... Ozzie Guillen got into a Twitter beef with Jon Heyman, which provides a convenient example of why he's better off in media. That kind of attention can usually only help, whereas it eventually fell upon deaf ears toward the end of his tenure in the White Sox dugout.
Yermín Mercedes homered and doubled off Dallas Keuchel, and those clips made the rounds on White Sox Twitter. I was equally interested in what Keuchel had to say after this two-inning dud, which was sent off the rails by an outfield misplay. He hit the nail on the head:
"There's some tough luck involved but as a starting pitcher, I've got to be a little bit better," Keuchel said. "Haven't really had a great first inning now in my fourth start so I was really trying to get that one under my belt, obviously that didn't go well. It was either pretty much a strikeout or base hit somewhere or a home run."
Reynaldo López's velocity is back, he's ironed out how to make his slider work with his shorter arm path, and he's figured out how to apply that consistent arsenal to the hitters he's facing. It's that simple.
While we've seen various iterations of shift rules batted about and instituted at lower levels -- two infielders on each side, all infielders on the dirt -- Jayson Stark details new rules about to be implemented in the Florida State League that prohibit middle infielders from playing behind second base.
Every team but the Yankees and Astros has players who couldn't travel to Toronto because they were unvaccinated (it was Dylan Cease and Kendall Graveman on the White Sox), but the Royals have blasted past everybody else with 10 players who can't cross the border. Double digits!
There's probably a number where it goes from being a couple of unfortunate individual choices to a condemnation of an organization, and considering no other team has had to replace five players before a trip to Canada, 10 clears that line by plenty. It's especially ugly when a team leader like Whit Merrifield shows his ass and says that he'd change his mind for a better team.
“I understand what Canada has in place right now. That’s the only reason that I would think about getting it at this point is to go to Canada,” Merrifield said. “That might change down the road. Something happens, and I happen to get on a team that has a chance to go play in Canada in the postseason, maybe that changes.”
Dayton Moore expressed disappointment in the decisions of his players, but then he went and defended Merrifield with the you-don't-know-what's-in-his-heart defense. I don't think Merrifield can back out of it. It's more likely that he meant what he said, but had no idea how bad it would sound leaving his mouth.
(Plus, Moore has his own checkered history with doing his own research and influencing the team with his findings. Maybe they learned it by watching him.)
Anyway, what's happening with the Royals is a reductio ad absurdum outcome of the decisions made by Graveman and Cease. They're not bad teammates -- in fact, the López story above shows Graveman being a great one -- but they fell well short in that instance. Fortunately, life could go on because their teammates stepped up to minimize the disruption. If everybody else on the team chose to make the same individual decision, a team couldn't be fielded.
