If you visited the MLB.com homepage without being logged into an account after Saturday night's games were all in the books, the "Latest News" column recapped what sounded like a thrilling day around Major League Baseball.
As of 1 a.m., the headlines gushed about the feats of prominent players both established and emergent, next to logos touting the team involved.
- 'Smoking hot' J-Rod sets record with 17 hits in 4 games (Mariners)
- Here's what to know about the Little League Classic (MLB)
- MVP salute! Mookie homers twice with LeBron in house (Dodgers)
- Elly-ctric! De La Cruz rushes from home to home with elite speed (Reds)
- Turner wows with 2 HRs ... in the same inning (Phillies)
- 'A huge accomplishment': Altuve becomes fastest Astros to 2,000 hits (Astros)
- Going, going ... stuck? Homer lodges INTO foul pole (Orioles)
- Urias' 2nd slam in 3 days powers rout of Cole, Yankees (Red Sox)
- Rosario relives legendary run with game-winning performance (Braves)
This looks like quite the smorgasbord of baseball delights, doesn't it? Good job, athletes. Good job, editors. Handshakes all around.
Now, if you visited the same MLB.com homepage while logged into an MLB.com account that designates a favorite team that isn't represented in the column, it will automatically insert at least one relevant headline.
That makes sense for all sorts of reasons. If a user only cares about his or her team, that gives the site the best chance of getting at least one click, one extra page view, one extra minute of session length during that visit. It also attempts to preempt complaints from aggrieved users who believe the national media ignores their team, because that team is always represented on the home page no matter what.
And I mean no matter what.
Because let's say that favorite team traded nearly all of its desirable players at the deadline. Its starting rotation and bullpen are now depleted, its lineup offers some of the least competitive plate appearances the game has to offer, and the manager looks like a lame duck with two years left on his contract. That team has lost six of seven, and it doesn't figure to get better anytime soon.
That headline feed is still tasked with saying something, bless its heart.
(If you watch it closely, you'll see it pop up after the page initially loads, as if to express its reluctance in carrying out orders.)
"Forge ahead" is definitely the sunniest way to describe a team following a mandated schedule until it fulfills all contractual broadcast obligations. The season is a conveyor belt. "Ahead" is the only way any team can go, although the White Sox would be the team to figure out the way to forge backward.
I'll give the site credit: I did click on the link, and the article is somehow even funnier than the headline. By MLB.com standards, it's a GD roast. Here's Manny Randhawa:
DENVER -- Prior to Friday’s series-opening loss to the Rockies at Coors Field, White Sox manager Pedro Grifol said he could “feel” the overall tenor in his team’s clubhouse changing for the better after questions arose as to the “culture” and “accountability” therein.
“I feel it,” he said. “I feel it in the energy in the dugout and the energy in the clubhouse, on the plane. I feel it. These guys are close. They’re getting closer. There’s a chemistry and a culture we’re going to continue to create, and we’re definitely seeing some of it.”
A few hours later, Chicago suffered its worst loss of the season, by scoring margin, in a 14-1 defeat. And on Saturday night, the Sox again fell to the Rockies -- the club with the worst record in the National League -- by an 11-5 final.
In being outscored, 25-6, over their first two games in Colorado, the White Sox play could perhaps be characterized as “uninspired,” an antonym of the energetic nature Grifol spoke of.
“When you give up five runs in the first inning and four in the fourth or fifth, and you’re down 9-1, that’s kind of what happens,” Grifol said. “And is it acceptable? No. But that’s what happens. … It’s unacceptable, because our job is to start the game and finish it with energy. And I will address that.”
I'm guessing you might've noticed that Grifol spun the alleged creation of a supposed culture into yet another month, but to me, the most telling quote appears at the end of the story.
But here they are. And whatever is at the root of the club’s woes, it doesn’t seem to have been uprooted just yet.
On Saturday, the prevalent word seemed to be “energy.”
“There’s energy, and at times, we lose it,” Grifol said. “And when we get it back, it just comes and goes in the game. And that’s really unacceptable. … We need to bring it every day, every single inning. We’ll talk about that and we’ll move on to tomorrow.”
This hearkens back to the day Grifol was hired, doesn't it?
“This is an extremely talented ballclub,” Grifol said. “And it was a really difficult club to prepare for because if the energy was high, they can beat anybody in the game. And if the energy wasn’t, we were able to have some success against them. My job — and my staff’s job — is gonna be to make sure that that energy is high every night and we’re prepared to win a ballgame.”
By Grifol's own description, he and his staff haven't done their jobs. Check and mate.
I don't think it's that easy, but that's also the point that Chuck Garfien and Ozzie Guillen made on the White Sox Talk Podcast earlier this month. Garfien said that Grifol should've had an idea what he was getting himself into if he could see poor energy levels from across the field; Guillen pointed out that Grifol knocked the White Sox while his own team was worse.
With every passing Infrastructure Week, it becomes ever more evident that Grifol was a simple, superficial solution to a deep-seated, pervasive rot. The one thing he brought to the table has been thrown out the window, and even after months of the same issues, he hasn't figured out anything else to offer.
