White Sox players touted the positive, cohesive environment in the clubhouse through spring training and the first month in the season, but a 3-22 start would prompt anyone to question if any of that mattered.
"Early on it was like, 'When is it going to show? We're putting in the work, when is it going to turn our way for once?' We lost a lot of one-run games," said Nicky Lopez.
Indeed, the Sox opened the season with three straight one-run losses at home, plus two more over the course of their 1-6 road trip in Kansas City and Cleveland, but the focus on a handful of heartbreakers that could have gone the other way was also a more comfortable topic than others.
Uncompetitive sweeps at the hands of the Reds and Phillies quickly put them in ownership of the worst run differential in the sport. As bad as the overall record was, only five teams scored fewer runs than this White Sox offense in the first 25 games of a season. And once you remove the three Dead Ball Era teams, it was just the 1972 Brewers and the last year of existence for the Montreal Expos.
Worse, with Eloy Jiménez, Yoán Moncada and Luis Robert Jr. all hitting the injured list during that span, and both Andrew Benintendi and Andrew Vaughn stuck in awful slumps, the path to improvement was murky.
"I was hitting the ball hard, lining out," said Vaughn, who has hit three homers in the last week since reaching a 'screw it' stage with his struggles, and also reverting back to some old principles. "I just have to laugh it off and that’s the thing I gotta do. Hit the ball hard and good things will work out."
Neither Vaughn nor the White Sox overall tout season lines that seem worthy of speaking like they're on the other side of the storm. The Sox are still a bad series away from having the worst record in MLB again, and Vaughn is still a good series away from being comfortably over a .600 OPS, but three weeks of over .500 ball (11-8) provides a very specific type of needed relief.
"You get confidence after you get the 'W' and we’re playing the same baseball that we always have been," said Korey Lee. "We’re not going to change who we are. We didn’t change who we are in the beginning. We’re still not going to and obviously, the rough patch is behind us. Now, we’re going forward."
Even if it was relief that was needed more to end the gawking from outside, than for internal belief.
"Obviously we've still got a long way to go before we're back to where we all want to be," said Michael Kopech. "But when we were going through it all, yeah it sucked to lose games, but we were all confident that it was going to turn. I don't think any of us were at a point where we were like 'Well, we're about to make major league history being the worst team.' No one was going down that negative rabbit hole. It was just a tough stretch and for us to be climbing out of it is promising."
"We’ve been close this whole time," Vaughn said. "Every guy in here, really tight-knit group. It’s tough to lose that many games in a row, in a whole month, to come out of that and play good baseball is really special."
Discourse around the team understandably lingers around long-term direction, and how all the best performers of this stretch are just lining themselves up to be trade assets. But for the individuals entrenched in the daily work of representing this team, asserting that there is enough talent on hand to compete -- winning four of six series after a weekend in Philadelphia made avoiding no-hitters feel like the goal -- has been special.
It's just that the identity that was supposed to carry this group through this season has yet to be fully staked out. The defense is rated worst in the league or next to it, depending upon your preference for Defensive Runs Saved or Outs Above Average. Ahead of the stretch of schedule that was supposed to be more capable of inflicting a 3-22 stretch than an early season tour of the Central divisions, the recent offensive upturn has only seen the Sox hit .247/.289/.388 with a 5.6 walk rate in the 19 games since Tommy Pham joined to bolster the lineup.
It's certainly a lot better than they were, but not good enough to not have concerns about the road ahead, starting in the Bronx on Friday.
"We've got a tough schedule coming up, so it’s going to take a lot of good baseball played by us to beat some of these teams," said Pham, who is hitting .319/.365/.464. "Offensively there are a lot of things we have to do to get better. Too many easy outs.
"Usually when you’re swinging at the first pitch, you want to get off your A-swing. Too many first pitch rollovers. It happened to me yesterday, but when you swing at first pitch, man, you're looking to do damage, you're looking to hit balls 95-plus mph. No jam shots, rollovers, stuff like that. You want to be a tough out. That's something we’re trying to improve on as a team."
It's still a group facing very long odds to accomplish something beyond winning some series that no one expects them to before giving way to a youth movement in July. With the way the clubhouse is easily welcoming in Bryan Ramos as a wave of the future, or Pedro Grifol's insistence that gradually developing Korey Lee is more vital than his bat boosting what is still the league's worst offense, there is tacit acknowledgment of that before even talking to any front office members, who are good bets to overtly acknowledge that.
But the dark clouds and silent postgame clubhouses of April have been replaced by a mantra that's easier to get behind. At least for now.
"If you look at what was in the past, I mean ... that's what happened," said Garrett Crochet. "If we just shrink our focus to winning series and winning weeks, I think we're going to look up and be happy at the end of this. We know that we're behind but who gives a fuck? If we win nine out of the next 10 weeks, who knows where we'll be?"
