On Monday, just hours after a Crain’s Chicago Business report came out that White Sox ownership is looking at options to move the team out of 35th and Shields the team suffered an embarrassing 14-2 loss at the hands of the Seattle Mariners. It doesn’t get much worse than that.
If that isn’t bad enough at one point in the game winning pitcher Luis Castillo threw them 47 consecutive fastballs. During that stretch, the White Sox went just 3-15 at the plate. The game was over in the first inning.
The loss comes just one day after Pedro Grifol revealed he had a talk with his players about showing consistent effort, especially after going down early in games. The White Sox appeared to respond with a seven-run eighth inning to battle back for a 10-5 victory over the Rockies on Sunday.
As it turns out Sunday was an outlier. Now it was veteran shortstop Elvis Andrus’s turn to address the team.
Following the team’s 12-run beat down that wasn’t as close as the score suggests Andrus told his teammates to imagine they are in the playoff race. It’s easy if you try since. This time last season the White Sox were trying to run down the Cleveland Guardians atop the AL Central standings.
“You have to fight, man. It’s a mental game especially when you’re struggling as a team,” Andrus told reporters after the White Sox fourth straight home defeat. “You have to go out there and imagine you’re in the race.”
“It sounds crazy but that is where my mindset is now. I cannot just roll and go game by game. My mindset is still be aggressive, act like you’re still in the race. That’s the best way to take every game of your career.”
For a team devoid of leadership, Andrus is one of the few consummate professionals. It’s the reason he is still on the team. These comments come knowing the final 37 games of the season are about giving younger players an extended look and seeing which veterans fit into the future, a future that Andrus will almost certainly not be a part of.
If you look at the White Sox recent stretch of games they don’t look like a team that’s willing to bear down when the going gets rough. They are 0-5 in their last five and were outscored 13-3 in the first inning during that stretch.
On Friday they trailed 5-1 after one and went on to lose 14-1. The next day the Rockies put them in an early 3-1 hole and the White Sox eventually fell 11-5. Yesterday the Mariners put them in another 5-1 hole and you already know what happened next.
The way the Mariners beat the White Sox was by staying patient at the plate, throwing strikes, and not letting their foot off the gas. It seems the Southsiders could learn a thing or two from them. They do all the things a team actually in the playoff race is supposed to do.
“You can learn a lot from a team like that. They take every at-bat with a purpose,” Touki Toussaint the losing pitcher on Monday said. “They throw the ball in the zone. That’s what we are trying to get to. I look back and I’m like ‘All right, that’s a playoff team.’ I can pick things they do and try to attack.”
After watching this team all year, playing to win is not in the DNA of just about every guy on the roster