Whither baseball, and where does that leave the White Sox?
Around Sox circles, the jokes are flying in two directions. Some fans are already treating 2026 - and the possible hand from Pope Leo - like the greatest act of divine intervention since the parting of the Red Sea.
Others would have preferred a little more help in the form of hitters actually putting the bat on the ball when it mattered most. But even that frustration looks tame compared with what Dodgers fans are dealing with.
My son, who lives in Los Angeles, says there’s been a spread - well, at least a little spread - of talk that Dodgers owners pushed the players to lose the series to the Brewers so there wouldn’t be a loud push for a salary cap when negotiations come around. Apparently, QAnon is alive and well.
That’s nonsense, of course. There’s no reason to believe any of it. But it does raise the bigger question: was there ever much reason to buy the owners’ version of the labor argument in the first place?
Competitive balance is the usual selling point, and the current playoff picture doesn’t exactly make that case easy. Having three of the four teams left come from small markets, including the two smallest metro areas, makes it look less like a broken system and more like organizational competence decides a lot of this. But no owner who’s fallen short wants to say that out loud.
Still, MLB would love to make the case. It’s good public relations, and it lets the league sound like it cares about the sport and the fans instead of just lining its pockets.
“We’re out to screw over the players and if fans miss a season, tough,” just doesn’t have the ring of a great sales pitch.
If you want to believe the owners’ main concern is really competitive balance, go ahead. Plenty of people have embraced stranger ideas.
But there’s one awkward little detail: if the owners truly want negotiations to be about the good of the game, why is Jerry Reinsdorf on their negotiating committee? He’s the White Sox chairman, and he’s been one of the loudest voices for obstruction and stupidity on the ownership side for decades.
A 91-year-old whose team just had a surprisingly good season might seem, on paper, like someone ready to solve problems and move forward. But Reinsdorf’s bitterness runs deeper than that.
Players take his money; fans and taxpayers don’t give him enough of it. So, as far as he’s concerned, to hell with them.
And why is Dick Monfort of the Rockies, equally incompetent, serving as chairman too?
The only major spender on that six-member committee is Hal Steinbrenner of the Yankees, who is presumably there as a counterweight to Mark Attanasio of the Brewers. Attanasio, after all, will have a hard time keeping a straight face while saying “competitive balance.”
As for the playoffs themselves, the fact that the Brewers and Guardians are still alive means Christian Yelich and José Ramírez are still playing too. That’s good for their teams and good for the sport, which is a very, very fine thing.
They’re two superstars who do things the right way on and off the field. Yes, Sox fans are supposed to hate Ramírez because of how well he has hit us - a .811 career OPS - but if you don’t enjoy watching him play, you don’t like baseball.
And then there’s the White Sox.
The speculation has already started about how they should keep moving up, both inside Soxdom and beyond it. Naturally, people are talking about big free-agent pitching additions. After the laugh that idea usually gets, it’s worth remembering there are 29 other teams that also want good pitchers and can afford them.
The more realistic path looks like trades, especially with the number of shortstops in the system. Caleb Bonemer is in Arizona learning the outfield, presumably so he can start out in a platoon with one of the current guys, none of whom hits lefties at all, despite a couple of key successes down the stretch.
At least one thinker has suggested dealing Andrew Benintendi for a starting pitcher, apparently without realizing the other team would need to be brain dead to go along with that.
Then there’s Colson Montgomery, who put up only a 90 OPS+ despite hitting 31 homers. He did it with a .197 average and, as noted, set the all-time record for striking out.
His defense is only a C-. Some believe the Sox could land a pitcher for him.
Maybe that’s worth exploring.
Behind Bonemer and William Bergolla Jr. are Roch Cholowsky and Billy Carlson, and Carlson, especially, brings slick defense at shortstop. If you haven’t been watching the playoffs, you haven’t seen how much that kind of defense matters.
There’s also Munetaka Murakami in the conversation. He struck out 16 times in 31 plate appearances in the playoffs, but he finished the season with a 130 OPS+ and a .347 OBP, both better than Montgomery’s .282 on-base mark. And unlike some others, he didn’t do those godawful lawyer commercials.