Remember the good ole days, back in mid-July when the White Sox were 42-44 at the All-Star break and the optimists had a leg to stand on?
The Sox were flirting with .500, and even with inevitable second-half regression, we couldn't rule out a 75-win season -- which would have been somewhat tolerable given where this team has been the past couple of years.
Well, there's regression, and then there's falling off a cliff. The Sox (64-82) are 22-38 in the second half, and they'd have to go 11-5 in their last 16 games in order to reach 75 wins.
Fat chance.
During the first half of the season, the Sox played the Kansas City Royals (55-92) 12 times and won eight of those meetings. But since the All-Star break, the Sox have gone a ghastly 1-6 against the lousy Royals.
Kansas City took two out of three this week at Guaranteed Rate Field -- even though they sent Glenn Sparkman and Jorge Lopez to the mound -- and that means the Royals win the season series from the Sox, 10 games to 9.
What an embarrassment. Once again, the Sox rebuild is going in reverse, and there's no rational reason to think this team can contend in 2020. The Sox sent their three most reliable starters to the mound against Kansas City, and they still managed only one win.
Here's a brief look back at the crapfest:
Tuesday, Sept. 10
White Sox 7, Royals 3: The series started off well enough as Eloy Jimenez hit his first career grand slam in the first inning. Adam Engel hit a solo home run in the second, and Yoan Moncada added a two-run, 452-foot homer in the seventh.
That made a winner of Ivan Nova (10-12), who gave up three solo home runs in the first two innings but settled down to get through 5.2 innings with no further damage. Four Sox relievers combined to allow only two hits the rest of the way and close it out.
Jimenez and Moncada homered in the same game for the first time in their careers. For Jimenez, it was his 25th homer, for Moncada his 23rd.
Wednesday, Sept. 11
Royals 8, White Sox 6: Sparkman (4-11) threw a complete-game shutout against the Sox the first week after the All-Star break, and then proceeded to go 0-6 with an 8.32 ERA over his next nine starts. The Royals did not win a single one of those nine games.
But they won this one, with Sparkman allowing three runs over five innings to pick up the victory. Jimenez hit his 26th homer in the first inning, a three-run shot, but the Sox couldn't get anything else done against the Kansas City starter.
Meanwhile, Reynaldo Lopez (9-13) got roughed up, giving up six runs, four homers and nine hits over 4.2 innings. This was not the same Lopez who threw a complete-game one-hitter in his previous start against Cleveland. He slider was hanging, his fastball was not well located, and he didn't seem interested in using his changeup.
At least Jose Abreu hit a two-run homer and increased his league-leading RBI total to 114 in the loss.
Thursday, Sept. 12
Royals 6, White Sox 3: Even with Lucas Giolito on the mound, the Sox can't win. Giolito (14-9) struck out a team-record eight batters in a row at one point, and finished with 12Ks, but he also gave up a crushing 3-run homer to Hunter Dozier in the sixth inning that turned a 2-2 tie into a 5-2 Kansas City lead.
The Sox, of course, scored only two runs off Lopez (4-7) and his 6.09 ERA.
Scraping for something nice to say, Abreu is up to 115 RBIs now after he had a sacrifice fly. And Tim Anderson had his second consecutive two-hit game to keep his league-leading average at .333.
But other than that, the Sox are a disaster right now. Not a single starting pitcher got through the first inning without giving up a run in this series, and the Royals scored 17 runs over three games -- 15 of them on home runs.
This was a pathetic showing in a season full of pathetic showings. All of us here at The Baseball Kid would like to congratulate Rick Hahn on clinching his seventh consecutive losing season as Sox GM.
Rick, if we had our way, you would have been fired long ago. Your rebuild sucks.
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