Chet Coppock's Fur Coat wrote:
Drunk Squirrel wrote:
Joe Orr Road Rod wrote:
Drunk Squirrel wrote:
Joe Orr Road Rod wrote:
This might be the worst team to ever play the game at the big league level. Seriously.
is this their worst April in your memory? When the cubs really stink up the place (which is more often than I'd like to admit) I always think, well, its not 1994 bad and I admittedly don't follow the Sox closely but this is bad as I can remember.
1969 was my first year as a fan and they were certainly worse than this on paper, but I didn't know any better then and I was just happy to watch baseball with my dad. It also didn't come after five years of losing on purpose with the promise of a long contention period.
It's all easier when you are a kid to just enjoy the moment for sure. My kids were happy to go to a game, any game and have a hot dog and a pop. There was a reward in that even while watching Edwin Jackson get lit up or Junior Lake go 0 for again. About the same as going to low A Quad Cities baseball I suppose if Im being honest.
The tank is great when it works but there are so little guarantees in baseball when it comes to prospects and where you find them between injuries, projections and everything else. Top 5 pics or international signings are all exciting and everything but the track record would tell you to temper your expectations. I hate the signing of retreads as well but it's not an either or proposition.
The thing that made the Cub rebuild tolerable was that you could see progression from the guys who would eventually matter. When Anthony Rizzo has his cup of coffee with San Diego he was as overmatched as Colas was now. His first two years in Chicago, he was horrible against lefties. But you could see that he was making adjustments and improving. It was fine to sit in Washington on a 90 degree evening and watch Chris Volstad get his brains beaten in, the kids were getting experience and improving.
With the White Sox, there is no improvement from the guys who we should be expecting to improve year over year, and Charlotte is a tire fire of AAAA has beens like Billy Hamilton, Jake Marisnick, and Clint Frazier.
I guess the Cub rebuild "worked", I mean obviously they broke the World Series drought. But what if Cleveland wins that game. Yeah, then you had a few good seasons with some playoff runs, but you're already back to Tank II- Electric Boogaloo where Caller Bob had to pretend to be excited about Schwisdom.
Tanking sucks. If every team isn't trying to win every year, that's something in the game that needs to be fixed. And it's something a lot bigger than shifting on a left-handed power hitter.