Gregor: Sox offense wakes up - for one game
The Chicago White Sox' inept offense has driven general manager Rick Hahn to the fork in the road.
Should he bear right, and stay the course? Or bear left, and start chucking unproductive bats out the window?
"You really have two avenues," Hahn said. "One, you take some solace in these track records, some solace in the analysis you made in the off-season, both internally and externally, that was excited about this group being together, and think, 'OK, over the next 80 games there's enough time for guys to start regressing back to their proven track records.'"
Hahn has waited the entire first half of the season for the Sox' offense to heat up, and for one game at least, his patience was rewarded.
For the first time since May 9, a franchise record span of 24 home games, the White Sox scored more than 4 runs in a game at U.S. Cellular Field.
In the 11th inning Wednesday night, Adam Eaton led off with a home run and the White Sox beat the Blue Jays 7-6.
It was the sixth home run of the season for Eaton, who hit only 1 in 2014.
Eaton tried to bunt on Toronto reliever Roberto Osuna's first pitch and took a ball. On the second pitch, he hit a fastball out to right field.
"My first instinct was, 'Let's try to get on for Jose (Abreu) to get a double,'" Eaton said. "I thought the next one was going to be a heater. I have to admit, that's the first time I tried to hit a homer. For some reason, I don't know, I blacked out, but it happened to work out well. I'm very fortunate it went out."
It was a nice offensive output - but it was only one game.
The long stretch of futility explains why Hahn is likely leaning hard to the left and rolling down the window as he prepares to move players off the roster.
"It is hard, having now seen this for 82 games, to not trust what your eyes are showing you," Hahn said. "It's showing you it's not clicking for whatever reason and you've got to change this mix. Those are the two avenues in front of us right now."
The White Sox are the lowest-scoring team in baseball, and with the July 31 nonwaiver trade deadline approaching, Hahn might try moving players like Adam LaRoche, Alexei Ramirez and Melky Cabrera.
He might also look for internal upgrades for Conor Gillaspie at third base (Matt Davidson) and Carlos Sanchez at second (Micah Johnson).
As for catcher, where Tyler Flowers and Geovany Soto have combined to generate very little offense, anything appears to be possible.
With so many teams still in the playoff chase, Hahn should get more in return the longer he waits, assuming he decides to sell.
"We've got a lot of clubs, especially in this league (American), that are still arguably in contention, a good week away from being right in the thick of things," Hahn said. "I do think it's been a somewhat slower evolving market in talking to GMs. Even some who are in the so-called declared sellers camp are saying it's moving fairly slowly in terms of getting specific offers.
"That's all going to change. We've got 22 days until the deadline and things can happen fairly quickly once teams get committed to making a decision."
Hahn appears to have little choice but to become a full-blown seller thanks to an offense that ranks last in the AL in runs scored, homers, on-base percentage and slugging percentage.
"We've heard people say they've never seen anything like this before in terms of this many, arguably high-caliber offensive talents with significant track records, all falling off the table at the same time," Hahn said.
The Sox' GM looked to have filled many key holes last winter, but only Abreu has hit up to expectations over the first half of the season.
"Obviously, we felt heading into this season that we put ourselves in a position to contend but it was still, as I said at the time repeatedly over the off-season, part of a process," Hahn said.