Why White Sox won't be sellers - or buyers - as trade deadline nears
The White Sox are markedly better now than they were in April, but the numbers don't lie.
They're still bad.
Heading into Friday night's game at Oakland, only the Athletics (21-62), Royals (23-58), Rockies (32-51), Nationals (32-48) and Cardinals (33-47) had worse records than the Sox (36-47).
The White Sox are now 36-48 after losing to Oakland 7-4.
Making another spot start, Tanner Banks took the loss after allowing 4 runs on 5 hits and a walk over 4 innings.
Andrew Benintendi was 2-for-4 with 2 RBI, Luis Robert Jr. hit his 24th home run and Andrew Vaughn was 3-for-5, but the Sox's offense squandered too many early scoring opportunities and wound up going 3-for-12 with runners in scoring position while leaving 11 runners on base.
The trade deadline is a month away, and there is little doubt the White Sox match the profile of a team getting ready to dump veteran talent for prospects.
That could happen, but the gut feeling here is the Sox take a pass on selling. They also take a pass on being buyers at the Aug. 1 deadline.
Why?
Why not?
Actually, there's a logical reason the White Sox are likely to stand pat. It's called the AL Central.
If the season ended today, the Twins would be the division winners - with a 41-42 record.
It's the same Minnesota team manager Rocco Baldelli aired out earlier this week after the Twins were swept by the Braves in a three-game series in Atlanta.
"We got wiped this series by the team on the other side of the field," Baldelli said. "There's no way we can walk out of this with any positives, to be honest with you, and that's the truth. I mean, if I'm rolling that up and trying to portray it any other way I'm lying, so we have to make some really, really legitimate adjustments to what we're doing right now if we're going to go out there and compete and win games against that team or really any other team."
Talking to reporters on June 19, general manager Rick Hahn said he's still waiting for the Sox to go on an extended run of success before deciding whether to sell or buy.
Even if they don't get hot, the White Sox are going to be contending in the incredibly weak AL Central whether they like it or not.
Hahn did say the prospects of winning such an awful division is not enough to prevent a sell-off at the trade deadline.
"Making the playoffs is important," Hahn said. "But the goals are loftier than that. And when we judge ultimately what happens as we get much closer to Aug. 1, how we project our ability to not only win the division but to make an impact in October is going to factor in."
It's not like Hahn was going to come out and say: "We're just trying to make the playoffs, even if we get swept in the first round."
That could very well happen, and for the Sox, it's more appealing than being buried in any of MLB's other five divisions.
In a perfect scenario, the White Sox do put it together in the second half, win the Central by a comfortable margin and stay competitive in the postseason.
That's another reason Hahn does not launch the second rebuild in seven years.
"If we're able to turn this around and get ourselves in a position to win this division, we are obviously going to be playing pretty (darn) good baseball for the final two, three months of the season, which would give us reason to believe that the postseason performance could be better," the Sox's GM said.