What would you end up calling Rick Hahn's critique of White Sox fans during his White Sox Talk appearance? "Smackdown" is too harsh, and "patdown" is something else entirely.
"Targeted upbraiding" isn't as charged, but it's probably accurate, and it appeared he'd navigated the aftermath of it when Paul Sullivan came swooping in with a column about it on Sunday night.
The podcast appearance was more than a week ago, and Sullivan's column doesn't add a whole lot to what we've already discussed, except he talked to Houston's Jeff Luhnow about openly running a Twitter account while overseeing a rebuild. But Sullivan has taken it upon himself to be the BBWAA cardholder who needles entrenched White Sox personnel, and Hahn has opened himself up to it. Hahn couldn't figure out how to make his actions match his rhetoric, and now he's lowering the latter to line up with the flatter curve and getting frustrated that fans are frustrated.
If it feels like Hahn's vent session has hovered over proceedings for too long, it's business as usual. One hallmark of the White Sox over the years is an inability to replace stale storylines with better ones, and this season is no exception. Sure, 2019 has produced key developments. It's great that Lucas Giolito and Yoan Moncada have taken massive steps forward and Tim Anderson is maxing out his plate approach. It's good that Eloy Jiménez is taking his lumps in a noncompetitive season and is showing signs of getting it. Leury García's done about everything asked of him as an everyday player.
But that's been about it, and more than that, it's also been the case since about late May. Dylan Cease's outings are instructive at this point, but not yet enjoyable, and the White Sox won't let Nick Madrigal or Luis Robert try to improve the MLB product. The people who defend the front office by saying "nobody liked Giolito last year" aren't wrong, but a team should also be adding to that list throughout the season.
The Sox really haven't done it. When it comes to potential 2020 contributors who are more intriguing in late August than they were in late May, we're looking at Jimmy Cordero, Zack Collins, Yermin Mercedes and Gavin Sheets. Only the first guy is on the 25-man roster, and the other three might play the same position. Even the veterans who provided early bursts of professionalism have faded. Ryan Goins only has five singles over his last 37 at-bats, and Jon Jay is 3-for-33, also with no extra-base hits, and they've been leaky on the defensive side of the ball, too.
Perhaps the White Sox are sticking with guys like Jay and Welington Castillo because they're trying to arrange takers in this new single-deadline environment ...
... but the longer they dole out playing time to guys who won't help in 2020 or beyond, the harder it becomes to isolate the legitimate progress from a greater stagnation. The pace the White Sox have chosen for the rebuild reminds me of a Mitch Hedberg joke:
I wanna mountain climb just to hang out at base camp. You grow a beard, you drink hot chocolate.
"Hey, you going to the top?"
"... Soon."
Part of me wonders if the Sox haven't called up Robert due to the blow they would suffer in farm system rankings. I doubt Robert's rookie eligibility is a driving factor, but it's harder to sell a rebuild when the team remains several developments away from competing and the farm system is middle-of-the-pack.
But even if the Sox want to preserve the rebuild's purity as long as they can, they can at least start with giving a hard look at Collins and substantial auditions to Mercedes, Danny Mendick, etc. Maybe they have the shelf life of a Palka or the half-life of Delmoniconium, but I'd like to see at least one more push to add to the list of 2019 success stories with the six weeks remaining. New isn't always better, except when the lack of novelty is the biggest issue.
