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You know, three or four years, and we talked about this, three or four years ago, I'm looking at that team and it's got Gileto and Dylan Sees and a Lance Lin, Timmy Anderson and a Bray you, who are both not in the game right now. Carlos Rodon, right now, Carlos Carlos. Yeah, and, you know, Copac was, well, had you had that time. And I'm thinking, yeah, I'm thinking three or four years ago, this is going to be a team in that division that's going to be kind of a, kind of a juggernaut and going to go on a four or five, six year run. I, as an analyst, I look at it. It's probably the most disappointing franchise I've seen over the last three or four years, as far as expectations are not living up to them. That's fair. That's fair. Let's go. Let's go with this year and because it's been such, I'm looking right here. This team's 29 and 93. They could have the, they could lose a hundred going into the September. I've been on some tough teams, Scotty. I've been on some really great teams. I've been on some teams that, man, it was a struggle. And we were out of the pennant race at the All-Star break and it's no fun. You got to find a way to get up in the morning and have a reason to play, whether it's beating somebody else, knocking somebody else out of the playoffs. But in all your years, you're playing years, you cover in this team the last nine years. Have you ever seen anything like it and what has it been having to cover this team going through in City of Chicago? I haven't seen anything like this from a fan's perspective or even some of the teams that I've been on. And I was on some bad teams throughout my career. You look back to 2021, Booney, the guys that we mentioned, they had a good young core, a lot of talent. They run 193 games that year with Tony LaRusa at the helm. So you really thought, hey, once these guys start maturing, once these guys start growing a little bit, they're going to be, are going to have themselves a pretty good base moving forward. And from that point on, it has just been a deep dive into this historically bad seasons. I don't know. I don't know the next year. They won maybe 70, 60, and then this year. But it's not the question isn't what went wrong. The question is what didn't go wrong. I mean, when you look at this roster, I'm going into this season. I'm tired of talking about it. Fans are tired of hearing about it, but it is part of the story and that's injuries. They've suffered injuries to some key guys the last two to three years. That's part of the game. All clubs have to deal with injuries, but that is part of the story. Just weeks into this season, you had Eloy Jimenez, Johan Mancata, Luis Roberts down. Mancata is still out. He hasn't been back since. So I know all clubs have to deal with this type of stuff, but that has been part of the reason as to why they haven't reached their potential as a club. On the field, when you look at different parts of this ball club, all offense, defense, base running, they don't do anything really well, Boonie. Offensively, their second to last in runs, I think their second to last and on base percentage, second to last in runs, or in batting average, their situational hitting is terrible. Productive outs, they're among the bottom six. They're just offensively, they do nothing right. Pitching staff leads baseball by a lot in walks. And you can pitch around walks one, two, three times a week, but that's not a sustainable way. Over 162 games, you're going to find yourself in trouble. Defense, I think they're among the bottom six and fielding percentage, so they don't catch the baseball. Base running is terrible. Secondary leads are terrible. I can go on and on, Boonie. And we can get into the analytics of the game, which is a hot topic now and exit velocity and launch angle. But at the end of the day, regardless of what league you're playing in, and regardless of if you're in literally baseball, traveling high school baseball, the teams that play the most fundamentally sound baseball. I know it's not sexy. I know people don't want to talk about it, but the teams that play the most fundamentally sound baseball, their teams that are going to win consistently, and the White Sox, fundamentally, as a ball club, just are not anywhere close to where they need to be to win games night in and night out. And Pedro Krophal came in two years ago and talked about improving the fundamentals. We're going to get back to that. We're going to play the game the right way, and that just has not developed. Each and every night, you just watched his club and they're just a bad baseball team. Last night, that loss to the Yankee was kind of a typical loss. Pitching staff walk six. Offense had no walks. They scatter nine hits. Nobody's on base. It's just kind of a typical loss for the White Sox. So they're at rock bottom. Chris gets in company. They have a lot of work in front of them. But hopefully they can get to the drawing board. And look, we can talk about what is this organizational philosophy? Is this just a matter of players not executing? The White Sox going to have to take a long look in the mirror and not only find their identity on what they want to be, but look, break it further down and say, hey, who do we want to be? What are our guiding principles? How are we going to go out and win ball games? Who are we going to bring in here? And how are we going to take the field and try to win games? They have a lot of work to do. And all that's true. And I'm watching from afar, you're seeing it on the daily. They've won two out of their last 28 games. And I kid around a lot, especially when it comes to batting average in the modern era. I tell my son, I said, do you realize that it's harder to hit 190 than it is 300? Yeah. I mean, I had some tough years. And I remember hitting 223 or 233 one year in Cincinnati. I'm telling you after games, I had tears in my eyes under the bleachers of Riverfront Stadium. I'm hitting 230. I couldn't imagine being a worse offensive player. So I always say it's easier to hit 300 than it is one night. Two wins and I've been on some crazy loss, you know, bad streaks team wise to win two games in 28 to lose 20 straight. As you mentioned, if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. The teams you've been on the 2005 World Series Champion White Sox that you were a part of, you probably had a feeling you came to the yard and it was a you're smiling at your teammates. Like we're going to find a way today that 2001 team you came up on seems like we want every day. And we would find a way in if we didn't find a way, our opposition would give it to us because of whatever we had that mojo we had rolling. Are you able to are you down on the field at all with these guys time to time and get to talk, get a temperature for what are these guys actually going through? Because as athletes, you know, it's part of the gig. When you sign up for this, you're going to have some you're going to have some humble pie and you're going to have some some lean years, some lean weeks, some lean months, whatever it may be. But part of the part of the deal is you got to be a pro and you got to roll with it. You got to be able to be criticized and take that and not be offended by it. Hey, you saw you, you make a lot of money to play this game. And that they're going to praise you when you're when you're great. And you're going to have to wear it a little bit when you're when you're not so great. So, so once again, do you have any chance to interact with the players on the field to get a pulse for what they're what it actually is they're feeling? Yeah, I don't get down into the clubhouse much at all. We do probably 90 for 95% of our games in the studio. Occasionally, we'll go to the ballpark and do a pregame there. But I stay out of those guys way. If I'm part of the broadcast next year, I'm hoping I think we'll be doing more games at the ballpark than I might have the opportunity to get down there and mix it up a little bit and kind of get to get a feel and a beat for what's going on. But back to what what you were talking about, Boonie, winning is an attitude and losing is an attitude. You know, that O1 team you were talking about, you show up to the ballpark and you have this attitude and you have this feeling of we're going to win a ballgame. And that goes the other way. When you're on a losing club and I've been there, you show up to the ballpark and one thing goes wrong and this negativity kind of succumbs you. And baseball is a game of momentum and you can feel it. And I remember feeling something goes wrong and I can it's almost tangible. You can almost feel it with this white socks club when something goes wrong. It's kind of oh gosh, here we go again. It takes mentally strong professionals to be able to to battle through that and to kind of change the narrative because you can just you can fall into that trap each and every day. Oh gosh, where the socks were terrible this year, we're just kind of supposed to lose. So it's going to take a culture shift. It's going to take an attitude shift. There's going to be a lot of work that needs to go down on the south side. It can't happen. You know, we've seen some quick turnaround with some of these clubs. You know, from one year to the next, look at the Royals, look at some of these other clubs in the past that were terrible and then you know, got a couple of guys, the attitude changed and you kind of start gaining momentum from there. I remember in 05, when we showed up to the ballpark, you know, we knew we we were going to be in a game and each night's different, Boonie, you know, you know, we can talk about the analytics and the exit velocities all we want. But at the end of the day, there are intangibles that clubs have it takes to win ball games night in a night out. It takes something different each and every night. One night, you may have to catch it play defense. The other night, you you are relying on that three, two run, home run. Someday, some nights, you're going to have to pitch it and clubs have to possess the the versatile ability to kind of just battle and fight each and every night and find ways to win ball games. In 05, I think we were fifth in home runs. So we hit we hit the ball out of the ballpark, but we also had the versatility to manufacture a run here or there. We stole bases. We bunted. We sacrificed guys over. But our identity that year was pitching in defense. Our pitching staff, I don't know, I believe it was top 10 in the league. They were given two, three, four, five runs a game. We knew as an offense, if we could show up and just put three, four runs on the board, we had a pretty good shot of winning a ball game. And that's, but most importantly, we were resilient. We lost a game, come back the next day. We were able to squash it. Today's a new day. We're going to go out. We're going to battle you. We're going to do what we need to do this night to win a game. And I don't see this current White Sox club making adjustments. They seem to be just relying on one specific free swinging way to go out and score runs. And it just hasn't happened for them the last couple of years. What are the White Sox need to do going forward this offseason? What needs to happen? What's the biggest change you see? Yeah, that's a really good question. I think that's a question the White Sox need to ask themselves, Boney. I think they need to get to the drawing board, look in the mirror and ask themselves who they want to be. What do we value? What do we believe is going to win games? And I think with all the numbers and the information and the analytics and the data, I think some of these clubs and some of these executives have dug into those numbers and have kind of lost themselves a little bit and have gotten away from good, sound, solid, fundamental baseball. I don't know what exactly, what they value and what they feel, but they need to start from scratch and say, "Hey, what kind of club do we want? What kind of club?" And that's different. It depends on who you got in your minor leagues, what you believe in. There's mixing and matching. What type of manager are we going to bring in at this point? Are we going to bring in more of a development teaching kind of manager? They're obviously not ready to win right now, but who they're going to get to lead that culture change. So there's a lot of questions, a lot of work that has to be done down on the south side, but I hope that they can do it because, like I mentioned, no one knows more than I do how passionate those White Sox fans are down their booty. They deserve better. I hope they can get it going and get things
