The path to success with La Russa managing the Sox was never an endless slate of three- or four-run outputs from his offense and making five or six game-altering decisions every night and getting all of them right. Aaron recently tweeted out a quote from Rocco Baldelli about controlled aggression at the plate that sounds like it could have come out of La Russa’s mouth, had it only contained some random allusions to Rick Monday or Paul Richards. La Russa is not batting 1.000, as I think we’ve covered extensively, and the sense that he is messing everything up is probably hardened by how ornery he can be in the agony of defeat. “Tense” was also a candidate, since that is the nature of almost every White Sox victory, as their putrid offense makes every triumph a bullpen-gobbling grind. James Fegan ( White Sox): Terse, since that is the nature of a lot of postgame press conferences with Tony La Russa. The Twins lead MLB with 24 different players spending time on the IL this year - including season-ending stints for Royce Lewis and Chris Paddack - and they rank seventh in total days lost to injury. At one point last week the Twins had 18 players unavailable because they were on the injured list, COVID-19 IL or restricted list, and they’ve had double-digit players on the IL basically the entire season.
The Tigers have battled a barrage of injuries, but that doesn’t explain why they rank last in runs, home runs, slugging percentage and wRC+.Īaron Gleeman ( Twins): Injured. Instead, the Tigers have struggled to produce runs at a historic pace and have generally succumbed to too much sloppy play. Playoff hopes were always a stretch, but when Detroit finished last season 68-61 after May 8, it was reasonable to expect this team to be competitive after an offseason of additions. The Tigers came into the season hoping this would be the year their rebuild was officially over. The route the Royals choose to take at the trade deadline, and the performance from now until the end of the season will dictate how close the club believes the light at the end of the development tunnel is.Ĭody Stavenhagen ( Tigers): Disappointing. This indicates the state of the team: still in the development phase. And while Melendez and Witt have been impressive in many facets, the young pitchers continue to be inconsistent. They’re on pace for more than 100 losses. But to this point, the Royals have underperformed. If that meant 80 wins, it was going to be doable, as long as the young pitchers took steps forward, and young prospects such as Bobby Witt Jr., MJ Melendez and others established themselves in the big leagues in a way that prepared the Royals for a solid chance at contention in 2023. The playoffs were not a reasonable expectation, but reasonable progression was. The Royals wanted to improve this season. It seems they have identified pieces who will be here a long, long time.Īlec Lewis ( Royals): Developing. From that standpoint, this start has to be viewed as a success. The Guardians have one of the deepest farm systems in baseball and this season was always going to be about figuring out which players will be foundational pieces and which can be bundled in trades. Most of the rest of the everyday players are guys like Andrés Giménez (23), Josh Naylor (24), Owen Miller (25), Steven Kwan (24) and Amed Rosario (26). Team president Chris Antonetti made the point a few weeks ago that the average age of this roster is even younger than a Triple-A team. What’s one word that describes the state of your team? With more than a third of the season in the books, we gathered our AL Central writers to take stock of each team and make sense of the division race.
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