Lack Of Urgency And Missed Opportunities Story Of White Sox Season

Dylan Cease extended his streak of allowing one earned run or less to fourteen straight games on Thursday afternoon. The 26-year-old posted a line of six innings of one-run ball with eight strikeouts and just three hits allowed. Despite another dominant outing on the mound, he was tagged with the loss. The White Sox offense sealed his fate by trying to bleed the Royals to death with singles. It did not work.

 Missed Opportunites Pile Up In Kansas City

The White Sox outhit their division rival 14-8 but still managed to be on the wrong end of a 5-3 final score. It wasn't for lack of opportunities. The offense went 2-13 with runners in scoring positions and stranded 11 runners. The White Sox had the bases loaded with nobody out in the third inning with the heart of the order due up. Eloy Jimenez put together a horrible at-bat and struck out on a curveball out of the zone. Jose Abreu followed his lead by going dirt farming for a sinker. Yasmani Grandal ended the inning with a whimper as he grounded out first. The White Sox offense now leads the league in scoreless innings after having a bases-loaded opportunity with nobody out after squandering their third chance of the season. Posting zeros with the bases loaded is nothing new for the White Sox. Entering Tuesday's game, Tony La Russa's squad ranked 25th in batting average (.220), 24th in OPS (.575), and 24th in RBIs (51) with the bases loaded.

Menechino's Approach To Hitting Has White Sox Offense Floundering

This is the problem with hitting coach Frank Menechino's approach to hitting. He stresses hitting the ball hard for average. Hitting for average is fine and well, but modern-day baseball is all about launch angle and home runs. In fact, the White Sox's only three runs of the day came via home runs from Yasmani Grandal and Andrew Vaughn. Out of the White Sox's 14 hits, 12 were singles. This trend is nothing new. Ever since Frank Menechino was named the hitting coach, the White Sox power numbers have slowly evaporated. Of the White Sox's first 1,000 hits this season, 705 were singles. At this rate, just over 70 percent of their hits will be singles. The last three teams to finish a season with at least 70% of their hits being singles were the 2018,2016 and 2015 Miami Marlins. They had a combined record of 213-272 (.439). The hitting coach for those Marlins teams was Frank Menechino.

Hustling Is Optional

Frank Menechino deserves his fair share of criticism, but there is plenty of blame to go around. On Wednesday night Johnny Cueto called out the White Sox lack of urgency. "We can't get comfortable. We need to go out and play and play hard and show what we can do," via interpreter Billy Russo. "We need to fight. We have to show the fire that we have- if we have any." This type of statement from a decorated 15-year veteran should have served as a wake-up call for the White Sox. Instead, the White Sox sleep-walked through another game and even had broadcaster Steve Stone questioning their lack of hustle. "It seems to be that hustling is optional, and as long as that stays that way, it is going to be very difficult to win some games going forward," Stone said as the broadcast was coming to a close. The White Sox record is now 8-8 in what was supposed to be the easy portion of their schedule. The results speak for themselves. Something needs to change, but if the first 112 games of the season are any indication, they won't.