Chicago White Sox

Power Rankings

Date	Ranking	Previous
01/26/2012	25	21
Good business: Robin Ventura is a righteous dude. After years of Ozzie brushfires, it'll be nice to have a level-headed individual without a Twitter handle in control. Bad business: Every time somebody floated an "Adam Dunn for A.J. Burnett/Jason Bay/Alfonso Soriano/other horrific contract -- who says no?" trade concept, the answer was "the team that's not the White Sox." Prognosis as of 11:14 a.m. GMT on Jan. 26, 2012: They're rebuilding! They're not rebuilding! They're rebuilding! They're not rebuilding!
10/31/2011	21	21
2011 eulogy: A loud mess. Offseason to-do list: Prep Chris Sale for a move to the rotation ... Pray that Mark Buehrle is more "I like it here and feel at home here and I won here and I threw a perfect game here" than "what's in YOUR wallet?" ... Hook up Adam Dunn with a personal trainer, a hypnotist and Tony Robbins ... Require new and inexperienced skipper Robin Ventura to communicate with his superiors via a medium other than Twitter ... Replace last year's "All In" marketing slogan with something more realistic and world-weary, like "Baseball: It's Our Job." Odds of achieving Cardinals-like glory in 2012: If the Stink Triplets -- Dunn, Jake Peavy and Alex Rios -- rebound to even 60 percent of what they once were, the Sox should contend.
09/28/2011	21	19
What went right: Three more seasons like this one and Paul Konerko's resume will be Cooperstown-worthy, in a Tony Perez kind of way ... Don Cooper isn't leaving with Ozzie ... Brent Lillibridge established himself as the game's preeminent utility gnat, even though he's too tall and lean to be characterized as "scrappy." In next year's media guide, the team should list him at 5' 6", 145 pounds. What went wrong: After Kenny vs. Greg Walker, Kenny vs. Ozzie and Ozzie vs. punctuation and grammar, the games themselves were anticlimactic ... Lovely work by Jerry Reinsdorf, ordering a deal of the team's #2 starter to save cash and getting nothing of real worth in return. How do I know that it was a Reinsdorf trade? Because Ken Williams is reckless, not cheap ... At least Adam Dunn is embarrassed enough about his 2011 campaign that he plans to "change his offseason approach." One part of me wants to put him on a no-baseball regimen until the start of December -- you know, to clear his head. The other part of me is thinking witch doctor and/or leeches. Regular-season epilogue: Just a headache of a ballclub.
09/20/2011	19	17
Heaven only knows what else Ozzie Guillen has to do to get himself fired. He's already given his own eulogy five times to Chisox beat reporters ("I didn't get it done. It's on me. La culpa es mía") and accepted -- hell, embraced -- blame for everything that's gone wrong this season, even the cheap-out deadline trades. He's probably gonna have to take his fire-me campaign to the next level, which means we should all retreat into our Twitter bunkers. ... At least Brent Morel figured out how to play baseball in the season's final weeks, putting up a .302/.444/.698 line in his last 14 starts. As we all know, late-season surges are the most reliable indicator of a player's true abilities, so pencil in Morel for appearances in the next seven All-Star Games.
09/13/2011	17	18
I'm watching Tigers/ChiSox as I write this on Monday night, and the only comment to be made is "blow this team the eff up." ... When Juan Pierre joined the 2,000-hit club, there were plenty of snide comments likening its exclusivity to that of a public restroom. As much as Pierre has been a garbage player for some time now, the guy deserves credit for sticking around as long as he has. Think about how many managers, administrators and teammates he must've had to bribe, trick or hypnotize into thinking that he could be a useful part of a winning baseball team? That's some serious psychological stuff there. Anyway, congratulations.
09/06/2011	18	13
Well, that ended fast and ugly. Few teams have waved the white flag as enthusiastically as the Sox did on Sunday night, when they were tattooed to the tune of 18-2 by the Tigers. The team's 2011 highlights DVD ought to be titled either Mercy Flush or The Unwinnables ... When a player talks about his contract during a pennant race, he gets lectured about "keeping [his] eye on the prize." When Ozzie does the same thing, it goes down as Ozzie Being Ozzie, just like it does when he slurs his players' maternal forebears in Spanglish. He's one of the game's great managers, but he's a headache personified.
08/30/2011	13	14
I still think they've got an outside shot. What am I seeing that everybody else isn't? Is it a lilt in their step? A glimmer of hope in their sad eyes? ... Here's one for the Funny Filezzz: Adam "Done." Get it? Ha! Oh heavens, I love me some homophones ... After all the Dayan-Viciedo-NOW cries from the sabermetrically uninclined corners of ChiSox Nation, I expected the guy to come on up here and oaf it like an ox. Instead, he has a certain tubby grace to him. Who knew?
08/23/2011	14	14
Last week, they beat the Rangers twice but lost twice to the Indians -- who celebrated this achievement by getting swept by the Tigers. Let's just discount results involving AL Central contenders, because their half-involved jockeying for position demeans us all… A.J. Pierzynski had never been placed on the disabled list before last week, which is quite amazing given his age, his position and his personality. Seriously, you'd have thought that somebody would've responded to his taunts and sneers by reshaping his orbital cavity with a fungo bat. ... Since the Power Rankings only update once a week (on Tuesday), let me take a shot at the twee-anecdotal lead paragraph for tomorrow's Angels/White Sox AP game story. It'll kick off with either "Rookie Zach Stewart watched Jered Weaver throw his warm-up pitches and wondered if he truly belonged. Nine innings later, he knew that he did" or "Rookie Zach Stewart got the snot kicked out of him by a lineup that has yet to make the acquaintance of the warning track. Nice job winnowing the pitching depth, Kenny."
08/16/2011	14	16
They've evened their record at the expense of the league's dreggers (8-2 vs. the Orioles, Twins and Royals). Let's see what happens during the upcoming Indians/Rangers/Angels stretch before we start fitting them for silken robes ... And still they were stymied once again by immortal fireballer Bruce Chen, which prompted Ozzie Guillen to patiently run his charges through a series of hitting drills designed to increase agility and reduce reaction time. Nah, I'm just jerking your chain -- he just cursed a lot in Spanglish and tweeted, and I quote, "God carlos mencia is funny than crab great". Suddenly, his decision to keep hitting Alex Rios higher than 14th in the batting order makes sense.
08/09/2011	16	15
Well, I guess that ends the whole Twins-own-a-psychological-and-spiritual-advantage-over-the-Chisox thing. Dumb non-trends die hard ... At the same time, the White Sox couldn't have looked less invigorated during the Yankees series if they'd set up cots in the bullpen. Maybe they've tuned out Ozzie, or maybe they're simply less than the sum of their parts. Either way, they're by far the league's most frustrating team to watch.