Chicago White Sox eliminated from playoffs: What went wrong?

By Jake Mintz
FOX Sports MLB Writer

A year ago, the White Sox were a team on the rise. A promising group of young players had just carried the team to its first ALDS appearance since 2008. Even in baseball’s softest and squishiest division, Chicago appeared a formidable club set to compete for years to come. But with their 8-4 loss to the Twins on Wednesday (their eighth defeat in a row), the 2022 White Sox were mathematically eliminated from postseason contention.

If you haven’t been paying attention this season, this might come as a bit of a shock. What happened to Tim Anderson, Lucas Giolito, Luis Robert and the rest of the young guns who cakewalked to a division title last year? Wasn’t this team supposed to be a World Series contender? How did things go so completely and totally wrong?

Here are the six main reasons the 2022 White Sox were an utter calamity.

1. Injuries

Public Enemy No. 1 of any underachieving baseball club absolutely ravaged the White Sox all year. Talisman Tim Anderson started just 79 games and hasn’t played since early August after he freakishly tore a ligament in his left hand on a check-swing. 

Eloy Jímenez, who spent most of 2021 on the injured list in the sky, has also played in only 79 games because of a variety of leg ailments. And Yasmani Grandal, baseball’s best offensive catcher last season, has posted in just 93 games, with back problems hampering him for major chunks of the year.

Grandal and infielder Yoan Moncada (oblique, quad and hamstring issues), in particular, have seen their on-field production suffer as a result of their injuries, with both hitters drastically underperforming from full-season projections. Before finally heating up in September, Moncada was hitting .196 with just seven taters through the end of August, while Grandal has been the third-least valuable MLB player (by bWAR) with at least 300 plate appearances, behind just Darin Ruf and Kole Calhoun.

Injuries are an unavoidable part of any team’s season. Five projected playoff teams — the Rays, Dodgers, Yankees, Phillies and Mets — have accumulated more total days on the injured list than the White Sox. A team that plans accordingly by prioritizing depth throughout the organization can withstand the inevitable bumps, bruises and tears that pop up over the course of the six-month marathon of a season.

But …

2. Chicago’s reinforcements were weak.

The Tampa Bay Rays have had the third-most IL days of any team in baseball. They’ve been without ace Tyler Glasnow for nearly the entire season while he recovered from Tommy John surgery. A quintet of offensive linchpins from last year’s 100-win team — Manuel Margot, Wander Franco, Kevin Kiermaier, Brandon Lowe and Mike Zunino — have started a combined 307 out of 775 potential games this season. No competitive roster in baseball has been more decimated by the injury bug, but in typical Rays fashion, no organization was better prepared. Heroic fill-ins from randos such as Harold Ramirez, Isaac Paredes and Christian Bethancourt kept Tampa afloat until the big boys got healthy.

Call it luck, call it good scouting, call it magic, call it player development — whatever the Rays possess to coax a 127 OPS+ out of Harold Ramirez, the White Sox have none of it. 

The “backup” White Sox (players with fewer than 350 plate appearances minus the oft-injured Jiménez) slashed .239/.288/.347 in 1,544 total trips to the dish this season. Adam Engel, a competent defensive replacement forced into a starting role, OPS’ed .576 in 247 PAs. Leury Garcia, a light-hitting utilityman the Sox recently rewarded with a three-year (???) deal, has been even worse in even more plate appearances (.500 OPS in 315 PAs).

Backup plans are backup plans for a reason. No one expected a 30-homer season from Engel, but competence is vital and remarkably underrated. Seven-game series are won by the best 15 players in an organization, but divisions are won by the best 40. 

3. The rotation was good, not great.

Before we continue the tossing of tomatoes, let’s take a second to appreciate the magnificent seasons from Dylan Cease, Johnny Cueto and Michael Kopech. Kopech finally capitalized on his immense potential and became a reliable rotation piece (even if he should be striking out more hitters with his nasty arsenal), Cueto emerged from the depths of our collective memories to post a 3.39 ERA in 151.1 innings, and Cease ascended to the top tier of big-league starters and should finish top-five in the AL Cy Young race.

But three starters does not a rotation make.  

From 2019 to ‘21 Lucas Giolito was one of the most reliable hurlers in baseball, receiving down-ballot Cy Young votes all three seasons. Over that span, he hurled 427 2/3 innings (13th in MLB), with a 3.47 ERA (20th-best) and 11.1 K/9 (ninth-best). That puts him not in the upper, upper echelon of MLB starters but firmly in the tier below that.

This season, he has looked like a ghost of his best self, to the tune of a 5.05 ERA, the 15th-worst mark among pitchers with at least 100 innings. His fastball velocity was down a full tick from 93.8 to 92.7, which surely played a role in raising his walk rate and lowering his K rate compared to last year. He perpetually looked to be a start away from putting things together but never quite turned the corner.

It should be noted that Lance Lynn, half-man/half-box-truck, also took a big step back. He wasn’t awful, but his 96 ERA+ was light-years behind the 163 ERA+ from his third-place Cy Young showing last season. As a whole, the Sox’s rotation was squarely mediocre: 15th in baseball in ERA, 15th in xFIP and 19th in earned runs. 

With a stellar defense, that could have been enough to challenge Cleveland, but … 

4. The defense stunk.

Defensive metrics are notoriously finicky and difficult to trust, but no matter which defensive stat you prefer, the White Sox stunk at it. Let’s start with the basics: No team has had more unearned runs (46), only the Pirates and Nats have made more errors than Chicago (99), and only the Pirates have a worse fielding percentage than the Sox (.982). 

The fancy defensive metrics tell the same story. Chicago ranks 24th in Outs Above Average, 25th in Defensive Runs Saved and dead last in Ultimate Zone Rating.

The highest ranked White Sox player by Statcast’s Outs Above Average measurement, Moncada, posted just four OAA, putting him in the 63-72 range league-wide. No one on the team has been anywhere close to elite, while Andrew Vaughn stacks up as the single worst defensive player in all of MLB.

5. Luis Robert was merely good.

Everyone’s spicy MVP pick (guilty as charged) flat-out underwhelmed. Why? To put it simply: The downsides to Robert’s game (horrid plate discipline) outweighed the upsides (he hits the ball stupid hard). Cleveland’s Oscar Gonzalez is the only player in baseball who has swung at pitches outside more often than Robert. 

Robert’s immense raw juice and above-average contact skills still propelled him to a solid 109 OPS+, but that’s 55 points below his outstanding three-month stint last year. In all fairness, Robert only just turned 25, but that walk rate needs to tick up for him to develop into the MVP candidate so many think he can be. 

6. Tony La Russa was the wrong guy all along.

Who could have predicted that the 75-year-old guy who hadn’t managed in a decade would lack the energy, perspective, tact and intensity to properly lead a big-league ballclub?

Practically everybody.

La Russa, who hasn’t been with the team for nearly a month due to health problems, is reportedly unlikely to return as skipper next season. Thus concludes one of the more bizarre, bewildering and straight-up sad managerial experiments in recent memory.

When team owner Jerry Reinsdorf selected La Russa ahead of the 2021 season, overruling his front office in the process, people around the sport were skeptical La Russa would be able to adapt to the modern style of baseball. Unfortunately for Chicago, that assessment proved correct. 

Last season, in Year 1 of La Russa, Chicago’s roster was too talented and the AL Central too dinky for anything but a division title. Then a swift and complete defeat to Houston in the ALDS showed how inferior the Sox were compared to the true juggernauts of the American League.

But this year, La Russa was even more of a detriment and a distraction. There was the time he probably fell asleep in the dugout. For some godforsaken reason, he kept intentionally walking hitters in bizarre situations. And who could forget when he forgot to put in a pinch runner until a screaming fan in the front row reminded him it was the right move.

Of course, not all the White Sox’s ills can be put on La Russa’s shoulders — that’s an unfair and unrealistic assessment of what a manager is responsible for — but the best MLB coaching staffs succeed at squeezing value out of the nooks and crannies. They look for every possible advantage under every rock. They help foster a sense of meaningful chemistry in the clubhouse. They seek to get the most out of every player through empowerment or development. 

In all those ways and more, La Russa failed. As a result, his legacy — especially among those who never witnessed him managing in his heyday — is forever sullied. What’s more, Reinsdorf’s shortsighted decision wasted two vital years of the White Sox’s competitive window. 

This is still a talented roster, one that should be able to compete for a division title next season, but boy, oh boy, was this campaign an unmitigated disaster, a disappointment for the ages and one that Sox fans would like to erase from their minds ASAP. 

Jake Mintz, the louder half of @CespedesBBQ, is a baseball writer for FOX Sports. He’s an Orioles fan living in New York City, and thus, he leads a lonely existence most Octobers. If he’s not watching baseball, he’s almost certainly riding his bike. Follow him on Twitter @Jake_Mintz.