By Sam Reeves, Stoop Kiid, and Bennett Karoll

We somehow made it, everyone. The 2022 White Sox season is over and done with. The White Sox missed the playoffs, after appearances in consecutive seasons for the first time in franchise history. They finished 2nd in the AL Central with a lovely record of 81-81. Which did not meet any preseason expectations. It did however, meet mid-season and late season expectations. This team was built much like a kid building a fort with duct tape and sticks: terribly. I would know, I built a lot of terrible forts as a kid. It starts with the front office brain trust of Jerry Reinsdorf, Ken Williams, and Rick Hahn. They put their minds together to build this team to make a deep playoff run. It appears that their minds are complete mush, because what they came up with was less entertaining than a 24 hour marathon of C-SPAN programming.

Not only did this season piss off fans, it drove Tony La Russa out of baseball (again). Tony La Russa stepped down as the manager of the White Sox after 1 4/5 seasons in his 2nd stint as the skipper due to health reasons. La Russa released a statement stating he had a pacemaker in place, but then in August a different medical issue arose. It was not made public what this second ailment is, and frankly its his own business. We wish Tony well and hope he lives out his years in Arizona, not driving drunk. Tony, if you’re reading this, stay out of White Sox baseball, forever. Thanks.

I always have an optimistic look into most things, but this White Sox season tested that. My life motto is “Life is a joke, and then you die. So you might as well laugh.” I laughed a little too much during this White Sox season. Even to the point of passing out because it was just too funny to stop laughing. Whether it was a triple play on a fly ball, intentionally walking a batter on a 1-2 count then giving up a home run to the next batter, or Tony falling asleep in the dugout. This season brought the laughs. A lot of these blog sites and beat reporters will talk about the numbers and analytics that showed why the team was bad. That is not what we do here and we never will. We are here to bring you the real hard-hitting truths about sports. Numbers don’t tell the story, the dumb shit that we see tells the whole story.

The Guardians won the AL Central and on the IG Live of Emmanuel Clase you can hear their clubhouse chant “Fire Tony!” as an homage to what you could hear at Guaranteed Rate Field most of the season. They took Elvis Andrus’ words to heart, apparently. Andrus stated they had to wait for Cleveland to “crumble” which at first glance you thought was a passing remark. Nope. The Guardians and their fans clung to that and made sure that the White Sox and their fans knew it. If you looked at the Guardians on paper before the season, you would think that team may string together a 3rd place finish in the AL Central. In fact, that is what almost EVERYONE thought. When you have a great manager like Terry Francona, and a front office and coaching staff who understand the principles of baseball, anything can happen.

There are several things from this season that were positive. One being Dylan Cease’s mustache prowess. Tim Anderson was an All-Star starter, Reynaldo Lopez clearly isn’t blind anymore, and Johnny Cueto was fun and pretty damn impressive. That’s really about it. I mean yeah, the nerd blogs will go into numbers and tell you who improved and yada yada, but that’s so recycled and boring. Every time the White Sox took the field nobody knew what to expect. That can be construed as good or bad, but it was mostly just mediocre and unfun. I’m not going to keep harping on this because everyone else is probably going to do that. There is going to be a lot of coverage on this pathetic season, so without further ado, let’s get to some other staff members perspectives.

– Sam Reeves

Ah, the window.

Remember when Chris Sale was traded away for prospects, signaling the start of the rebuild? That was December of 2016. Rick Hahn promised that he was setting us up not just for one good season, but for a “championship window.” For those of us who had just sat through five grueling years of Robin Ventura (and over a decade of unmet expectations since the miraculous 2005 world series), this was a real cause for optimism. “Finally, at least there is a plan in place,” we all said.

Over the next three seasons, I attended roughly 60 god-awful baseball games at 35th & Shields. Attendance was poor, and certainly the on-field product was poorer yet. Still, “this team is awful, but just wait until these prospects get here. The 2020s will be our decade,” we all said.

The 2020s got off to a muted start due to the coronavirus pandemic limiting the season to 60 unattended games, but boy it sure felt like the start of something, didn’t it? Sure, the team played a woefully sloppy brand of baseball with terrible fundamentals. And sure, Rick Renteria mismanaged the bullpen in the wild card series loss to Oakland, but next year it would get serious!

Then of course, our boy Jerry goes and pulls a decrepit monkey skeleton out of retirement, who did everything he could to look alive at his introductory press conference, where he assured us all that he would not sap the life force out of our fun, exuberant young team. Well, 2021 saw a spate of injuries to key players and exposed a critical lack of depth in the White Sox roster. Despite the presence of our godlike Hall of Fame manager, the team continued to play stupid, erronious, lazy, fundamentally unsound baseball. Those of us who had observed the rest of the league knew perfectly well how the ALDS against the Houston Astros would go.

Did our three headed monster of Reinsdorf, Williams and Hahn see how badly their team was outplayed in the 2021 playoffs and realize that they had some serious issues to address? Apparently not. So would 2022 be any better? Sure, if our stars just stay healthy!

Should. It’s always “should” with this damn team. The stars should stay healthy. The healthy ones should play up to their theoretical potential. The manager should know what a high leverage situation is. The highly paid relievers should be able to throw goddamn fucking strikes. But what happens when those things don’t happen?

You get the 2022 White Sox, and presumably the White Sox for the remainder of this “championship window.” At this point, folks, I think it’s safe to say that this is what we’re getting. This right here is what we sat through hundreds of abysmally subpar baseball games for.

Why should we believe that anything will get better? What cause for optimism has this regime given us? Why are we such gluttons for punishment that we continue to emotionally (and financially) invest in this team? What the hell is wrong with us?

– Stoop Kiid

“Can you put in Bennett Karoll wanted to write something about this season but really couldn’t be asked to care enough to write something about the 2022 White Sox season.”

– Bennett Karoll

There Bennett I respected your wishes. If you want to look into all the dumb moments possible from the 2022 White Sox season, go look at the replies to this tweet: https://twitter.com/TheBennettK/status/1573316597598617601?s=20&t=WgC8ZCyDFOnk4-t2IicOsw

There are some real good ones in there. Look I know this came out a century after the season ended, but I was lazy and we procrastinated. Anyway, expect more disappointment next season and enjoy mediocre Bears football and hopefully uplifting Bulls basketball (if those are you teams your root for in those respective sports).