What should we think of rebuild; does All Star Abreu have future in Chicago?

Chicago White Sox fans are likely to get the highlight of 2018 come next week in Washington, D.C., when first baseman Jose Abreu starts for the American League in the baseball All Star game scheduled for next Tuesday.

Could Jose become a White Sox immortal someday?

Abreu, it seems, got so many fan votes that he is the top player at first base for the league. Which is an accomplishment, since first base is usually a position so overloaded with top hitters that many a talented ballplayer throughout the years has been crowded out of the All Star game because that was their position.

SO IT WOULD have been understandable if the best ballplayer the White Sox employ these days would not have made it onto the league’s All Star team.

But he did. White Sox fans will be able to enjoy that bit of glory that at least one of the players on their dreadfully mediocre team of 2018 is worth having around. He’ll be the bragging rights that Sout’ Side-oriented fans will be able to chat about next week.

And it could wind up being the bit of a boost for the White Sox, who are trying to justify their lack of concern over the 30-win, 60-loss (as of Monday) team the White Sox are putting forth this year.

We’re supposed to be in a rebuilding mode, which means the potential for young talent that will someday surround the veteran Abreu with equal talent – to the point where in just a couple of years, it will seem odd that the White Sox could ever have delved to the lows that we’ve seen last year and this.

Payton played for weak Bears teams before '86

THEN AGAIN, CONSIDER that things can change quickly in baseball.

It was just three years ago that the Kansas City Royals were a World Series-winning ball club. Now, they’re a team with only 25 wins this year – and the reason the White Sox can claim to not even be the worst ball club in their American League division; let alone all of baseball.

Of course, there are some people out there who are convinced that what the White Sox ought to be doing with their best current (and one of their best ever) ball players is – repeat after me – “TRADE HIM!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Could Abreu top Minnie for top Cuban Sox

The theory being that some other team wishing to have Jose’s big bat (12 home runs and 59 runs batted in, as of this week) to help them win THIS YEAR might be capable of giving up some young “kid” who might be capable of being a star come 2020 or 2021.

WHICH, THE WHITE Sox marketing people will claim, is the time about when it might be possible to expect the ball club to “not suck” quite so bad as they do now.

Abreu being the ballplayer who’s already 31 years old (meaning he’s on the tail end of his physical prime as a ballplayer), and it might be helpful long-term to let go of him now, rather than thinking he’d still be of use at ages 33 and 34 (which is what he’d be if still a part of the White Sox) in ’20 and ’21.

Of course, if the Chicago Bears had followed the same line of logic, they would have let their immortal star Walter Payton leave just before that Super Bowl-winning year of 1986 and those contending teams of the late 1980s.

We’d probably have Bears fans now ranting about how the team gave up on “Sweetness” and didn’t include him in the chance for athletic glory at the team’s peak.

SO IS THIS just a matter of sports fans who can feel malcontent regardless of what their favorite team actually does?

Is the "L" flag destined to return to Wrigley?

Keep Abreu, and they’re being shortsighted. Get rid of him, and the White Sox will regret it if he and his big bat are the missing piece of a contending team the White Sox hope/wish/dream they’ll have around 2021.

Because personally, I could see how that future White Sox contending team could be one built around Abreu – who will wind up being the leader of a core of Cuban and other Latino ballplayers who play in the mold of past White Sox stars like Minnie Miñoso and Luis Aparicio.

Besides, it could also be that many of the people who want Abreu dealt away from Chicago are nothing more than Cubs fans realizing that 2016 is history, their own “winning” ways aren’t forever and it’s just a matter of time before the “L” flag becomes the symbol flown atop the Wrigley Field scoreboard on a regular basis.

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Remembering the Redlegs of ’57 – are the ’16 Chicago Cubs a redux?

It was all over the newspapers across the nation – rosters for the baseball All Star Game to be played next week in San Diego is going to look a lot like the American League vs. the Chicago Cubs.

 

Should Ernie have been a '57 all star?

For it seems that seven Cubs players were picked to be on the National League all star team – including the entire starting infield. That is a first; although I have to admit I had to question that fact.

BECAUSE PEOPLE WHO know their baseball history know of the 1957 all star game when fan voting inspired by a Cincinnati Enquirer initiative resulted in the bulk of the Cincinnati Reds lineup being picked as the National League’s best.

Quite an accomplishment for a team that barely won more games than it lost and wound up finishing that season in fourth place.

But it seems not even that year resulted in a ball club’s entire infield being chosen. For the one non-Red who managed to get picked by the fans to start the game was the St. Louis Cardinals’ Stan Musial – who by that point in his career was aged enough that he had been moved from the outfield to first base.

So ’57 was the year that gave us a National League best of Johnny Temple at second base, Roy McMillan at shortstop and Gus Bell at third base. With eventual National League most valuable player Ernie Banks as an infield reserve and the lone Cub representative that season.

IT’S NO WONDER the National League, weakened with an infield like that, managed to lose to the American League 6-5 in the game played at St. Louis’ Busch Stadium.

 

Should Carpenter be all-star starter in '16?

Which makes me wonder if having such a Chicago Cub presence on the National League all star team this year will have some sort of equal negative effect? Is there something similar to the ex-Cub factor in the World Series that applies to the All Star Game?

I know some people are already convinced the Chicago Cubs of the 2000-teens are a baseball dynasty – one meant to win championships galore. Even though I’d argue such boasting is way ridiculously premature.

They haven’t won a thing yet. Even for those Cubs fans who want to think that 2015 was something mighty special, keep in mind that the record books indicate the New York Mets wound up being the National League champions.

 

The non-Reds starter of  '57 as chosen by "voters"

THE CUBS WOUND up being just one of several ball clubs that came close, but wound up winning nothing.

Besides, the point of the All Star Game is that it is meant to be an exhibition – some mid-season fun to break the monotony of the 162-game marathon that is professional baseball.

I can’t help but think the National League could have done better than to load up the infield from Clark and Addison to represent them come next week.

Besides, while I’m sure that Cubs fans are feeling over-bloated with joy at having their team’s players in such prominent roles, it could wind up being that the most prominent Chicago story that comes out of the All Star Game will wind up focusing on Chris Sale.

HE’S THE WHITE Sox pitcher who currently has more wins than anybody else this season in baseball, and could wind up being the American League’s starting pitcher for the game.

 

Will Sale be the ultimate Chicago all star?

What happens if Sale winds up being the guy who shuts down all those Chicago Cubs during the few innings he pitches, and winds up being the winning pitcher for the American League?

It could mean that the eventual World Series that Cubs fans already are convinced will be theirs come October 2016 will wind up being played with the challengers getting home field advantage.

That is, presuming that both Chicago ball clubs don’t wind up sitting in front of television sets at home come October while other ball clubs play for the championship of ’16.

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Abreu vs. Puig would have been worthy

Let me state up-front that I could care less about the Home Run Derby.

The whole exhibition of watching baseball sluggers take their best whacks against batting practice pitchers to see who can hit the most balls into the outfield seats just isn't that thrilling.

THERE IS SOMETHING intriguing about going to a ballgame and catching the pre-game ritual of watching a hitter try to gain his timing so that he doesn't go into the game and get skunked by real-life pitching.

It can be relaxing. It can even be entertaining in its own way. But it's not the whole show.

Even though EPSN would have you think it was from the spectacle they broadcast Monday night, and which fans packed their way into Minneapolis' Target Field. I couldn't bear to watch it, even though I'm a baseball fan and think the All-Star Game to be played Tuesday is a fun ritual.

But listening to broadcaster Art Berman go on and on about how baseball "history" was being made by the phony spectacle? That was too much to have to bear.

NOW HAVING SAID all that, I have to admit that a part of me kind of wishes that Chicago White Sox slugger Jose Abreu had chosen to participate in the event.

For what it's worth, Abreu is the Cuban star who defected and wound up with the White Sox, and is turning into the very ballplayer the Chicago Cubs wish they had -- someone to entertain the fans with on-field antics while the team rebuilds.

Abreu is also the American League leader in home runs (29, thus far) and is near the top of the league with 73 runs batted in.

But Abreu is of the type of ballplayer who seems to think that the whole Home Run Derby exhibition will throw off his swing and wind up hurting the White Sox in the long run.

IT MAY BE true. Although there's a part of me who thinks such ballplayers are taking themselves way too seriously, and THAT is what will wind up hurting the ball club.

It would have been interesting to see Abreu take his cuts and try to show off the power on a national stage that White Sox fans have been seeing thus far this season.

That kind of attention might have even been useful to the White Sox organization. And it would have made for an entertaining spectacle.

Although there's also the part of me that would have liked to have seen such a show become a showdown between Abreu and Yasiel Puig -- the Los Angeles Dodgers slugger who also is a Cuban defector of sorts.

AND YES, THE two men do know each other. Both of them played for Cienfuegos in the Cuban League before they decided to flee for bigger and better money playing beisbol in the United States.

I'm sure any personal touch could have added to the event's flavor.

Instead, we'll likely have to settle for seeing Abreu get a lone at-bat at some point in the game to be played Tuesday. Perhaps we'll get lucky and it will be a hit that has a role in an American League victory.

Although I suspect the fact that another White Sox All-Star, Alexi Ramirez, is complaining of a bad back. Because since I suspect this year's All-Star game is meant to be a Derek Jeter farewell show, it isn't likely that a fellow shortstop is going to get many moments.

THEN AGAIN, I suppose White Sox fans could face the predicament of the Cubs -- whose "star" pitcher, Jeff Samardzija, got elected to the team right after the Cubs traded him away.

Of course, the American League-best Oakland Athletics (59 victories thus far this season) probably have better use for a worthwhile pitcher than the Cubs do.

For anyone can give up the home runs flying over the ivy and out of Wrigley Field on any given day!

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