White Sox rebuild progressing, but will Yankees 'will to win' get in the way?

The great rebuild of the Chicago White Sox into a pennant contender progressed a step further Wednesday when the great young talent Yoan Moncada (supposedly the best ballplayer in the minor leagues) was promoted from Charlotte, N.C., to the big club on Chicago’s Sout’ Side.

Did the White Sox' future begin Wednesday?

Yet there also was a related move that could portend the reason why the White Sox ultimately will not prevail in winning a World Series, or even an American League championship in coming years.

IT ACTUALLY IS an old phenomenon in baseball, familiar to every fan of an American League ball club (although those of you Chicagoans who think you’re baseball fans but actually pay attention only to the Cubs and the National League wouldn’t know this).

It is the New York Yankees.

One of the realities of the Yankees having won 27 World Series and 40 American League championships is that there have been many other ball clubs that had solid teams and seasons that “might have won” in other years, but wound up falling short to the ball club from the Bronx.

Even the White Sox experienced this same phenomenon back in the 1950s and 1960s when they had those 17 straight winning seasons and a ton of second place teams. With the Yankees finishing ahead of them so many times.

Sox' Robertson returns to pinstripes ...

YET THE FACT that there is now a roster spot for Moncada on the White Sox is because of the trade that the White Sox made with the Yankees to help rebuild New York’s American League ball club into a contender this year.

Todd Frazier, who played third base for the White Sox, is likely to become the Yankees first baseman (a spot where they have been weak this season) and top Sox relief pitcher David Robertson is likely to become a set-up pitcher who becomes the guy who pitches right before top relief pitcher Aroldis Chapman – who isn’t pitching as well this season as he did last year in his half-season with the Chicago Cubs.

... after Chapman fails to match Cubbie ways

The Yankees could easily turn Robertson into their top relief pitcher if Chapman doesn’t get his act together soon. Which is what makes this trade so significant – the Yankees were able to go out and get a replacement whereas many other ballclubs would be stuck with the big-bucks Chapman contract and couldn’t even think of finding a replacement.

Lopez managed many 2nd place teams

The Yankees, who haven’t won a World Series title since 2009 and haven’t been in the playoffs for three years, are serious about wanting to contend now – and likely will make moves to keep in contention for future years.

MEANING ANY EFFORTS by the White Sox to ride a “Cuban revolution” of Moncada, Jose Abreu and Luis Robert (still in the minor leagues, for now) and other top minor league ballplayers acquired from other teams in trades this year could wind up being thwarted by the resurgence of the New York Yankees.

Which would be oh so predictable.

Ichiro's best ball club fell behind Yankees

There are too many American League ball clubs that have had their dreams of championship play halted by the Yanks.

Not only the White Sox of 1964 (98 wins, including a winning streak of the last 10 games of the season – which fell behind the 99 wins the Yankees had that year).

BOSTON, CLEVELAND AND Detroit fans can also claim horror stories about wonderful ball clubs that couldn’t get beyond second place, or the first round of the American League playoffs.

And let’s not forget the Seattle Mariners, who have never won a championship of any kind during their 41 seasons of existence, largely because their glory years of the late 1990s coincided with those Yankees teams of Derek Jeter that won four of five World Series titles in the same time period.

Will White Sox improvements be enough to match Yankee upgrade?

Then, in 2001, those Mariners managed to tie the baseball record for the most wins during the regular season (116, by the 1906 Chicago Cubs that lost the World Series to the White Sox), only to lose in those playoffs to the very same Yankees.

Is that the same fate to befall the White Sox of the late 2010s and 2020s – to finish behind New York? Once again turning the phrase “Damned Yankees” into an epithet meaning more than just a long-ago Broadway show!

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Chgo v. N.Y., Round 1; 2017 World Series preview, or baseball fluke?

The New York Yankees are making their annual trip to Chicago to play baseball, but it’s not the usual one.

For due to the quirks of interleague play, the Yankees will be headed to the North Side this weekend – taking on the Chicago Cubs in a three-game series beginning Friday.

GOING INTO FRIDAY’S game, both ballclubs are in first place in their respective divisions, which I’m sure will have some people getting all worked up into thinking this weekend is a potential preview of the World Series – Yankees vs. Cubs!!! – and a rematch of 1932 and 1938.

 

Not that any serious baseball fan of the Cubs wants to relive either of those seasons – the Yankees won both years in four-game sweeps. ’32 will forevermore be famed for that home run Babe Ruth hit that he may-or-may-not have called in advance, while the ’38 Yanks of Joe DiMaggio swatted aside the baby blue bears as though they were insignificant.

In short, there’s not a whole lot of history between the two ballclubs – the Chicago/New York baseball battles throughout the years have involved the White Sox; and as it turns out will occur June 26-29 at Guaranteed Rate Field on the South Side.

Historically, the White Sox were the ones that had something of a rivalry with New York and the Yankees (although the coming of modern-era divisions and an emphasis on local rivalries has diminished that), while the Cubs were the ones who engaged in their rivalry with the St. Louis Cardinals for Midwestern supremacy.

A RIVALRY THAT fits in perfectly with the modern-day divisional structure.

Not that any such rivalry would have been possible for the White Sox, since back in the days when St. Louis was a two-team baseball town, even at their low points the Sox could count on being better than the St. Louis Browns of old.

But this week will give us the one-time City Number One versus City Number Two, although there are enough players who’ve done double duty for both ball clubs.

Take the Yankees squad that will take the field at Wrigley. Starting shortstop Starlin Castro was once supposed to be a Cubs star of the future, while Cubs fans still remember the glories of relief pitcher Aroldis Chapman who was acquired in a mid-season 2016 trade from the Yankees, then skedaddled back to New York as a free agent once the season ended.

THEN, THERE’S ALSO Yankees manager Joe Girardi, the pride of Northwestern University who also was once a Cubs catcher and whom some Cubs fans are delusional enough to think fantasizes about the day when he’ll be able to leave New York to once again don a Cubs uniform.

Actually, it makes me wonder if the Yankees are now subject to the Ex-Cub Factor – three or more former Chicago Cubs on the roster is the Kiss of Death to any World Series-bound ballclub.

It even took down the Yankees in 1981 – which had pitcher Rick Reuschel, catcher Barry Foote and outfielders Oscar Gamble and Bobby Murcer. Even though Murcer played the bulk of his ballplaying career as a Yankee, it seems his Cubby stint tainted him in the eyes of the baseball “gods” and that wound up being the year a Dodgers team was finally able to defeat New York.

Of course, there also have been other Yankees who did stints in Cubby blue, including Hall of Fame-quality relief pitcher Rich Gossage, toupee-clad infielder Joe Pepitone (who looked stylish while he played) and even a guy who was a personal favorite ballplayer when I was a kid.

THE LOU PINIELLA who smashed water coolers to ease his temper (and making a game-saving defensive play in that 1978 tie-breaker with the Boston Red Sox) just always seemed out-of-place during that stint he was the Cubs manager.

I’m sure the hard-core fan of Cubdom can rattle off endless lists of people who did double duty for both ballclubs.

All I know is I have my ticket for Friday’s game; the first time since 2004 that I’ve set foot in THAT ballpark. I’ll be watching to see how Cubdom reacts when it is in the presence of a team that has enough on-field achievements to justify a haughty attitude, while wondering myself what the chances are this could be a World Series preview.

And I most likely will be giving the outside world – the part that actually thinks Donald J. Trump makes a credible government official – little thought.

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Is 'City Series' shifting to off-field issues; is Sale or Chapman Chicago's biggest baseball off-field flake?

The Chicago White Sox take on the Chicago Cubs this week for their annual head-to-head competition that is more about bragging rights than anything else.

 

Will he challenge for flakiest Chicago ballplayer?

But this year, it seems we’re going to be in a competition more to see which team has the flakiest ballplayer bearing a Chicago uniform.

WILL WHITE SOX pitcher Chris Sale’s recent outburst over a throwback uniform, when combined with his defense of former would-be slugger Adam LaRoche for wanting to have his son hang around the clubhouse all the time, give him top billing?

Or did the Chicago Cubs manage to give themselves the bigger baseball head case with their acquisition of top-notch relief pitcher Aroldis Chapman on Monday from the New York Yankees?

There are those who think Sale is the best American League pitcher these days, while there are those who think Chapman is the key to ensuring that 2016 will go into the books as the first season in 71 years that the Cubs won anything of significance!

While others wonder if the flakier natures of these particular ballplayers is what will keep their teams out of contention.

FIGURE THAT IT was just earlier this season that the Yankees acquired Chapman knowing that he was facing a suspension that would cause him to miss the first month of the ’16 baseball season.

He supposedly was so good that his problems were worth having him around.

Except that the Yankees have been so mediocre this season – playing at about the same level as the White Sox are – that the Yankees were more than willing to give him up in exchange for several ballplayers who could have been the future of the Chicago Cubs franchise.

 

Will Sale retain his 'title/"

The Cubs, after all, believe they can win something now, and were willing to take the chance on giving up the 2018 World Series victory in exchange for a chance at winning something this year.

AND CHAPMAN, ALONG with Sale, is proof of that old baseball adage, “You’re Only As Smart As Your Batting Average.”

A ballplayer who can produce on the playing field will be tolerated no matter how ridiculous or absurd his quirks are. A ballplayer who is merely a nice guy will find himself traded away or released in an instant.

It is those 14 (league-leading) wins and respectable 3.18 earned run average that have Sale being tolerated even though he was the guy who threw a hissy fit over being asked to wear a throwback uniform jersey that would have made him look like Ken Kravec.

It is those 20 saves in 21 chances with an outstanding 2.01 earned run average this season that have the Cubs all too eager to have Chapman – he the guy who got a suspension for an incident involving domestic violence against his girlfriend.

WHICH WAS THE reason his former team, the Cincinnati Reds, were willing to give up on him and ship him off to the Yankees – who let him go when he did not immediately become the on-field salvation of the ’16 season. He lasted so little in New York there are very few baseball cards depicting him in Yankee pinstripes.

 

How many reading this wondered "Who's Ken Kravec?"

Which makes me wonder what the mood will be on Thursday at Wrigley Field – which is the day the White Sox and Cubs play the last of their games against each other this season. It also is the day that Sale’s suspension for jersey vandalism is up and he can play ball again.

Could Thursday be the day we get a Sale start for the Sox, and a chance to see a blown save by Chapman for the Cubs?

While the fans in the stands speculate about which guy is flakier and also engage in their usual city series silliness of trying to out-shout each other in their chants over which team sucks the most!

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