Three years ago yesterday, the Washington Nationals appeared on the edge of a teardown.
A four-game sweep at the hands of the New York Mets left the Nationals with a 19-31 record — the second-worst in baseball, ahead of only the perpetually rebuilding Miami Marlins — as well as 10 games out of first place and 8 1/2 games back of the second wild card spot. With Anthony Rendon and Stephen Strasburg headed for free agency and Max Scherzer on the back end of his seven-year deal, Washington seemed likelier to embark upon a rebuilding project than to mount a surge from almost-worst to first.
Of course, the Nationals turned things around and earned a wild card berth before winning it all for the first time in franchise history. Two years later, the Atlanta Braves — without MVP candidate Ronald Acuna Jr. and ace-caliber starter Mike Soroka — may have turned this into a trend by winning the World Series despite not getting over .500 for the first time until Aug. 6 and not climbing into first place until nine days later.
Might the Chicago White Sox have begun 2022’s comeback tale with Sunday’s eventful doubleheader sweep of the New York Yankees?
“It’s always good to take a series on the road, especially here,” outfielder/first baseman Andrew Vaughn said after the White Sox earned 3-1 and 5-0 victories over the Yankees, who have the best record in baseball at 29-13 and hadn’t lost consecutive games since Apr. 10-11.
“Kind of shows that we have that in us.”
At 21-20, the White Sox haven’t put together the extended stretch of mediocrity endured by the Nationals in 2019 and the Braves last season. At 4 1/2 games behind the first-place Minnesota Twins in the American League Central and a half-game back of the Toronto Blue Jays for the third and final wild card spot, the White Sox aren’t staring at an uphill climb into contention.
And 26-year-old Michael Kopech carrying a perfect game into the sixth inning of the nightcap and 28-year-old shortstop Tim Anderson responding to the boos — and some decidedly less tasteful catcalls — of Yankees fans by hitting a three-run homer in the eighth inning served as reminders the Pale Hose has a bigger championship window than the 2019 Nationals, who have gone 105-160 since 2020.
But owner Jerry Reinsdorf, who turned 86 in February, didn’t lure Hall of Famer and three-time World Series winner Tony La Russa out of retirement shortly after La Russa’s 76th birthday in 2020 so that La Russa — who’d previously managed Chicago from 1979-86 — could preside over a few more years of incremental progress by the White Sox, whose championship in 2005 is their only one in the last century (even if ESPN’s forgotten about it a bunch of times).
Yet the White Sox — who won the AL Central with a 93-69 record last season and entered this year with +1200 odds of winning the World Series, tied for fourth-best with the Braves and New York Mets, per DraftKings — have looked like a decidedly average team, ranking 11th in the AL in OPS (.650) and seventh in ERA (3.64) while committing 28 errors, a total exceeded in the Junior Circuit only by the last-place Baltimore Orioles and Oakland Athletics. Their World Series-winning odds have dropped to +1700, ninth-best in the majors.
Those early-season flaws were apparent even in the sweep Sunday, when the White Sox were 2-for-18 with runners in scoring position before their five-run eighth inning in the second game.
“One of those things you can laugh about later — all the opportunities that we had,” La Russa said with a grin. “We’re going to work on that man on third.”
But La Russa is well aware of how the eventual World Series champion doesn’t have to be the team that was the best over the six-month regular season. None of the 100-win teams he managed — the 1988 and 1990 Oakland Athletics and the 2004 and 2005 St. Louis Cardinals — won the World Series.
His two most recent World Series crowns were earned with the 2006 and 2011 Cardinals, each of whom entered the playoffs with the worst record of any team in the field. The 2006 club won it all despite going 49-59 after May 31 and finishing 83-78 in the regular season — the worst regular season record ever for a champion.
If Sunday’s wins prove to be a turning point for the White Sox, it’ll be another example of sparks being found in the most unexpected of places. The White Sox swept the doubleheader a day after Yankees third baseman Josh Donaldson infuriated Anderson — who is Black — and his teammates by twice calling him “Jackie,” as in Jackie Robinson.
Benches cleared in the fifth inning Saturday of the Yankees’ 7-5 win after White Sox catcher Yasmani Grandal had words with Donaldson. After the game. Donaldson said it was an inside joke with Anderson, who told Sports Illustrated in 2019 he hoped to have a Robinson-like effect on today’s game.
“I’m really happy with Yaz’s decision to confront him at the plate,” White Sox closer Liam Hendriks said Sunday afternoon, when he used an eight-letter curse word four times to express his feelings for Donaldson’s explanation while sitting across the room from Anderson, who was wearing a T-shirt with the word “Family” emblazoned across it in the White Sox’s logo font.
“That shows just how strong this clubhouse is. That shows the brotherhood in this clubhouse that we have going on — that we are going to go to bat for everyone in this clubhouse no matter who they are and what’s going on. We’re going to take care of them and that’s what we do.”
Given the context of the weekend — Kopech said he heard some fans chanting “Jackie” at Anderson in Sunday’s second game — the sweep doesn’t have the feel-good back story of the Nationals’ doubleheader sweep that provided the defining moment of their turnaround on June 19, 2019. After the popular Gerardo Parra returned to the team in the first game and stepped to the plate to “Baby Shark” in a 6-2 win over the Philadelphia Phillies in the opener, Max Scherzer — sporting a broken nose and a black eye suffered in batting practice the day before — tossed seven scoreless innings and earned the win in a 2-0 victory.
But if the White Sox go on to experience some October glory, Anderson taking care of his teammates Sunday night — when he hit a three-run homer in the eighth and jogged around the bases while making a “shushing” motion at fans — might be looked back upon as the cinematic jump-start a struggling team needed.
“I think that was just one of the cooler things I’ve seen — watching an entire crowd that’s shown low class towards him, booing him, calling him ‘Jackie’ and then hitting a homer and putting us in a good position to win,” Kopech said. “I had a lot of fun just playing the game today. You don’t always feel that way, because sometimes, it feels a lot more like work than other times. But I had a lot of fun playing the game today.
“And then to come out, know I was done and then see the eighth inning go the way it went — it’s one of the more fun games I’ve been a part of. That was really cool.”
