The Athletic is not impressed with the White Sox's lack of activity at the deadline.
White Sox underperform at deadline, too
The White Sox did not sugarcoat it, claim their team doesn’t have any holes, or compare Luis Robert coming off the IL to a trade-deadline addition. They failed. They wanted to augment an offense lacking power and consistency against right-handed pitching. They wanted to arm their banged-up bullpen with more than just Jake Diekman. They even looked into some starting pitching depth, even though they anticipated a lack of supply making it cost prohibitive.
The same core that has underperformed its way into third place in the weakest division in baseball will be called upon to pull itself up by the bootstraps; which as we all know, very rarely works in reality. Colson Montgomery, Oscar Colás and Bryan Ramos could easily have careers that would make dealing them for two months of a platoon bat look foolish. But for now, it was a continuation of a theme that everything is going wrong for the White Sox, and they have neither the means nor the will to do anything about it. Diekman looked lights-out in his White Sox debut, though! – James Fegan
The Sox have the easiest schedule the rest of way among the Central contenders, although that may have changed now that the G's have played seven games against the Rays and Astros since the break. But their lack of doing anything to improve the team at the trading deadline improves the Guardians' chances of winning "the weakest division in baseball".
The Sox are 8-7 since the break, playing KC, Oakland, Texas, and Colorado (except for going 2-2 against the G's). They have been treading water against mostly bad teams. They scored 4 runs in their last three games - all against the Rangers.
The door is open.
The interesting thing is the Guardians are so much younger than they were last year. No Cesar Hernandez, Eddie Rosario, Franmil Reyes, Bradley Zimmer, Harold Ramirez, Nick Wittgren, Blake Parker, and Phil Maton. They've all been replaced by younger players. So far 13 prospects have made their debuts with 55 games to go.
The Guardians were not supposed to contend this year but the Twins' rash of injuries and the White Sox' surprising underperformance has cracked open the door. So we get to watch the next generation of Guardians make their entrances while we're in a pennant race at the same time. We get to have our cake and eat it, too.
