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One thing that this thread allowed me to do is actually keep track of games where Tony LaRussa did something specific that caused a blowup. 1-Apr Failing to make review time window, Leury starts opening day, no pinch hitter for him late. 3-Apr Bullpen Usage - Bummer never used, Marshall allowed to blow game in the 9th. 4-Apr Bullpen usage - Hendriks not used in the 9th, Ruiz and Foster blow it. *Several times could have PH for Leury or Hamilton, not done 7-Apr Bullpen usage - Foster comes in with Bummer and Hendriks needing work, gives up 5 runs. 11-Apr Couple of poorly thought out bunts, pinch running for Mercedes early left no backup Ofs 13-Apr Williams hits 5th, Lamb hits 7th, Mercedes benched against Bieber. Could have kept Hendriks out to start the 10th. 27-Apr Attempts to kill Lucas Giolito. "We were looking for a single there." Insists postgame that he was awake. 5-May Messes up double-switch, runs team out of 10th inning, rulebook read to him by reporter. Bolded are games where managerial decisions are particularly troublesome. Numerous other games - Vaughn, Madrigal being benched for Leury, Hamilton, and Williams. Lack of offdays for Abreu, Eaton. There's at least 8 games so far this season where the manager has been a contributing factor in a loss, without counting guys that he chose to bench on the list more than once. Changing to a competent manager doesn't turn all of those into wins - maybe a better lineup still loses to Bieber as Cleveland's bullpen is outpitching us, maybe someone still gives up runs out of the bullpen, etc. But there's an awful lot of high-leverage events so far this season where people have been saying "the Manager contributed to a bad thing happening".

Imagine being Rick Renteria right now.....he’s probably dying of laughter these past few weeks

There is literally no place for Albert to play here.

I would venture to guess that 99.99999% of the posters who don't think TLR should necessarily have to know the rules since the announcers didn't and Frank and Ozzie didn't, would have fully held Ricky Renteria accountable for not knowing the rules if he was in the dugout. LaRussa is a hack. IMO, he always was, but give him his Oakland and St. Louis days. At the very least, it is rather obvious this isn't a guy who is 3 or 4 steps ahead of everyone else. Yesterday and a few other examples have shown he is at least one step behind.

Attn. mods, you know those heart things on the lower right (heart, fire, trophy...), can we get a puke one?

Remember when Tony intentionally walked him this year? Good times

Non-practicing attorney Tony La Russa demonstrated all the time in Arizona that he doesn't do research or know rules. He tried to make trades that weren't legal per MLB rules and then traded for the wrong Luis Basabe, because he's too fucking lazy to do his goddamn research. The D-backs paid the price for his laziness for years. Now the Sox are going to pay the price when they could have had their pick of any single manager on the market, especially one who would bother to learn the rules of the game.

I went to the popcorn vendor and asked if they knew whether Tony could have inserted Jose Abreu instead of Liam Hendriks as the 10th inning runner. She laughed and said “That’s not my job, that’s the manager’s job.” PS - Listen to DJ’s radio broadcast during the 10th if you have access. DJ, who is nearly always positive, was livid. He said multiple times he didn’t know what the Sox were doing and criticized at least three TLR decisions.

This is garbage. The FO wasn't able to look for their guy because our dumbass owner wanted to try and fix what he thinks was a wrong committed decades ago and hire his drunk and senile friend.

Pujols to Sox official

That's the same dude that told him about the rule yesterday, right? Can he be the manager?

I'd let him manage tbh

Do it you fucking cowards, let's just go full batshit crazy.

If this happens I will fucking kick a damn goat. idk why a goat. I don't even know where to find a goat.. but damn it i will.

This is just sad. Does Tony have naked pics of your mom or something? I mean, the fact that you are contradicting yourself within the same post just makes it worse. MLB is TOUGH, which is exactly why we can't be wasting games on a manager losing games because he still refuses to leave 1989.

I find these two opinions to contrast.

I didn't even know David Ross had a law degree.

I was happy when they fired him the first time. I did not like the hire this time but was convinced it would be OK because he was putting together a good staff to surround him. If he is going to ignore that staff to prevent him from screw ups, that is a problem.

I love how the attitude has shifted to instead of shaming the people who troll, let's blame the people who confront them. It's stupid. No. Trolling is childish and ridiculous and people that do it should be called out for it. If you present yourself as a troll, then no one should take you seriously because you clearly haven't grown up. This emoji stuff is dumb and just promotes that liquid courage trolling nonsense. Let us see who is posting that reaction and see if they do it as much. Or just eliminate it altogether because really, it's just pointless. Weird to see so much trolling and degenerate behavior on a forum that hates Trump so much.

You're not even an attorney so nothing that you say has any credibility

You are lucky, at his age, Tony's testicles probably aren't that heavy for you to carry around for him. Forget false outrage, why are you cucking a man who literally just told the world he didn't know how to do his job? Like it or not THAT is an important fact here, not your crusade to protect him like he is Brittany.

Oh ok, yeah you're right...Hahn didn't want Hinch or any other manager candidate out there and chose TLR as his first choice as a bridge. This was all Hahn and Jerry had no input on this! I wont even debate this any longer,...its so outlandishly illogical and absurd!

I've heard from a few sources that Bochy (my top choice by a mile over cheater Hinch and [insert criticism] TLR] was #2.

Such a historic franchise, we had Frank Thomas, Ken Griffey Jr, and now Albert Pujols!

Has that stopped them before? TLR is a really bad fit, yet he is here...

You can't seriously believe that AJ Hinch would pass up the Sox job for one of the worst teams in baseball (Detroit) going through a total rebuild again? Hinch only took the Tigers job after TLR was mistakenly hired. In fact, Oct 29, the Sox hire TLR and on Oct 30, the Tigers hire AJ Hinch! Everyone knows Hinch was destined to be the Sox manger until our senile and inept owner did something no owner ever does...which is make the decision for the manager hire and not the let the GM do it. Furthermore, even if Hinch didn't want the job, which obviously isn't true...are you naïve enough to think Hahn would choose TLR over tons of other manager candidates out there for a bridge hire? I think your theory my friend is level 2 out of 10 thinking!

Yermin could not have picked a worse time to be stuck in traffic.

Flip half of those and the Sox are 20-9 - the Sox are the best team in baseball. Without Eloy, Abreu and Grandal slumping, and the bullpen not hitting on all cylinders. The ceiling on this team is artificially put in place by Mr. Hall of Fame Person, brother.

Not even remotely true. 15 teams lower this century.

This is literally a thread on the manager. If you would like to create a thread saying "The hitting coach is not preparing these guys well!", I guarantee it would not be the first such thread in White Sox history. "The White Sox have other problems" does not mean that in a thread created to talk about the brand new and controversial manager we should ignore the decisions of the manager.

Players aren't trying to score zero runs. That will happen. Thats just baseball. It wasn't as if they didn't know how to score, or forgot. The manager isn't even trying to do his job correctly, he doesn't know the actual rules. A managers job is to give his team the best chance of winning by putting players in positions of success. Does scoring zero runs cause issues for winning? Sure. But the sox know they have to score runs. The problem is the manager doesn't know he has to know the rules. He doesn't know that running with a man on 3rd and 1 out in extras is dumb. He doesn't know the things he should know. He's not trying.

Why it's it that we can only have one problem at a time? There are a number of problems with the team, one is we have players, coaches, and managers relearning or learning their positions. We've had players, coaches, and managers fail at key times. Why give any of these guys a break? You score zero runs you aren't going to win games. You make poor decisions you're not going to win games. Multiple key players get hurt, your going to lose games. Plenty of blame to go around. This is why we're the worse franchise in baseball. No back to back playoff appearances. Lowest win percentage this century. Worst franchise in baseball. All we're arguing about is which of all the problems we have is the worst.

Agreed, and thank you for stating what I've been stating. In an organization that has financial constraints, asset allocation matters MORE than for the richer orgs. And I agree that Hendriks' value was bloated by Oakland overusing him. What scares me is that if this is what he is NOW, how much shittier will Hendriks be in a year or two from now? Sure, Hendriks is and was better than Colome. But 1 year/$6.25MM sounds a fuckton better than 3 and $54MM. I share your hope that Hendriks can get his shit sorted. I just hope that this org doesn't start throwing good money after bad at this point.

Castellanos been pretty great, and I remember quite a few fans wanting him two years ago. Castellanos would look mighty good in the middle of that lineup instead of Hendriks at the back end of the bullpen too. This is where the distribution of funds was not managed well by the FO in my opinion. To be fair, I was very worried about Hendriks overuse the past couple years before the signing and after it on this site. I hope he keeps it together and works out.

It seems like all of the FA right fielders suck so far so we can just call it a push all around

Give me a list of teams in the majors other than the Dodgers and Padres that would survive losing two possible All-Star outfielders (Eloy, Robert), a quality RF (Eaton - I did not expect him to be quality, but credit where it's due at this point in the season) and the primary quality backup (Engel) to injury. That is with... The top position prospect emerging as an average LF (per quantitative metrics), but the manager refuses to trust him in the OF, instead trusting another non-OF (Lamb). No minor league season since 2019. We had the alternate site, but Rutherford, Adolfo, Gonzalez, Sheets, and the rest aren't as talented as Vaughn. Sheets has gotten off to a hot start (in an incredibly short sample size of two games), but it's hard to have ready-to-go depth in the minors in May without minor league season since 2019. Leury would have been a serviceable 5th OF. Hamilton a serviceable 6th OF. In short, stop making excuses for a man that has shown repeatedly over the past decade that he is lazy and thinks he is better than everyone else in the game.

Bernstein is absolutely lambasting LaRussa on the Score right now; talking about our "issue" getting national run now, and being the buzz of the baseball world. I was one of those who was resigned to LaRussa (though he was far from my first choice) and excited that he would at least be an improvement over Ricky. I've officially flipped. And the worst part about it, as Bernstein pointed out, is that there's no recourse. It's depressing. I just hope the negativity surrounding this legitimately bad situation doesn't completely derail this still-promising team.

Before saying the Chicago media is too tough, let’s note that this week there were two articles about grumbling in the locker room, and they were hosted by ESPN and The Athletic. The local press stayed out of that. The guy reading him the rule book yesterday, also the Athletic.

I dont like the 7 inning DH or the extra innings rule, but this narrative that baseball hasn't changed in 120 years is complete nonsense. Mound height has changed. DH was added. Bullpen has changed. Shift has been implemented. People of color can play now. Strike zone was changed. Spit ball was removed. Save rule was added and changed. Free agency was added. Foul balls were made strikes. Teams were added. Ballpark dimension requirements changed

Why the hell is a Blake Rutherford in this organization if he can’t step in right now.....

TLR lost this game for the Sox in extras. Running Hendricks by mistake, possibly winding him or hurting him. Sending Leury for a steal with Hendriks at 3rd who was not going To try to score and Hamilton at the plate unlikely to hit into a double play. He could have also pinch hit for Hamilton who was horrid at the plate. Didn’t even need to leave Hendriks in the game. Had other relievers available and would have had a faster runner at 2 nd and no chance for the blunder. The game nowadays is just too fast for an old guy like TLR. Made me remember when TLR left Foster in for a 7 run inning and left Giolito out to dry in another game. This guy is costing the Sox too many games!

Odds from May 1st before Luis went down with the hip flexor. Odds as of today.

Correct. The steal was out of this world stupid. It's just a disaster man. And it sucks. Because there are SO many likable guys on this squad.

LaRussa is a terrible manager and Bernstein is an asshole. The two are not mutually exclusive.

It's embarrassing this is the defense some of the more "positive" minded fans are coming up with tonight. STOP COMPARING YOURSELF WITH A MAJOR LEAGUE MANAGER. In the same post, you say "I know for certain that LaRussa has forgotten more than I ever knew about the game." So by that account, fans and managers shouldn't be compared. Yet in your attempt to somehow defend LaRussa, you're blaming baseball for changing the rules? Even though the manager across the dugout knew what the rule was? Have you seen any other manager make that mistake this year? So I don't really think you do understand why fans are frustrated. LaRussa is sitting in the dugout making MILLIONS a year, and you're blaming MLB for Tony not being up on the rule changes? Really?

Go back to sleep?

Len didn’t know the rule. Jason didn’t know the rule. Frank didn’t know the rule. Ozzie didn’t know the rule. Hall of Famers, World Series tacticians, and the greatest minds in baseball broadcasting didn’t know the rule either. You could split Tony or any of the above 4 people in half, and they’d be smarter than any twitter kook or poster here. But let’s give credit where credit’s due - 95% of the posters here and all the twitter kooks deserve an Oscar for pretending they knew the rule all along just so they could get their “Gotcha!” moment in the 24/7 Salem witch trials they’ve conducted since November. Take your victory and bask in it for the next 48 hours - this is a Super Bowl-esque holiday for many. Tony got rulebook’d today. But when Tony takes over October, it’s game over.