Here We Go Again?

I'm having a real hard time suppressing my Inner White Sox Meatball so far this season. My Meatball is so frustrated by what he has seen, that he's calling for Jerry Reinsdorf aka "Uncle Jerry" to blow this entire organization up from Kenny Williams on down. I try to reason with him that the season is only a month old, and the team can't be this bad. Coming fresh of the heels of Francisco Liriano throwing one of the worst no-hitters in the history of baseball (in terms of strike percentage) against the Sox tonight, it's really tough for me to mount an argument.
The real irony of course is that nearly a year to the day, I was calling for the White Sox to be blown up as well. Looking back at that post, there's very little content that would need to be altered to fit the problems the White Sox have in 2011. They still can't hit, they have tremendous bullpen problems, and they have a lot of long money committed to aging/bad players. The only major difference is that the payroll is $127 million this year as opposed to $103 in 2010.

It also got me thinking about just how bad of a start has this team had, versus other White Sox teams of the recent past? The 2011 White Sox were 10-18 in April and already have had a 7 game losing streak. The 2010 White Sox had a 9-14 April, and put together an 8 game losing streak late in the season.

Looking at the previous 20 April Records in White Sox franchise history, there have been a few that mirror the 2011 team. In 1997, they were 8-17. In 1998 they were 9-15. In 2001 they were 8-15. What do those teams have in common? You guessed it.....no postseason hopes for the entire season. Incidentally in case you were wondering, the best April they've had since 1990, was in 2005 when they started 17-7 in the month of April.

So barring another historic 25-5 run like the 2010 White Sox put together, I think it's safe to say that my Meatball may be correct in his desire to blow this whole thing up. The only problem is, we're stuck with this bunch for a long time because nobody is going to pick up the contracts of Alex Rios, Adam Dunn, or even Paul Konerko at this point in their careers.

All we can do is hope this team rebounds in a major way very soon. Assuming they don't, the question then becomes who is the most responsible and expendable, and my quick answer would be Kenny Williams. Kenny was given the freedom to spend a sizable amount of money to improve this club, and it appears he has made them worse than they were before.

Someone has to swing for this. Maybe it's Kenny, maybe it's Ozzie, or better yet maybe it's both? Either way, this cannot continue anymore.