(670 The Score) The White Sox have dropped seven of their last 10 games, including a 5-2 loss to the Rangers on Monday in Chicago, and they've now fallen to 12 games under the .500 mark.
The saving grace for the White Sox is that they compete in the AL Central, the worst division in MLB, which is led by the sub-.500 Twins (36-37) entering action Tuesday. Despite their struggles, the White Sox are only 5.5 games back of the division lead.
With that in mind, White Sox general manager Rick Hahn explained how his team will evaluate its chances to win and compete ahead of the Aug. 1 trade deadline.
“If we are able to turn this around and get ourselves in a position to win this division given that we are currently (12 games under .500), we are obviously to be playing pretty damn good baseball through the final two, three months of the season, which would give us reason to believe postseason performance could be better,” Hahn said. “Making the playoffs is important, but the goals are loftier than that. We’ll be judged only with what happens as we get much closer to Aug. 1 than we are now.
“I hope we’re not proving the old baseball axiom, that you can’t win a pennant in April but you can lose one. Because we’re (12) under and we had a 10-game losing streak. You remove that and obviously we’re right in the thick of things, but that’s not how it works.
“You don’t get those back. We’re going to have to make those up on our own going forward. Thus far, in a tough stretch of the schedule, yeah, we’ve treaded water, but we’ve yet to really go on that run, and we’re going to need that run here in the next few weeks before we’re up against Aug. 1.”
The White Sox suffered through a 10-game losing streak in late April that dropped their record to 7-21, a season-worst 14 games under .500. They've gone 24-22 since ending that skid.
The White Sox host the Rangers on Tuesday evening at Guaranteed Rate Field.
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