The Chicago Shite Sox

Well, if you're a baseball fan and you didn't watch the ’05 Series because of the matchup, you missed three great games. Their loss.

 

Bingo.

Same goes for the often-derided '97 Series, too.

 

I believe the Daily Herald's headline for that one was, "Margins win World Series!"

 

Oh, I never heard that.

It's a sign he made some good ones, but it doesn't mean that every move leading up to it was smart. The Lee deal was stupid at the time, stupid while they were popping champagne and remains stupid years later.

 

That was outstanding.

 

What GM is 100 percent on target? The bottom line is, the team he put together won the World Series, and since then had a 90-win season and a division title (and a turd of 2007, yes). So he must be doing something right.

 

From a pure production standpoint over the long haul, the Lee deal was not a good one. But it was a key move in winning the franchise's first WS in 88 years. Thus, it was a good deal in terms of the most important responsibility a GM has — building a championship team. I think Kenny Williams is OK with the trade.

 

It made the offense worse, it had little effect on the defense.

I can't get all counterfactual and say they would have won the WS despite it, but it didn't help their chances. It was irrelevant to the reason they won, which was their pitching.

 

Stain is a fitting username for you.

 

It really bothers you when facts pop a bubble in the story you have associated with that season, doesn't it?

 

I think we can agree on this: the White Sox clearly were not as good an offensive team in 2005 as they were in 2004, and the pitching was way better. Those are statistical facts. So is the fact that Jermaine Dye in right pretty much evened out losing Lee's offense. The decline came from lesser production by Uribe, Crede and Rowand, the departure of Jose Valentin (the Dave Kingman of shortstops) and far less production from the bench. (Of course, the Sox in 2005 didn't have the injury problems the 2004 Sox did, so they didn't need the bench so much.) Eh, whatever.

This idea of popping a bubble is ridiculous, because however you want to argue it, the White Sox still won the World Series that year. I'm as much for deep statistical analysis as the next guy, but in the end you want to win a title, and that's what happened.

 

They deserved that title completely. There's not a team in either league I can look at and say was definitely better than the White Sox that year.