Tony La Russa once again showed us why the White Sox need to get rid of him

Tony La Russa is back on his BS by intentionally walking batters with two strikes on them.

Good luck telling Tony La Russa how to manage the Chicago White Sox because he knows it all.

With a tight AL Central race heating up between the Cleveland Guardians, the Minnesota Twins and the White Sox, La Russa decided to intentionally walk a batter with two strikes on him. The latest episode of La Russa going analytics fever dream on us came in the bottom of the seventh inning vs. Cleveland on Friday night. What could have possibly driven him to this crazy conclusion?

After Andres Gimenez and Josh Naylor effectively pulled off the double steal on southpawed reliever Jake Diekman, La Russa opted to walk Oscar Gonzalez intentionally with a 1-2 count. This loaded the bases for Owen Miller with Chicago already down 5-2 to Cleveland. Although Miller flied out to Andrew Vaughn to end the inning, Cleveland already put four runs across in the frame.

No more runs were scored in the ballgame, but Chicago would fall to 61-59 on the year in the loss.

Chicago has lost three straight and is 3.5 games back of first-place Cleveland in the AL Central.

Tony La Russa will always intentionally walk a batter when you least expect it

Even though the postseason has expanded to six teams in both leagues, the White Sox will probably have to win the AL Central to get into the playoffs. The Houston Astros are an absolute wagon out west. While the New York Yankees have played putrid baseball of late, they have a huge gap on the rest of their AL East divisional foes in contention, not including the bad Boston Red Sox.

With presumably two of the three AL Wild Card spots going to either the Tampa Bay Rays, the Toronto Blue Jays or even the Baltimore Orioles, as well as the third going to the Seattle Mariners, you can understand why it is so important to be the top banana in the AL Central. The game might have already been lost when La Russa went galaxy brain on us, but you do get the point, right?

Entering the season, Chicago was on a shortlist of teams who could realistically win the AL pennant. Houston is the team to beat until proven otherwise, but anything short of a trip to the ALCS would be seen as a great disappointment for teams like the White Sox and the Yankees. Missing the expanded postseason will not be tolerated on the South Side. Retirement is imminent.

The White Sox could have had Buck Showalter, but Jerry Reinsdorf told everybody he knew a guy…