Levine: The Time's Come For White Sox To Make Hard Decisions

By Bruce Levine--

CHICAGO (CBS) -- The temperature on the South Side is heating up, but it's not because of a hot ball club. After the White Sox dropped their fifth straight game Monday with a 3-0 road loss to the Pirates, some measure of change is bound to be the course of action by team officials.

Chicago has fallen to 28-35 and is nine games out of first in an AL Central that's as tough as any division in baseball. This comes after the White Sox committed $120 million to a roster that they were convinced was a championship-caliber group. Free agent relief pitchers cost $61 million alone in the offseason. A three-year, $42-milion deal was given to outfielder Melky Cabrera, who's responded by batting .241 with an abysmal .555 OPS.

After signing a two-year, $25-million deal, first baseman/designated hitter Adam LaRoche has been inconsistent at best, hitting .235 with eight homers and 24 RBIs in 59 games. You can go up and down the entire roster and not be satisfied with the results. An All-Star shortstop in 2014, Alexei Ramirez is playing like a Triple-A player, batting .234 with a .566 OPS. Mental mistakes that lead to physical errors have also been a theme for the White Sox.

The list of transgressions goes on and on. Nothing good is happening on offense, as Chicago ranks second-to-last in baseball in runs scored. For the most part, plenty has been going badly on defense all season long.

It's inevitable that someone will walk the plank for this 63-game spiral down the AL Central drain. The choices seem to be few: Either you start to move your dysfunctional players or you blame the coaching staff.

Removing manager Robin Ventura would be a departure from the way the White Sox way of doing business. They haven't fired a manager during a season since 1995, when they let fourth-year manager Gene Lamont go just 31 games into that campaign. Under Jerry Reinsdorf's ownership, the White Sox have only fired one other manager during a season (Tony LaRussa 1986) in 35 years. Reinsdorf has always said to his general managers that they could replace coaches anytime they felt the time was right -- provided they felt they had a replacement in mind who could do a better job..

Ventura's an organizational member of high standing. He was asked to take the job by Reinsdorf and Co. after Ozzie Guillen left the team at the end of 2011. This season is really the first time the front office was convinced it had a playoff-caliber club since 2012, which was Ventura"s first in the dugout. Ventura was third in the Manager of the Year voting in 2012 as the White Sox led the division for 117 days before blowing a three-game lead over the Tigers in the last few weeks of September.

Ventura and his staff are detail-oriented and hard-working, and he's plenty tough with his players when he needs to be. Because Ventura isn't a self-promoter, even the well-connected baseball reporters aren't going to find out much about his methods of handling players. Sometimes this style has worked against Ventura in perception from media and fans alike.

The choices are difficult for the White Sox but need to be addressed at once. Chicago's "White Flag Trade" in 1997 was widely disliked by players and media when it was made. Back then, Chicago was three-and-a-half games behind Cleveland in July when it was blown up (sending away pitchers Wilson Alvarez, Danny Darwin and Roberto Hernandez) to acquire a nice group of young pitchers from San Francisco (Keith Foulke, Bob Howry and Lorenzo Barcelo). That deal led to a division title in 2000 with Foulke and Howry as the main contributors out of the bullpen.

Nowadays, you can blame the coaches, players or both. The only choice that can't be made is standing pat. Two homestands ago, executives Rick Hahn and Ken Williams met with the coaching staff after a rough patch of losses had occurred. They were to monitor where the team and possibly the coaches were failing and why. Those results should be in.

I've asked the age-old "team chemistry" question at least 20 times since spring training. It's possible in sports to put together a group of good players with sound makeup that for some unknown reason just never play well as a unit. Up until now, that has been true of the 2015 White Sox.

The ball and bat are in the hands of team executives. The time to do something about the team's failures appears to be now.

Bruce Levine covers the Cubs and White Sox for 670 The Score and CBSChicago.com. Follow him on Twitter @MLBBruceLevine.