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

Tony La Russa is back on his BS by intentionally walking batters two shots at them.

Good luck telling Tony La Russa how to do this Chicago White Sox because he knows everything.

With a close AL Central race, that heats up between the Cleveland Guardian, the Minnesota Twins and the White Sox, La Russa chose to deliberately lead a batter with two strikes on him. The latest installment of La Russa, which has us dreaming in analytics fever, came Friday night in the seventh inning against Cleveland. What could possibly have driven him to this crazy conclusion?

After Andres Gimenez and Josh Naylor effectively doubled the steal against left-hander Jake Diekman, La Russa opted to intentionally lead Oscar Gonzalez with a 1-2 count. This already loaded the bases down for Owen Miller with Chicago 5-2 to Cleveland. Although Miller flew to Andrew Vaughn to end the inning, Cleveland was already putting four runs into the frame.

No more runs were scored in the ball game, but Chicago would fall to 61-59 in the losing year.

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

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

Even though the postseason has expanded to six teams in both leagues, the White Sox will likely need to win the AL Central to make the playoffs. The Houston Astros are a total dare out west. While the New York Yankees have been playing lazy baseball lately, they have a wide margin over the other AL East division opponents, not including the struggling Boston Red Sox.

With two of the three AL wild card spots likely going to either the Tampa Bay Rays, the Toronto Blue Jays or even the Baltimore Orioles, and the third going to the Seattle Mariners, you can understand why being the top banana is so important at AL Central. The game might have been lost when La Russa came at us, but you get the point, don’t you?

At the start of the season, Chicago was on a shortlist of teams that could realistically win the AL pennant. Houston is the team to beat until proven otherwise, but anything less than a trip to the ALCS would be a huge disappointment for teams like the White Sox and Yankees. Missing out on the extended postseason will not be tolerated on the South Side. Retirement is imminent.

The White Sox could have had Buck Showalter, but Jerry Reinsdorf has been telling everyone he knows a guy…