Baffoe: Sooner Than Later, Fire Robin Ventura

By Tim Baffoe--

(CBS) It was a bunt that finally broke me.

In the seventh inning of the Chicago White Sox's seventh loss in a row Monday and their 15th of their last 19 games, the team's No. 3 hitter in Melky Cabrera came to the plate with two runners on and handed the New York Mets a free out.

Maybe the bunt didn't directly lose the White Sox a game that they felt destined to lose with Matt Harvey rediscovering his dominance against tough-luck Jose Quintana. Hell, thebunt worked in theory -- the runners moved over a base -- but it's just a proven flawed theory in 21st-century baseball. The White Sox didn't score, yet they might have had they that extra out. A managerial choice decreased the team's chances of scoring in a close game, which decreased their chances of winning.

That's emblematic of the little choices made by Robin Ventura that add up on a long enough timeline to equal a manager who's not fit to captain a ship that can make the postseason but may not because of a bunt call here and a call to the bullpen there.

Until the holiday weekend, I had been fairly neutral regarding Ventura, believing he isn't anything special but maybe too often the unfair object of fan derision. Not anymore. If this White Sox team is a playoff one, it's without Ventura.

And that choice to fire him needs to be made sooner rather than later, lest the responsibility for this mess starts moving upward.

Jimmy Rollins isn't a major leaguer anymore, but Ventura likes to think of him as his No. 2 hitter who hopefully only has baseballs hit within five feet of him in either direction at shortstop. Bunts will continue to be called in counterproductive situations despite having a general manager supposedly brought in a progressive baseball approach. The bullpen will continue to be mismanaged.

This isn't just a weekend. It's a pattern. Nothing suggests a Ventura-led team will be otherwise.

"I don't think he gave up any runs," ace Chris Sale told ESPN.com, echoing the mantra defense of any baseball manager. "I don't think he made any errors, and he's in the dugout the whole time. It's on us to win games. I understand people -- I'll keep it that -- want to point fingers and find blame. But at the end of the day, it falls on the players. We have to find a way to turn it around. We're going to keep fighting. It will turn. We have too much morale, chemistry and too much talent. Just a rough patch."

It was a rough patch walking into the Kansas City Royals series, then you got swept in epic fashion. Box scores tell us the bullpen gave up 15 runs between innings 7-9 in those games. Box scores don't tell us how poorly Ventura handled the bullpen this past weekend.

True, it's not all Ventura's fault. He can't do the hitting, but he can make the lineup decisions and bunt calls that stifle production. He didn't carve out what's rated as the 19th-best defense by Fangraphs, but hasn't defense been a bugaboo Ventura's entire tenure? He can't get opponents out late in games, but he does make the choices of when and whom is out there failing.

Ventura's choices Friday and Saturday in games where his team led late 5-1 and 7-1, respectively, make him partly culpable in those losses. And if a manager is partly culpable, he's wholly culpable. Managers aren't allowed to play a part in losses, and Ventura was a headliner this weekend as he's been too often as manager of the White Sox in these five seasons.

In particular, he's played a key role in starting a chemical fire under all the positivity of the White Sox's great start that suggests the team isn't as much regressing to a mean than desperately trying to stay afloat as June starts. What gets this team playing better baseball? If the powers that be thinks there's a solution, what argument can be made that Ventura is part of it? Hell, what argument can be made that he's not an obstacle to it?

"We were talking about when we were winning it seemed like a different guy every day," third baseman Todd Frazier told the Tribune on Monday. "Now it's kind of the opposite. It's a different guy every day not getting the job done. And for me it was me today."

But it's Ventura too many days not getting the job done. When are the wins that today seem so far away a product of him getting the job done? When is the good stuff (remember the good stuff?) something you say, "Look at the job Robin's done"?

You have a team built to win now, and you have a manager who may foster losing games in a playoff race that projects to be winnable but by the slimmest of margins. That's simply unacceptable. General manager Rick Hahn had a lovely offseason in which he let Alexei Ramirez walk and prospects were traded to acquire Frazier and Brett Lawrie, both filling holes and solidifying a roster that on paper was viable in spring training.

The front office made the choice in camp without much negotiation that underachieving Adam LaRoche's "Bring your child to work year" was over, despite the objections to some prominent players. Then came the jettison of longtime staple, teammate favorite and guy who can't pitch anymore, John Danks, for the cold business decision to not lose an automatic one-fifth of the games anymore.

Upper management has shown in 2016 that when it comes to winning, personnel decisions will be made without pathos. It presumably is aware the White Sox have best one-two starters in the American League, baseball's co-leader in homers in Frazier and a now-hitting Jose Abreu who when he's locked in is as feared as any player in baseball. Yet they're merely two games above .500.

The White Sox are a team that wins despite its manager and sometimes loses in part because of him. That's no way to run a railroad.

Let's say the White Sox hover around a plus-.500 record for the next month. Are they a buyer if adding pieces can only be sabotaged in the long run by managerial choices? Worse, if it still goes south, are they a seller while retaining that which is partially responsible?

Does a front office assess the postmortem on the 2016 White Sox as a team that leaked away a makeable postseason down its leg with a manager who was more capable of mopping up the mess with used underwear than preventing it in the first place?

Because if a front office does -- if you do say with confidence that you built for October 2016 and missed it (maybe by one, two or even five games) while hanging on to Robin Ventura for the duration -- then the conversation shifts to a responsibility above the manager.

Even if he'll probably call for another dumb bunt tonight.

Tim Baffoe is a columnist for CBSChicago.com. Follow Tim on Twitter @TimBaffoe. The views expressed on this page are those of the author, not CBS Local Chicago or our affiliated television and radio stations.