Carlos Rodon was a member of the White Sox three years ago, when they won the AL Central and made the postseason for a second straight year.
He left as a free agent for San Francisco and has watched from afar as the White Sox slipped quickly to a .500 team and then one that lost 101 games a year ago.
But even that was nothing compared to what has happened on the South Side this season, as the White Sox are 28-91 and on pace to finish with the worst record in MLB history.
The Yankees will get a first-hand look at the hapless Sox when they open a series in Chicago Monday.
“When I left, it looked like a team that definitely had a chance to win another division,’’ Rodon said Sunday. “I don’t know what happened.”
Like others, though, the left-hander has some theories about how it got so bad, so quickly.
“I think they’re still finding an identity,’’ Rodon said. “‘Do we want to spend money or develop [players]? Right now, it seems like they want to develop, but you have to learn how to do that, and it takes time.”
He’s seen the organization transform before, from the down years of 2017 and ’18 to the gradual improvement in ’19 and ’20.
“You see what the Royals have been able to do in that division with putting a team together,’’ Rodon said. “The White Sox are four years behind that. I was there for a rebuild, and then we got to the postseason, and here we are with them being in a rebuild again.”
And for a Yankees team battling the Orioles for AL East supremacy, they can’t afford to slip against the White Sox, whose first-year general manager Chris Getz just fired manager Pedro Grifol and replaced him on an interim basis with Grady Sizemore.
“Not a lot has gone right there,’’ DJ LeMahieu said. “They just made changes to their coaching staff, and I feel like they have better players than their results.”
Left-hander Tim Hill spent the first three months of the season with the White Sox before he was released and signed with the Yankees in June.
“It was kind of a perfect storm of injuries and things not working out the way they wanted to,’’ Hill said of the team’s struggles.
No one, though, saw this coming.
“It’s crazy how it all unfolded,’’ said Anthony Rizzo, who played for the Cubs on the other side of Chicago for nearly a decade before his 2021 trade to the Yankees.
“Just a few years ago, it seemed like they could have sustained success,” Rizzo said. “The people of Chicago, definitely the South Side fans, they deserve better. It’s tough. It’s a sports city.”
Rizzo, still rehabbing from a fractured arm, won’t be in Chicago for the series, but he’s aware of how rough it’s been.
“As a professional, to see a team lose like that, it’s tough for those guys there, and it’s very challenging as a team [and] individually,’’ Rizzo said. “I feel for them, but we try to win every game.’’
And while the White Sox are likely on the bottom of the list when it comes to the pro teams in the city, Rizzo said they are “very passionate.”
“I love them,’’ Rizzo said of White Sox fans. “That rivalry was great. I hope they get out of it soon.”
