Evidently earlier this week, Jeff Passan mentioned Tony La Russa in this paywalled article I haven’t read. In a section that was made available to me by someone who copied and pasted said section and put it online, Passan mentioned that some are growing upset with Tony La Russa being a bad manager. Really shocking stuff, right? You hire a bad manager, he manages badly, and people are upset with you for that. Who could have seen this coming? Anyway, one specific instance mentioned was when La Russa kept Luis Robert—he of the .359 OBP and if you want to be Tony La Russa a .316 batting average and if you want to be good-question-asking Tony La Russa a .259 career batting average that’s still better than those of each of these next two guys I’m going to mention—on the bench in a big situation while letting Billy Hamilton and Leury García bat. Not a smart move. A very dumb move, in fact.
Shortly thereafter, Luis Robert tore his hip flexor. He’s now out for months.
Robert is awesome. I hope he’s ok. He is the man. Fun. Good. Wears the White Sox uniform well (the White Sox uniforms are good and I like them). But I have to wonder:
Did Luis Robert intentionally hurt himself so he could get away from Tony La Russa for a few months?
Would like to hear La Russa answer for that.
