CHICAGO _ From the Drake LaRoche saga during spring training to the Chris Sale uniform-slicing episode and the freakish spate of rookie injuries, the 2016 White Sox have endured one ordeal after another.
It's enough to make your head spin, especially if you're the manager with two months left on your contract.
"It has been a crazy year," Sox manager Robin Ventura said before Friday night's game with the Orioles at U.S. Cellular Field.
"It's baseball though. You show up every day. It could be something new. Somebody getting hurt. It's not always easy, but you just deal with that when it happens. You can't prepare for that, a guy coming up and (getting hurt)."
Ventura has been in the spotlight since taking over for Ozzie Guillen in 2012 with the mandate of restoring sanity to a clubhouse that suffered from a communication breakdown between the manager's office and the front office.
The relationship between Ventura and general manager Rick Hahn has been fine. But they haven't been able to win together, so Hahn soon will have to make the decision on whether to keep Ventura around for the alleged rebuild.
Ventura entered the weekend series with a .462 winning percentage (349-407) and has not had a contending team this late in the season since his first year in 2012.
It's a hard sell for Hahn, and Ventura said he's not thinking about his own future.
"I don't know. It's better for me just to think about today and where I'm going," he said. "My concern is these guys in here, not me. That's not a focus. They need to be prepared to play today and feel good about playing today."
But how can Ventura not think about whether he's going to be here next year?
"You can, but listen, I've always done my contract and I'll worry about it later," he said. "Whether I was a player or not, I never went into it seeking anything other than doing what I'm supposed to do."
So Ventura can go into these final two months without wondering if this is the end?
"Of course I can," he said. "Because that's what I signed on to do."
Why he would want to return is another question. Ventura has been able to deftly downplay the clubhouse issues that arose from the LaRoche and Sale incidents, even after Sale threw him under the bus, blaming his manager for not challenging the marketing department's decision to wear the throwback uniforms at the heart of the ruckus.
"Robin is the one who has to fight for us in that department," Sale told mlb.com. "For them to put business first over winning, that's when I lost it."
Ventura and Sale had a long talk after Sale's five-game suspension. On Friday Ventura insisted: "We'll be fine."
But there's a big difference between simply co-existing and having a strong working relationship.
"He's going to pitch," Ventura said. "There's not some underlying rift that's ripping the team apart. You have an open conversation about it, man to man, and you move on from there. We're good. We've already had that conversation. I don't need to go through (the media) to talk about it."
Still, the perception exists the two don't see eye to eye.
"Yes, (it's just) perception," Ventura said.
As for talk of a Sox rebuild, Ventura took the fifth.
"I don't ever go out there and scout minor leaguers to know who you're trading for, who you're going to go get," he said. "I don't have those conversations with other GMs."
Not even his own GM?
"We do talk about things," he said. "But I don't necessarily know what (players) they're talking about."
Despite all he has gone through, Ventura insisted there's no more stress on him now than "any other given day." He said he doesn't feel the need to know what the Sox have in store for him or his team, even if it would alleviate some of that stress.
"I'm plenty relaxed," Ventura said. "I don't think that's the issue."
