Everyone Can Smell These Sox

It’s one thing to get ripped by Frank Thomas, an American League batting champion and bellwether in the batting order. Thomas laid into Chicago White Sox management a week ago for assembling a roster that includes 12 players with less than a year of major league service, saying the team had become an embarrassment.

It’s another to get ripped by pitcher Jaime Navarro, something of an embarrassment himself.

Navarro is 5-6 with a 5.62 earned-run average and 14-20 since signing a four-year, $20-million contract as a free agent before the 1997 season.

“We stink,” Navarro said as the White Sox fell 10 games below .500 this week. “You call this a team? Bull. We don’t have a team here. It’s like a cemetery, a bunch of dead dogs. The guys are struggling, and I’m part of it. It’s not fun anymore. We’ve looked like a triple-A team out there.”

Amid the Cubs’ resurgence, the White Sox are dying. Bad attendance, team and morale.

The truth of the matter is that the Florida Marlin tandem of Dave Dombrowski and Jim Leyland might be headed to Comiskey Park, not Dodger Stadium.

It definitely has been a tough managerial debut for former Leyland lieutenant Jerry Manuel, who has had to cope with Albert Belle’s lack of hustle, inconsistent production from Belle and Thomas, the firing of his hitting and pitching coaches, a roster that requires parenting and tutoring at the big league level and the recent verbal assaults of Thomas and Navarro, who added the stinger that the White Sox are leaderless.

“It’s all right to get frustrated,” Manuel said. “We all get frustrated. It’s good too, to take on the responsibility as a leader, if that’s what Jaime was trying to do, but you also have to lead on the field. Jaime still has to establish himself that way.”

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The woeful nature of the White Sox and their other competition in the AL Central has helped, but the Cleveland Indians have reestablished dominance on the unlikely foundation of pitching.

A month ago the Indians were scouring the market for help, but they now lead the league in pitching, the rotation fortified by the coming of age of Jaret Wright, 22, and Bartolo Colon, 23, the tenacity of veterans Charles Nagy and Dave Burba, and the return of Dwight Gooden.

Before an interleague weekend against Cincinnati, the Indians were 15-5 since May 14, a span in which Nagy, Burba and Wright were a combined 11-0.

Nagy led the majors in homers allowed (20), had a 5.71 ERA, and opposing batters were hitting .324 against him.

Yet his record was 7-2, a testimony to his competitiveness and the seven runs the Indians were averaging in his starts.

Burba, acquired from the Reds amid Cleveland’s earlier struggle, has pitched seven or more innings in nine of 12 starts and is 7-4 with a 3.73 ERA.

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The New York Yankees got a look at the future this week but are going so well they could afford to return Orlando Hernandez to triple A after his dominating debut against Tampa Bay.

Let’s see: Hernandez started in place of David Cone and took a roster spot belonging to reliever Todd Erdos, who was optioned to triple A, is required to spend 10 days there and will be replaced on the Yankee roster during that span by right-hander Mike Buddie.

All of this because Cone was nipped on the hand by Veronica, his mother’s terrier.

“She has teeth like a hypodermic needle, and she affected four careers,” Cone said. “It’s kind of embarrassing.”