The White Sox have about five weeks left to cement the unthinkable. In a year where the Tigers, Royals and Guardians were all expected to compete, they are still hanging onto first place for dear life, on the strength of a bunch of 20-year-olds, a Japanese rookie who hits dingers, and a ton of really close games and walk-offs. For a team this streaky and basic, it's not gonna be over til they wave the flag, and they need to keep from coming apart. This is year one of the competitive White Sox experiment, and they want to take this as far as they can.
Already you're beginning to see a few of the strings come undone. After being one of the best pitchers of the first half, Davis Martin has slowed down and will be missing time with an injury. Sean Burke has stepped up in his stead, and Anthony Kay, Erick Fedde and Luis Castillo are doing what they can to support him, but...you see the issue, right? The hook of this rotation was that it was centered around the youth movement. Now Noah Schultz, David Sandlin and Shane Smith are all sitting in the minors rather than supplanting the older, shakier rotation options. The fear is that those guys aren't much better, and recently Schultz and Sandlin have gotten roughed up, but it's worth a shot, right? We saw Shane Smith's highs. He hasn't been TERRIFIC in Charlotte but he's still a confident enough young arm. Hagen Smith is also around, but the team is very hesitant to let him start, and I'm still not sure why, considering he was doing pretty well at that in the minors until someone got the bright idea to start using him in relief. You don't see the Mariners doing that with Kade Anderson, right? No, they started him, and it worked. This is what the Pirates did with Bubba Chandler last year, and I don't think that worked for them either.
I think the idea is just to outhit everybody and hope that still works, and judging from all the walk-offs that's been doing the trick. Jake Rogers had the big one the other night, the blast so incredible that one lady in the crowd nearly showered the contents of her purse all over the field level seats. Yesterday was Tristan Peters's turn, he had a walk-off homer. Two guys are closing in on 30 homers, and a 3rd ain't too far off. The depressing part is the lack of catching stability but Rogers and Romo are doing what they can.
An underrated piece of this team this year is Andrew Benintendi, who's been around since before the rebuild. Benny was supposed to be a huge piece of those competitive Red Sox teams going forward, and has wound up as the least accomplished of the Killer B's, with his speed basically gone, his contact ability waning and his defense nonexistent. All that remains is a halfway decent power hitter, and with 13 homers and 64 RBIs he's been that. It's not pretty, and he's not on target as much as his contemporaries, but he's got a role to fill, and he's filling it pretty well.
The Sox have to play fellow AL competitors the Rangers and Twins coming up, and hopefully they can stave off the Guardians for that playoff spot. Nothing's over in this division til the Guardians say it's over, and the Tigers aren't completely out of it either, so hopefully this Sox team can be in it for the long haul.
Coming Tonight: Once he figured out how to stay healthy, and once the team found room for him on the MLB roster, the big game stuff was bound to show up.
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