Thanks–or no thanks–to the deadball era, and nearly 150 years of Major League Baseball’s existence, we’re far from the threshold where the White Sox current scoring ineptitude would approach any kind of historical level. Three-straight shutouts against bad teams, 32 consecutive scoreless innings, all are just the mundane struggles of a .500 team slipping into irrelevance rather than historical fodder.
1. Saturday night in Anaheim, the White Sox fell victim to Angels starter Matt Shoemaker‘s 13-strikeout, complete game shutout breakout party. Shoemaker has been mostly subject to hard luck and hard contact this season despite flashing some dynamic swing-and-miss stuff, but Saturday was more exclusively the latter. Opposing starters have now strung together 30 strikeouts with no walks in 23 innings over the Sox last three games, and they have now lost back-to-back series to last place teams, and there’s a solid five teams between them and a Wild Card spot, in addition to a 8.5 game division gap.
2. There was the whole eight innings that preceded it to get all hot and bothered about, but the Sox probably best represented their struggles by finding a way to blow the ninth inning against Shoemaker when he was spiraling over 100 pitches, and they only needed one run to tie. Adam Eaton laced a leadoff double to the left-center gap, and really avoided a triple out of restraint; risking eliminating the tying run to grab third base with no one out is not prudent, right?
That process may have been good, but after Jose Abreu grounded out uselessly to third, and a bullet Melky Cabrera single to left didn’t allow Eaton to advance beyond third, the results were gut-wrenching. Despite titling over 110 pitches with fading command, and with the deeply struggling Huston Street warming in the pen, Shoemaker dug deep for his best sliders and struck out Todd Frazier–who had no read on him all night and whiffed three times–and Justin Morneau (who otherwise looked good) to end it.
3. Abreu seemed good, or the best of anyone at least. Not in his traditional favorite, ‘I once hit 29 home runs in a half of a season’ good, but he laced a pair of doubles and generally seemed cognizant of the reality that he was facing a glorified No. 4 starter. The mild flurry should keep his season line slightly north of depressing. However, he struck out with Eaton on second to end the sixth–a plate appearance that was imbued with far more importance than any random sixth inning plate appearance should have–and then bounced to short with Eaton representing the tying run on second in the ninth.
4. James Shields was…dominant? Results-wise, at least. He completed the sad version of the complete game, stringing together eight smooth one-run innings, and only getting burned because of the two hits he gave up on the ninth, one was a leadoff triple to Yunel Escobar in the first inning, which lead to a run across on a Mike Trout groundout.
He was far from overwhelming again, striking out just two and showing only flashes of decent breaking stuff, which has been representative of his nice stretch of outings against the Twins, Yankees, Braves and Angels. He’s put together a 1.91 ERA over those four-straight quality starts, but has struck out just 12 in 28.1 innings. The good starts matter, but the future implications are concerning until he shows a bit more.
5. At least Jacob Turner is the spot starter Sunday. That should be able to hold the opposition at bay until the offense gets on track.
Team Record: 45-45
Next game is Sunday at Los Angeles at 2:35pm CT on WGN
Lead Image Credit: Gary A. Vazquez // USA Today Sports Images
This outfit desperately needs a kingpin. Unfortunately, Reinsdorf will never pony up the necessary cash or give the necessary autonamy for that to happen. Nothing ever changes. Mediocre players and a mediocre front office and we are getting are doors blown off in this city by Ricketts. It’s sickening.