Kopech didn’t have his best stuff — something he was up front about to reporters after the game — as his velocity was down a bit and his command of his breaking pitches wavered, but he still managed to induce 10 swinging strikes and most importantly didn’t issue a walk. His next walk allowed will be the first at the major league level and he hasn’t issued one at either level for the entire month of August.

The fact that he hasn’t allowed a walk is the most notable thing about Kopech’s eight major league innings. Evaluators have never doubted his stuff, but his ability to command each of his pitches is what many believe will be the difference between him living up to his potential as a starter. Even in Sunday’s uneven start, Kopech pounded the zone, throwing 61 of his 86 offerings for strikes. It was just the Tigers (a common refrain throughout this article) but it’s another passing grade for Kopech.

His next start is expected to come Friday and be a much tougher challenge — the league-leading and his former franchise Boston Red Sox.

2. Is it time to start believing in Lucas Giolito again?

Saturday’s 6-inning, 1-run performance against a moribund Detroit Tigers team might not be enough to convince you just yet, but the White Sox young starter turned in perhaps his best start of the season in a 6-1 win. It was his seventh quality start in his last nine outings and the fifth time in his last six starts where he induced 10 or more swinging strikes. He’s lowered his ERA to a still bad but improving 5.85 in the process, and has seen a significant uptick in his velocity.

The fact that Giolito has survived in the rotation throughout the season is more a product of the White Sox place in the standings than anything else, but the ability to afford a young and important piece of the team’s future the opportunity to work through his struggles could prove integral in the long-term.

3. Another White Sox prospect has been shut down for the season. But this time, it’s OK!

Dylan Cease is almost undoubtedly the White Sox minor league pitcher whose taken the biggest step forward in his development this season. And that’s saying something for someone who was already generally considered a consensus Top 100 prospect in the game entering the season. Cease, who had never topped more than 93 innings pitched in any professional season, ended his minor league season a few weeks early at a career-best 124 innings pitched, flawlessly jumping from Advanced-A to Double-A without missing a beat.

After dominating the lesser level for the first half of the season, Cease was even better upon his promotion to Birmingham, putting up a 1.72 ERA with 78 strikeouts against 22 walks in 52 1/3 innings at Double-A. The talent that made him one of the top pitching prospects in the Cubs’ organization despite a limited workload and one of the White Sox targets in their trade of Jose Quintana a year ago is starting to be realized, and the 22-year-old has positioned himself well to perhaps be in line for a major league call-up by late 2019, if things continue to go as planned.

4. Omar Narvaez now has about half of a season’s of plate appearances worth of significantly above-average offensive production. In 248 plate appearances, his 126 wRC+ entering Sunday would be good for fifth best among catchers with enough plate appearances to warrant consideration, behind only Francisco Cervelli, Wilson Ramos, Yasmani Grandal, and J.T. Realmuto.

The problem continues to be his defense, at least according to some. Narvaez ranks dead last in BP’s FRAA_ADJ stat, which is a catcher-specific version of FRAA that takes into account framing. Because of this, WARP grades Narvaez as essentially a replacement level catcher (0.51, to be exact). It’s a pretty significant difference from versions of WAR that judge defense differently — bWAR has him as worth 1.4 wins and fWAR has him at 1.7.

The biggest surprise offensively for Narvaez has been his power. While he’ll never be mistaken for prime Mike Piazza, his six home runs are double his career output entering the season, and his .430 slugging percentage entering Sunday is 90 points higher than last year.

What the White Sox believe they have in Narvaez will obviously depend on how much their internal numbers regarding his defense and framing match up with the numbers we have. Either way, the catching position is an interesting one to watch, particularly with Welington Castillo’s suspension ending. The White Sox transferred Castillo to the disabled list last week and he’s currently rehabbing in Charlotte, and he’ll presumably rejoin the team once rosters expand next week. Castillo is also under contract for the next two season (2020 is a team option) so one would assume the starting position is his for the foreseeable future.

Still, Narvaez’s offensive breakout gives the White Sox options they likely didn’t envision having entering the season. And while the performances of both Zack Collins and Seby Zavala this season are reasons for optimism about the future of a position the White Sox have struggled to find production at for a long while, the combination of Narvaez and Castillo give them present production much more serviceable than expected.

Lead Photo Credit: Raj Mehta-USA TODAY Sports

1. It would be apt to describe Yoan Moncada’s first half as a roller coaster — albeit probably one with more drops than climbs — but he enters the All-Star break on one of those stretches of play that make it easy to see why he was and continues to be so highly regarded. As Nick addressed Sunday, his most significant funk can be traced back to a hamstring injury that kept him out for 11 days in mid-May, and his OPS dropped from .868 to a low-water mark of .683 at the beginning of July during that stretch. Sunday’s 3-for-4 effort, which included his 12th homer of the season, lifted that OPS up to .737, and he’s now reached base at least once in 12 straight games. Of his 16 hits during that span, seven have gone for extra bases.

I feel like every week in this space we’re writing some variation of “Moncada is struggling” or “Moncada is showing the goods,” but during an otherwise tumultuous first half, it’s certainly nice to end things on the latter.

2. Discussing Lucas Giolito of late has felt like defending your little brother who you just know has good intentions despite always putting himself in a position to make bad decisions. You’re grasping at any sign of optimism that maybe, this time, he’s turning over a new leaf. Giolito’s results have certainly been better of late, including 6 1/3 shutout innings in Sunday’s win over the Royals, but there’s still plenty of evidence that you should err on the side of caution in terms of hope for him putting it all together.

The six strikeouts, tied for his third most in a start this season, are nice, but he also induced just five swinging strikes against a very bad Kansas City lineup. And while he’s seen his ERA drop from 7.53 down to 6.18 over his last eight starts, Sunday’s start was only the third such occasion where he struck out more batters than he walked.

Finding the good and reaching for optimism during a half-season of mostly moribund results is certainly understandable, particularly when it comes to a player who came into the season with as high of hopes as Giolito. But while things are certainly looking better than they were the first two months of the season, consider me skeptical that he’s fully turned things around just yet.

3. During a first half where very few White Sox prospects made it out unscathed, Dylan Cease and Luis Alexander Basabe were two of the obvious bright spots. Cease, the second piece in the trade that sent Jose Quintana to the Cubs, and Basabe, the third piece in the deal that sent Chris Sale to Boston, elevated their prospect stock over mostly successful first halves, both jumping levels in the process, and both earning spots in Sunday’s Futures Game in Washington.

Basabe started in center field and hit lead off for the World team, putting him smack dab in the spotlight. After fighting off multiple high-90s fastballs from top Pirates prospect Mitch Keller in his first at-bat, he struck out on a curveball. In his second at-bat, against young Reds’ flamethrower Hunter Greene, he saw a slew of 100+ mph fastballs and , well …

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Basabe also recorded an outfield assist in the first inning, gunning down Nate Lowe with a dart to second base after the Rays prospect tried to take advantage with a brief bobble on a single to center.

As for Cease, we didn’t see all that much but what we did see was good. He threw only eight pitches in recording two outs in his ninth inning appearance, striking out Rangers prospect Leodys Tavares before inducing a fly out against a Padres prospect you may have heard of.

Cease gets Tatis Jr. to fly out and the White Sox somehow simultaneously win the Quintana trade and the Shields trade.

— Collin Whitchurch (@cowhitchurch) July 15, 2018

It wasn’t much, but BP minor league editor Craig Goldstein was in attendance and liked what he saw.

Dylan Cease looked real good for two batters. 97-98, plus looking curve at 78. Also flashed a slider.

— Craig Goldstein (@cdgoldstein) July 15, 2018

4. BP’s lead prospect writer Jeff Paternostro was on the latest episode of The Catbird Speaks with Nick this weekend to talk White Sox minor leaguers on the heels of the release of our Midseason Top 50 Prospects list. The two discuss a lot of prospects including the command issues of Michael Kopech. Give it a listen!

Kopech has had an up-and-down season at Charlotte, as he’s battled control issues and struggled to go deep into the game more often that one would hope. On Saturday, though, he had perhaps his best start of the season, striking out 11, walking just one, and giving up just one run in six innings of work. Given how undeniably advanced his stuff is, at this point for Kopech the focus should be on him proving he can consistently command his pitches. That’s proven difficult for a good portion of the season, but Saturday’s performance showed exactly what he can do when everything is working.

5. It’s starting to become difficult to ignore another much less heralded White Sox minor leaguer. 2016 fifth rounder Jimmy Lambert earned a promotion to Double-A late last month after a strong first two months in Winston-Salem and has continued his solid level of play in Birmingham, the latest being a seven inning one-hitter on Saturday in which he walked two and struck out 10.

Lambert entered the season as essentially a non-prospect and kind of still is. The only national site that goes deep enough into the system to mention him is MLB Pipeline, and they currently have him at No. 28 in the White Sox system behind guys like Evan Skoug and Thyago Viera. He’s a low-ceiling kind of guy who, if everything clicks right, can probably carve out a career as a back-end starter. But right now he certainly seems on that trajectory, and finding major league contributors outside of the top few rounds of the draft or major J2 signings is a good and important way to supplement a roster when trying to build a contender.

Lead Photo Credit:  Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports

Lead Photo Credit: Jim Young-USA TODAY Sports

1. Imploring a player to be more aggressive when he has the second most strikeouts and fourth highest strikeout percentage in baseball seems a strange gambit, but it’s been a focal point for  Yoan Moncada as his advanced batter’s eye has sometimes worked against him in the sense that he hasn’t afforded himself to drive hittable pitches. On Sunday, an aggressive approach paid off for the 23-year-old in the most opportune of spots, as he drove a first pitch fastball for a bases loaded, bases clearing double in the fifth inning to put the White Sox ahead for good in what turned out to be an easy 10-3 victory. He added a three-run homer, taking a grooved, 94-mph fastball on a 3-1 count out to right field (he swung at the first pitch of that AB, too, for what it’s worth).

Moncada’s been mired in a terrible slump since returning from the disabled list in mid-May, hitting just .195/.247/.305 with 56 strikeouts in 166 plate appearances entering play Sunday. But the tools that made him one of the top prospects in baseball and the centerpiece of the White Sox trade of Chris Sale 18 months ago were on display in what was undoubtedly the best game of his still very young career.

That last point is worth repeating again: His still very young career. Moncada still has fewer than a season’s worth of plate appearances in his career, and while it’s frustrating that Moncada isn’t one of those top prospects to come up and just start outright mashing, it’s important to remember that there’s no linear developmental path all prospects follow. Moncada has flaws, but he also has an immense amount of talent. And Sunday we saw the best that talent has to offer.

2. It’s been discussed enough during the last two seasons, but the focus during a rebuild is more on the individual progression of key young players than actual wins and losses. Along with Moncada, the White Sox got promising outings from two others in the form of Lucas Giolito and Carlos Rodon in their pair of weekend victories over the A’s.

Giolito’s performance in Friday’s 6-4 win was perhaps more surprising but also more desperately needed. He looked more the part of his late-2017 or even Spring Training self over seven innings, striking out a season-high eight with a fastball that topped out at 96 and sharp breaking pitches. The line was only diminished after Rick Renteria sent him out to start the eighth inning at 89 pitches only for him to allow back-to-back singles that ultimately scored when Jace Fry and Chris Volstad couldn’t limit the damage. Still, it was the type of performance that makes one optimistic the pitcher the White Sox hope he’ll become is still in there somewhere.

“I felt in sync,” Giolito said. “[Omar Naváez] and I were working really well, finally commanding the fastball the way I should. Definitely the best I felt out there this year, for sure. Velocity was up a tick. Just felt right, felt in sync. Just competed from there.

“Feel for slider today was really good. I felt like there were a couple of times I could have gotten it down a little bit better with two strikes but other than that it was a good go-to pitch. Curveball feel was a lot better, though I didn’t throw it very much. Overall just felt like I was getting on top of all my pitches a lot better. I’ll look at it tomorrow but especially the angle of my fastball was probably the best it has been, too.”

Rodon wasn’t at his absolute peak in his eight innings of work Sunday, as we didn’t see the overpowering fastball or devastating slider induce a whole lot of strikeouts. He only had three, but was efficient in a 99-pitch outing with 69 strikes, which is nice, and perhaps more importantly zero walks. Despite the low strikeout total, he still got 10 swinging strikes, including eight with the fastball.

MOST importantly, though, is that through four starts Rodon looks healthy and unencumbered by the injuries that plagued him for most of the last year and a half. Seeing Rodon perform well and injury free for the rest of 2018 will make you feel a lot better for both him and the team going forward.

3. Believe it or not, it’s not all sunshine and roses with this 26-51 team. Dylan Covey got battered around for his second straight start before leaving with what turned out to be a groin injury. Fortunately for both him and the White Sox, it doesn’t seem as serious as the oblique that sidelined him for three months a year ago, but it’s still unknown how much, if any, time he will miss.

It’s amazing we’re at a point where Covey missing starts is considered a detriment to the team, but here we are. If he’s sidelined for any significant amount of time, the White Sox will have a couple of different options in terms of what to do with that rotation spot. The obvious and boring answer would be to insert Hector Santiago back in that spot, or even to call up Triple-A veteran Donn Roach, who’s 28-year-old but put together solid results for the Knights.

4. The option everyone will be clamoring for, of course, is the promotion of Michael Kopech. The 22-year-old top prospect has struggled mightily over the last month, and James Fegan of The Athletic detailed his command issues at great length last week, but given his pedigree and advanced stuff, the White Sox are bound to give him a shot at getting major league hitters out before long. He’s still posting high strikeout totals amid the slump, after all.

BP’s lead prospect writer Jeffrey Paternostro said in his weekly chat that “you should be a little worried” when it comes to Kopech, and when I asked him to expand on that thought he mentioned that, at some point, you get tired of waiting for the command to show up, particularly with a pitcher who is as close to major league read as Kopech.

It’s true that the command is a worry, but no prospect is a finished product by the time they reach the majors. Even with the struggles, you get to a point where you need to prove it at the major league level and Kopech has about reached that point. (Some may argue he was there long ago, and I wouldn’t necessarily disagree). We don’t yet know if Covey is going to miss significant time, but if he does, whether or not the White Sox opt for Kopech will be interesting to see.

5. Kopech hasn’t been promoted, but several White Sox prospects were, in fact, promoted after their respective leagues’ All-Star breaks last week. You surely already know the whole list, but the highlights include Eloy Jimenez and Seby Zavala going to Triple-A, Dylan Cease and Luis Alexander Basabe going to Double-A, and Luis Robert going to High-A.

Starting from the top, Jimenez’s promotion had been telegraphed and was wholly unsurprising. That he’s off to a solid start in Charlotte (he hit his first home run Sunday) only further proves how close he is to the majors. Zavala’s promotion isn’t what you would consider surprising, but it’s an important step for a player who has continued to surprise along every step of his development since the White Sox selected him in the 12th round of the 2015 draft. The difference between Zavala and his former Double-A counterpart, Zack Collins, as James Fegan detailed, was the defensive improvements, with Chris Getz saying he’s “major-league ready” in terms of how he handles the pitching staff.

Cease’s promotion would have been considered aggressive at the beginning of the season, as the 22-year-old had yet to surpass 93 innings at any point in his still very young professional career. Having a clean bill of health thus far in 2018 has allowed him to show the advanced stuff that make many scouts project him as a potential frontline starter, as he struck out 82 in 71 2/3 innings at High-A before his promotion. Similarly healthy after an injury-riddled and ineffective 2017, Basabe is displaying all the tools that the White Sox believed he had when they acquired him in the Sale trade prior to last season.

Robert going to Winston-Salem after just 13 games in Kannapolis may surprise some, but even at just 20-year-old, he’s advanced enough that his initial Low-A assignment was never going to be much more than a pit stop.

One final note: In the area of prospects who aren’t yet technically prospects, first round pick Nick Madrigal is not yet a White Sox. The reason being that his collegiate season just won’t end. Madrigal and Oregon State begin a three-game series with Arkansas Monday night in the College World Series final. His season will end no later than Wednesday, we know now. One would hope he’ll be signing with the White Sox shortly thereafter.

Lead Photo Credit: David Banks-USA TODAY Sports

Indeed, I’ve joked that you can fake being a good prospect analyst by assuming they will all fail.  Multibillion dollar corporations compete to draft the best players every year, with dozens of professionals whose full time job is to evaluate amateur talent scouring the country and coming to a consensus.  Still, in recent history we’ve seen our share of first overall picks fail pretty spectacularly for a wide variety of reasons–Bryan Bullington, Delmon Young, Matt Bush, Luke Hochevar, Tim Beckham, Mark Appel, Mickey Moniak…Go further down the first round and the bust rates get higher.

Pro prospects are more predictable than amateur ones, but that’s a low bar to clear.  Just pulling up, say, the BP 101 from 2012, you don’t have to go far to find extremely highly regarded players who didn’t work out–Matt Moore, Jurickson Profar, Jesus Montero, Jacob Turner, and Gary Brown all feature in the Top 20 although frankly it’s impressive how well our team did in hindsight overall.  Feel free to go through any prospect rankings from the past and marvel at how many players fell short of their promise.

This brings us to Lucas Giolito.  There’s obviously a Tommy John surgery between Giolito being the top ranked global pitching prospect, with a significant velocity drop to boot, and now.  The White Sox knew about this when they traded for him.  It was hardly a secret and the return for Adam Eaton reflected Giolito’s diminished repertoire.  If he were still where, say, Michael Kopech is now you don’t also get Reynaldo Lopez and Dane Dunning. None of this is to say Giolito is doomed either, despite his 7.19 ERA and even higher DRA. He’s still a month shy of his 24th birthday, has had success in the majors, and boasts a very deep repertoire.

I’ve seen some criticism of White Sox fans and analysts who were excited about Giolito after a strong spring training.  They correctly point out that spring training statistics are meaningless and you need a real change to a player’s profile before you start revising what you think of them.  The thing is, there was a change to the profile.  Giolito was hitting 95 on his fastball and throwing his curve for strikes.  But clearly he hasn’t brought those improvements with him to Chicago, as his fastball is currently as slow as it has ever been–averaging below 92 now–and he’s walked more batters than he’s struck out. He’s also throwing his curveball less and less often as he can’t get ahead of hitters or show he can throw it for strikes so they won’t swing at it.

But what do the White Sox do about it?

It’s not really a problem from a results standpoint.  2018 was a lost season before it began competitively.  He’s not taxing the bullpen too much either, as he’s generally making it five or six innings each game.  Indeed, for a while, Giolito did not even stand out as particularly bad in the rotation as Carson Fulmer and the injured Miguel Gonzalez looked even less capable.  But now it’s mid-June.  Fulmer has been demoted, Gonzalez is on the DL, Carlos Rodon is back, James Shields hardly deserves to be booted from the rotation, and Dylan Covey is pitching like an ace.  Michael Kopech has had some setbacks but he and Jordan Stephens are getting closer, and Spencer Adams has been promoted to Charlotte as well.

The frustrating answer here is I’m not sure.  There are still enough reasons to give those three prospects more time to hold off making a move for another few weeks, and even despite giving up five runs on Saturday, Giolito continues to show pieces of a guy who maybe just needs some luck or a little more command to hold onto his spot.  The White Sox are good at this sort of thing, and I’m sure Don Cooper or Richard Dotson could tell you what Giolito needs to do to harness his arsenal a little better.

But as much as I’m rooting for him, at a certain point one wonders if he just needs to take a month in Charlotte, throw his curveball a million times in games, and get a fresh start.  The organization is going to need to get a look at some of these other arms and it’s going to be hard to tell them they have to wait for a guy who’s giving up almost a run per inning.  I still think there’s a #3/4 starter in here, but I’m not sure if he’ll get there.

To end on a positive note, Dane Dunning is eviscerating Double-A now too and frankly, he may start squeezing Giolito sooner rather than later as well.

Lead Image Credit: Dennis Wierzbicki-USA TODAY Sports

2. Moncada’s two runs were enough support for Reynaldo Lopez, who needed 106 pitches to get through seven scoreless innings. Lopez’s start was once again something of an enigma as he struck out only four batters while also walking four Twins.  Lopez got 11 swinging strikes on the day (10.4 percent), which is just below the league average (10.6 percent) in that department. Lopez didn’t give up any runs in large part because very few Twins were able to put good swings on the baseball.  Yes, you’d absolutely like to see more strikeouts and fewer walks, but we need to get enjoyment from this season where we can and it is really fun to watch a young starting pitcher throw up goose eggs on the scoreboard against a division rival, and there are certainly other factors at work which are working against Lopez in each of his starts, but more on that later.

3. The two runs, however, were not enough support for the White Sox bullpen. Nate Jones came into the game in the eighth inning and retired the first two batters he saw. Jones then proceeded to allow a “hit” (a generous scoring decision) to Brian Dozier, a walk to Eddie Rosario, a laser single to Miguel Sano which scored the first Twins run, and finally the decisive blow, a three run home run to old friend Eduardo Escobar.  Dozier’s single was a sharply-hit grounder that bounced off of Yolmer Sanchez’s glove. Sanchez then recovered the ball with a nifty barehanded grab, but was unable to get the ball over to first on a fly and Abreu could not pick it out of the dirt, which opened the floodgates for the Twins. Based on the very solid defense we typically see from Sanchez, I’m sure he’ll tell you he should have made that play. Alas, it was not meant to be.

4. In the top of the sixth inning, the White Sox broadcast showed a highlight of Giancarlo Stanton hitting a monstrous home run off of Mike Fiers. The home run itself is nothing new for Stanton, but what was remarkable about it was that it came after Fiers had drilled Stanton with a pitch earlier in the game. This led to an enjoyable dialogue between Jason Benetti and Steve Stone in which Stone revealed that he was not a fan of Major League Baseball teams getting into beanball wars. I couldn’t agree more with Stone on this, and certainly do hope that MLB teams can move away from this frontier-style of justice. It’s really dangerous for the players and no one wants to see their players get hurt.

5. Calling back to No. 2, Lopez got very little help on the day from Omar Narvaez behind the plate. Narvaez has been worth a staggering -9.8 FRAA on the season and White Sox catchers have been worth nearly -15 FRAA as a unit, worst in the majors by a significant margin. Tuesday was no exception. On several occasions, Lopez threw borderline pitches that could very easily have been called strike threes, but instead were called balls because of poor catcher positioning/framing. Catcher framing has been a huge concern for the White Sox for a number of years now, and I certainly hope that they can find a catcher in the near future that can accentuate their young starters instead of actively harming them on a pitch-by-pitch basis.

6. After a short recess, the White Sox and Twins were back at it again for game two of their doubleheader. The Sox jumped all over Twins starter Zack Littell, who was making his Major League debut, and put up a big crooked number on the scoreboard with four runs in the first inning. Abreu kept up his hot hitting with a two-run blast. Tim Anderson got his first hit of the day with a double, Kevan Smith (welcome back!) drove in Anderson with a single and Adam Engel kept the party pumping with a line shot over left-fielder Eddie Rosario’s head to score smith.  Lucas Giolito followed up the big first inning by getting the Twins to go 1-2-3 in the bottom of the first. Why can’t the entire game be made out of the first inning?

7. Speaking of Engel, he’s really been hitting the ball well as of late. Since his OPS hit its season low of .396(!) on April 25, Engel has put together 111 plate appearances with a triple slash line of .275/.321/.422. His OPS on the season is now up to .621.  Engel’s speed defense has always been his calling card with the big league club and his bat an afterthought, but it’s nice to see him start to come around with the bat and make the most of his extended opportunity on the big league club.  When the White Sox are competitive again, they’ll need players like the more recent version of Engel to provide positive value off of the bench and guard against season-sinking injury replacements like the J.B. Shuck experiment.

8. As with most Giolito starts this season, I was skeptical that four runs would be enough for the White Sox to have the lead after Giolito departed. I ended up being wrong, but Giolito was not as sharp as his two runs allowed over six innings would indicate. He got some batted ball luck to get out of trouble in the second inning after he allowed the first two batters to reach, and then he benefitted greatly from a Twins base running blunder in the third. Eddie Rosario sent a towering fly ball to right field with no outs and runners on first and second base. Neither of the runners nor White Sox right fielder, Trayce Thompson, seemed to be able to pick up the baseball which ended up hitting the top of the right field wall. The runners were only able to advance one base and Sano bounced Giolito’s next pitch to short for an incredibly well timed double play. The Twins would get one run on the double play and Escobar would drive in the remaining runner on base with a double to the left-center gap.  Giolito may have only walked two Twins on the evening, but his control was largely erratic, as he threw only 56 of 95 pitches for strikes. While it’s good to see Giolito make it through six innings allowing only two runs, it was mostly lipstick on a pig. At some point he needs to limit the amount of solid contact he is giving up and start striking out more batters than he walks (he only got one strike out over the six innings) if he’s going to see his ERA fall significantly from its 7.08 mark.

10. Sanchez continues to have a very solid season at the plate. He added another double in the top of the fourth inning that drove in two more runs and chased Littell from the game. Sanchez doesn’t get the hype that Moncada or Anderson do, but he may very well be a great fit for the next White Sox contender and watching him on a nightly basis continues to be very enjoyable.

Sanchez’s double in the fourth was actually the last run scoring plate appearance of the game for the White Sox as their bats would fall silent against the Twins bullpen. Luckily enough for everyone invested in White Sox baseball, six runs would be enough as the White Sox took the nightcap in the doubleheader, 6-3. Chris Volstad was able to throw a scoreless seventh, and four relievers, Jace Fry, Bruce Rondon, Luis Avilan, and Joakim Soria, combined to allow only one run in the bottom of the eighth inning. Soria would stay on for the ninth, where the Twins would get runners on the corners with two outs, but he retired the final batter to preserve the win.  With the split, the White Sox start an amazing 21-games-in-20-nights streak of baseball on a relatively positive note. Next up is another match-up with the Twins. The probable starters are Jake Odorizzi and Hector Santiago.

11. As a bonus item, it was nice to see both the Twins and the White Sox wear their Jackie Robinson uniforms in the opener of the doubleheader.  The first game, of course, was a make-up game from the last time the White Sox traveled to Minnesota and were treated to some extended time off because of the early April snow. The two teams would have worn their Robinson jerseys on the original scheduled date, so I’m glad they decided to sport them again today to honor one of the most important players in MLB history.

Lead Photo Credit: Brad Rempel-USA TODAY Sports

It always seems overly simplistic to say that a key to a pitcher’s success is to throw strikes and to throw strikes early in the count. That’s the kind of thing players and coaches say in postgame interviews, and it’s always more complicated than that. In Giolito’s case, it is, but the whole strike-throwing thing or lack thereof was a big part of his struggles early in the season as well as his success on Wednesday. Through five starts, Giolito threw a first-pitch strike just 45 percent of the time (the league average is 59 percent). Wednesday, he upped that to 71 percent (17-of-24), including a first-pitch strike to 10 of the first 11 batters he faced.

Getting ahead, particularly with the fastball, is so important for Giolito. His velocity sat 91-94 throughout Wednesday’s start, which is in line with what we’ve seen this season. I don’t know if we’re going to see the kind of velocity we displayed in Spring Training, but if this is where his fastball is going to be going forward, he proved he can still find success. Using it to get ahead and not allowing Cardinals hitters to square anything up gave Giolito to unleash his breaking balls, which he showed can still be devastating when he has all his toys working. Giolito earned his top prospect pedigree not all that long ago, in part, because of his plus-plus curveball. On Wednesday, though, it was his slider  — something he added to his arsenal just last year — that gave hitters fits. He threw it 21 times on the day and induced eight whiffs, per Brooks Baseball. Of his season-high seven strikeouts, five ended on a slider, all of the swinging variety.

Through five innings, Giolito matched Cardinals’ ace Carlos Martinez pitch-for-pitch, throwing up zeros just the same as his counterpart. But the sixth and seventh innings showed just how razor-thin his margin for error can be. Martinez, who had just six extra-base hits and zero home runs in 225 career plate appearances coming in, took a first-pitch fastball (hey, at least it was a strike!) from Giolito out to break a scoreless tie. From that point on, his command wavered. He walked the next two batters (including Matt Carpenter on four pitches), and his day ended the next inning when he grooved a fastball that Dexter Fowler took out for a two-run homer.

Finding both consistency from start-to-start as well as within a start are going to be an important factor in Giolito becoming an integral part of the rotation as opposed to an erratic and frustratingly inconsistent one. Wednesday was just one start, and the results were merely adequate if not overwhelmingly positive. Still, it was a solid step in him righting the ship after a forgettable April.

Lead Photo Credit: Joe Puetz-USA TODAY Sports

There’s not much to say about this other than the obvious: It’s a terribly scary situation. Farquhar is, by all accounts, an earnest, humble, and endearing guy, something we’ve learned in the just nine months he’s spent with the organization.

BP South Side joins the rest of the baseball community in sending our thoughts and well wishes to him, his wife, and their three children.

2. There were actual baseball games played this weekend, of course. The White Sox were swept by the defending World Series champion Houston Astros, getting outscored 27-2 over the three-game series.

They’re on a seven-game losing streak and have lost 12 of 13. They’re 2-14 in April after winning the first two games of the season against the Royals. Feels like a million years ago, doesn’t it? In seven of 18 games, they’ve scores 0 or 1 run, and their -56 run differential is worst in the American League, tied with Cincinnati for second worst in baseball, and only two runs better than Miami.

The White Sox aren’t good, folks!

3. The White Sox being bad isn’t necessarily unexpected, but it’s the way in which they are bad that’s concerning. The rotation was expected to be iffy, but to date that unit has collectively walked more hitters (62) than it has struck out (60).

The biggest issue is with Lucas Giolito, who had his fourth consecutive subpar outing to start the season in Saturday’s loss, and one that was significantly worse than the first three. After that start, in which he gave up nine earned runs and walked seven in just two innings, he’s now walked 19 in 20 innings this season and sports a grotesque 9.00 ERA. His mechanics are out of whack, and the consistent velocity he displayed all spring is nowhere to be seen. What Giolito needs to do to be successful is clear — particularly to the pitcher himself — but any sign of him putting what is preached into practice has yet to be seen.

Reynaldo Lopez, on the other hand, has looked quite a bit better than most projected even after Sunday’s four walk/two strikeout performance in a loss to the Astros. His strikeout rate is healthy, but he’s now walked 15 in 24 innings and his sparkly 1.50 ERA is aided, in part, by an unsustainable strand rate and BABIP against.

2018 is much more important for folks like Giolito and Lopez taking next steps in their development than for wins and losses. While it’s still early, that aspect of the season is off to a questionable start.

4. How about some positives? Yoan Moncada is starting to get on base at a respectable clip. Even with a 1-for-7 weekend against Houston, he drew a walk in two of the games and, going back to the last two games against Oakland, has four walks, three stolen bases, and two home runs in his last five games. Baby steps? Sure. Moncada’s .214/.329/.400 line isn’t what you’d hope for from a former global No. 1 prospect, and yes, he’s still striking out at an insane rate. But the odds are still with him being a significant contributor over the long haul, and methinks the numbers will start to show that before long as well.

It’s kind of weird considering the White Sox offensive struggles as a whole, but when you look up and down the lineup it’s hard to be all that disappointed with several of the regulars. Tim Anderson has drawn seven walks and has eight stolen bases. Matt Davidson is tied with Moncada for the team lead in walks despite his numbers beginning to dip after his scorching start. Yolmer Sanchez has six extra-base hits already and somehow leads the team in batting average. Jose Abreu has been, well, Jose Abreu.

And then there’s Avisail Garcia. The 2017 All-Star is at .225/.243/.310 with 17 strikeouts and zero walks thus far. The weak contact that plagued the seasons prior to last year’s breakout is back. There was a lot of noise in Garcia’s surprising season a year ago, but the fact that it never subsisted brought some hope that, even with some minor regression, he’d still be a valuable player for the foreseeable future. That still may be true, but right now, it’s not happening.

5. Welcome back, Trayce Thompson! I’ve always had a soft spot for the 27-year-old outfielder the White Sox re-acquired last week, as despite his flaws he seemed easy to root for. His debut with the White Sox in 2015 went better than anyone could’ve expected, and is one of the reasons they were able to package him in acquiring Todd Frazier the following offseason, but he hasn’t been the same since, save for a hot start to 2016 with the Dodgers.

Thompson homered in Saturday, his first start since his return, and it will be interesting to see how the White Sox deploy him between spelling Nicky Delmonico or leapfrogging Adam Engel entirely. If he could just go ahead and return to that 2015 form, that’d do nicely.

Lead Photo Credit: Dennis Wierzbicki-USA TODAY Sports

1. One of the cool things about following baseball is there is always more to learn. For example, I bet you thought loading the bases increased your chances of scoring runs. The theory has a compelling, albeit facile, logic to it.  But that’s why you read Baseball Prospectus — you think on a deeper level.  The White Sox had some contrarian wisdom, loading the bases in the first on Sunday and the bottom of the second on Saturday with one out and none out respectively and not scoring at all.  It was cool and great.

2. Reynaldo Lopez took the hard luck 1-0 loss Sunday, although it indicts Pitcher Wins & Losses more than it says anything about his efforts. The term “effectively wild” is a cliché, but Lopez held the Tigers to one unearned run on the day, striking out five and only allowing two hits.  The five walks were a bit unsightly, but Lopez is missing bats so far in 2018, which is much more consistent with his repertoire and speaks to what he can accomplish if his secondaries are working.

3. For his second start of the year, Lucas Giolito did not have his best command, struggling to locate his fastball, and allowing 5 runs over 5.2 IP. Maybe Giolito has trouble getting loose in cold weather or maybe these are just two random bad starts.  Regardless, it has certainly thrown cold water on the popular Spring Training narrative Giolito had figured everything out.  The silver lining is how he has managed to muddle through reasonably deep into games when he clearly wasn’t at his best, but I’m sure he’d prefer to show his best instead.

4. Juan Minaya had a really rough weekend, walking all four of the batters he faced on Saturday and then being optioned to Charlotte the next day. The corresponding move represented the White Sox’ biggest moral victory of the weekend, as they took deployed former Detroit prospect Bruce Rondon, who pulled the reverse Minaya and struck out all four Tigers’ he faced.  Rondon throws hard. Maybe he’ll be the next Cooper reclamation project to troll the league.

5. The White Sox offense fell flat on against Michael Fulmer — a good pitcher — and Mike Fiers, who is not as good as Fulmer, but they still sit No. 1 in the majors in OPS as a team. Even after two bad games, Avisail Garcia is still hitting .343, and Matt Davidson drew a walk in each of them, including after an 0-2 count.  For reference, he walked 19 times in all of 2017.  Davidson is always going to strike out a lot, but the walks and power method is a tried and true one.  He already has the latter, so the former would be a very welcome addition, and it is a trend worth monitoring.

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Those things are still true, but Giolito’s season debut in Saturday’s 4-3 win over the Royals featured none of those aspects whatsoever. Giolito struggled to command his breaking pitches, walked four and just struck out, but survived six innings after a disastrous first inning in which he walked two (including one with the bases loaded) and hit a batter.

Giolito averaged 91 mph with his fastball and sat 91-93 most of the night. That’s not all that unexpected, but his troubles centered around an inability to locate his curveball that can be so deadly when he’s on. He abandoned it almost entirely, throwing it just nine times in the 89-pitch outing and inducing zero swings and misses, according to Brooks Baseball. He credited Welington Castillo for guiding him through an outing where his stuff just wasn’t working the way he would have liked.

“Overall, Wely is MVP,” Giolito said, after allowing three runs over six innings. “Helped me get through six innings and helped me spit that hook out as far as I was in line for the loss and it wasn’t looking too good, but he got it done at the plate. Just a fantastic job by him. I owe him a lot just from my performance tonight, him communicating and working with me really well, despite not having good stuff.” 

Viewing the start through rose-colored glasses, the fact that Giolito’s struggles were not tied to velocity is a positive. It’s easy to say any pitcher’s success is tied to them locating well, both with the fastball and the off-speed stuff, but with Giolito it particularly rings true. When he’s locating, his mixture of fastball command and that devastating curveball as a put-away pitch is tough to beat.

That’s what we saw in the spring and, to a certain extent, during the latter portion of 2017. In his thus far abbreviated career, he’s thrown his curveball 14 percent of the time. Saturday, he threw it just nine times and only once for a strike. It’s concerning, yes — the difference between Giolito being just another guy and a potential game-changer will be avoiding starts like this — but the fact that the conditions were less than ideal, and he was able to endure and post a quality start despite how much wasn’t working is a positive sign going forward.

2. Giolito called Castillo the MVP, and it wasn’t just for the way he guided his pitcher through six innings. Castillo took Giolito off the hook for the loss with a two-run double off Brandon Maurer that ultimately proved the difference in the win.

Catching has been a black hole for the White Sox since they let Tyler Flowers leave after the 2015 season. Castillo signed so early in the offseason, and the White Sox have so many exciting young players worth paying attention to, that he’s seemingly been overlooked as in terms of the makeup of the roster, but it’s worth noting how big of a boost it would be if the 30-year-old is able stabilize such an important position.

The RBI double is one thing — it was his first hit of the season in nine plate appearances — but if he’s able to hit with any consistency in addition to being a guiding force for the White Sox plethora of young arms, it will be a big boost.

3. Yoan Moncada hit his first home run of the season in Saturday’s win, a ball that was absolutely crushed into the wind off a low change-up by Maurer in the eighth inning. He also drew his first walk of the season, laying off a pair of tough pitches on a 2-2 count to lead off the game.

For some players more than others, you can glean certain things from early-season performance, even if we’re still a long way from stats stabilizing. With Moncada, it’s nothing more than him looking comfortable in the leadoff spot early on. It’s only been 11 plate appearances, but he’s seeing a completely respectable 3.73 pitches per plate appearance.

There are obviously a ton of variables in how much P/PA over a full season, let alone in a small sample size, but we’ve seen how patient of a hitter Moncada can be (sometimes even to his detriment), and if he continues to develop in that spot as the White Sox hope, he’ll be a real asset as a table setter going forward.

4. Joakim Soria got the call for the White Sox first save opportunity of the season on Saturday, but it was the effective return of Nate Jones that was most noteworthy in the first two games of the season as far as the bullpen is concerned.

Jones, appearing for the first time in 11 months, showed no ill signs of the nerve injury in his elbow that kept him out for almost all of 2017. In one inning of work, his fastball sat around 97 mph and he broke out his slider twice, putting away Mike Moustakas for one of his two strikeouts in the inning.

Rick Renteria has talked like a manager willing to mix-and-match in the late innings between Jones, Soria, and maybe even Juan Minaya, a refreshing approach if it does, indeed, play out that way. But regardless of how the seventh, eighth, and ninth innings work out throughout the season, a health and effective Jones would be great to see, and he may even turn into a valuable trade chip in a few months.

5. The White Sox leave Kansas City 2-0 after Sunday’s rain out, and head to Toronto where there will be no weather concerns and what is pretty assuredly a better team waiting. Going from cold Kansas City to the domed stadium in Toronto is likely welcome news to Reynaldo Lopez, who will get our first 2018 look at Monday, followed by Miguel Gonzalez and Carson Fulmer. The rain out also means James Shields is scheduled to take the mound in the home opener Thursday against Detroit, although Mother Nature may have something to say about that, as well.

Lead Photo Credit: Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports