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Despite the complete roster overhaul over the last year, the White Sox are pretty definitively ahead of two of their rivals both entering 2018 and in terms of future projections. The Tigers tanked the second half of the season, and the Royals’ magic ending culminated in the likely departures of Eric Hosmer, Lorenzo Cain, and Mike Moustakas, all three of whom remain free agents.

The Indians remain the divisional front runners, even after downgrading at first base from Carlos Santana to Yonder Alonso (and maybe a platoon partner?), while the Twins have yet to parlay their surprising playoff appearance in 2017 into any meaningful offseason gains, and are simultaneously dealing with whatever fallout comes from the accusations against one of their presumed building blocks.

This is simplifying things a bit, so let’s go in reverse of the teams I just mentioned.

The Tigers are set up to be bad for a while. Miguel Cabrera (still owed $184M(!) over the next six(!) years is the last vestige of their most recent contention cycle, and even if he returns to even 50 percent of his MVP form (he’ll be 35 at the start of the season), he’s surrounded by a lot of bad and a farm system that’s going to take a lot more than the 2018 No. 1 pick to restock. The returns for Justin Verlander, J.D. Martinez, and Ian Kinsler may have been underwhelming to some, but it was a necessary step and at least a start in building depth to a system that ranked among the five worst in baseball a year ago.

The Royals are kind of in limbo until we learn the fate of the aforementioned three free agents. Kansas City isn’t expected to retain any of their services, which makes sense considering they were even worse than their 80-82 record a year ago indicated. Like Detroit, their farm system is in need of an overhaul. But hey, they got a ring out of it, right?

The Indians are likely still in fine shape even with the departure of Santana, and are the kings of the division for the foreseeable future. Their entire core is locked up for at least the next two seasons, and the fact that none of them are under the age of 30 with the exception of the 25-year-old Jose Ramirez and 24-year-old Francisco Lindor, they will obviously be very well motivated to do everything in their power to snap the longest World Series drought in the league before the likes of Corey Kluber, Carlos Carrasco, Andrew Miller, and Edwin Encarnacion begin showing noticeable decline.

The Twins are the wild card (no pun intended) of the bunch and the toughest team to project both for 2018 and beyond. In Sano, Byron Buxton, and Jose Berrios, they have three talented former top prospects about to enter their presumed primes who have also shown obvious flaws in their game. Their pitching staff is currently Berrios, 35-year-old Ervin Santana, and, uh … Adalberto Mejia? The reason Minnesota is hard to predict, of course, is that they’re the team with the most obvious places to upgrade, including that rotation. The Twins’ front office has shown a willingness to spend money AT TIMES, and with Yu Darvish, Jake Arrieta, and a number of pitchers and position players still hanging out in free agency looking for whatever the hell they’re looking for, the opportunity to upgrade is there. If they’re able to spend wisely and their youngsters take a step forward, the Twins could be dangerous, but the IF in that sentence is a big one.

It’s easy to nitpick teams in the middle of a slow and still incomplete offseason, of course. And none of this is to say the White Sox are the team best set up for sustained success when they look to contend again. If projecting the future were as simple as looking at farm system rankings, you’d see major publications correctly predicting World Series champions four years from now. OK, bad example. But while many things need to go right for the White Sox to fully transform from middle-of-the-road purgatory to rebuilders to hopefully one day contenders, their main competitors are traipsing differently-shaped but tricky paths themselves.

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Since then, I’ve been asked how the team managed to get off to that good start if the roster really was that flawed. Injuries to spare parts like Austin Jackson only go so far, even if his understudy would wind up being well below replacement level. Similarly, vague explanations like, “Well, it was a small sample” or “Luck” or “Variance” is deeply unsatisfying and abstract.  Oddly, while Hawk Harrelson lamented the White Sox’ tough schedule as the season veered listlessly into a ditch, he had in fact accidentally stumbled upon a big reason why we thought the White Sox might actually be good.

Of those first 33 games, the White Sox played six against Minnesota, four against Oakland, and four against the Angels.  Those three teams would finish the season winning 59 (!!), 69, and 74 games respectively, and the White Sox unsurprisingly went 11-3 against them.  They even got three games against the Rays, who finished last in the AL East, for good measure, although they would only go 1-2 in that set.  In other words, the White Sox played more than half of their first 33 games against the absolute worst teams in the American League by a mile, and the only four teams who would finish lower than they did by the end of the season.

And sure, good teams beat up on cellar dwellers while treading water against stronger competition, but the White Sox drew about as weak of an opening schedule as you possibly could.  Eventually the problems that always plagued the White Sox of the post-2008 era–the back half of the roster being sub-replacement dreck with Worst In MLB production coming from multiple spots in the order–sank the White Sox as they moved through the rest of an otherwise very competitive American League.

I was inspired to re-visit this issue as the Minnesota Twins still sit in first place in the AL Central at 27-23, even after losing three straight to Houston by a combined score of 40-16.  And while they’ve had positive developments–Ervin Santana is still pitching out of his mind, Miguel Sano is a superb bat, etc.–a lopsided early schedule explains a lot of their good start.  The Twins are 7-1 against the Kansas City Royals, a team that rose to prominence by grabbing minor advantages all over the diamond, who have now lost a slight step, meaning they are looking like a 90-loss team again.  Throw in some good luck in one run games in the early going, Cleveland gearing up slowly, and voila, First Place Twins.

This trend may even continue! They’re currently matched up with the Angels right when they lost Mike Trout, and then they go on to play seven games against the Mariners whose entire team is on the DL, with a three game set against the Giants sans-Madison Bumgarner for good measure.

People throw around, “It’s early” all the time in baseball, and it can be very tempting to start trying to draw conclusions at this stage of the season.  After all, we’re at 50 games played for most teams and it’s June now.  But projection systems and the general public generally agreed the Twins weren’t a great team coming into the season, and the same reasons one would make that prediction still exist.  Their pitchers are by and large bad and there isn’t much help on the way from the minors.  If Santana’s ERA drifts up toward 3.00, which would represent a career best mark at age-34, does that erase their margin for winning more than half their games? What happens when the schedule gets harder?

At the risk of having this article shoved in my face forever when the Twins wind up winning 90 games for no reason, I recommend against betting on the Twins to win the division.

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1. Jacob May saw his fair share of playing time this weekend. It did not, however, yield good results for the 25-year-old center fielder. May has now gone 0-for-24 on the season. The two main arguments for him making the team to start the season were his hot spring and defensively abilities. His hot spring pretty clearly seems to be explained by feasting on below average pitching. His defense has certainly been OK, but it hasn’t been fantastic. It nearly cost the White Sox the win in Sunday’s game when he misjudged and dove for what ended up being a Brian Dozier inside-the-park home run. In every facet of the game, it was clear that May is overwhelmed by the big leagues. The White Sox don’t have a ton of options, but Leury Garcia can certainly handle the majority of the starts in center field while May figures himself out for awhile in Triple-A.

2. Before the season began, there were certain things that were identifiable as things that would be great for the White Sox and still somewhat plausible. One was that Shields could put together a first half of the season impressive enough to see him flipped at the deadline. So far, he’s doing exactly that. In three starts, Shields has pitched 16 ⅔ while giving up just three runs. It’s a bit early to tell any real trends in terms of walking and striking out batters, but so far the strikeout rate has improved. He’s still allowing too many baserunners, especially via the walk. It’s possible that this is simply because he’s leaving less pitches over the plate, and he has managed to work out of those situations.  The walks and inflated pitch counts are something to keep an eye on, but for now, Shields’ results look like the guy he was before being traded to the South Side.

3. Quintana has not had himself a great start to the season. He’s among the worst in every stat that it’s too early to even be looking at, including his 6.75 ERA. He hasn’t looked great. There’s no way around that. The biggest question, of course, is how this affects his trade value. The answer, for now, is that it really doesn’t. Every single pitcher in the big leagues has had a bad stretch — some even worse than Quintana’s current one. Scouts from the Yankees, Astros, Dodgers, and whomever else know who Quintana is as a pitcher. That is not in question at this point. It’s going to take a much longer and far worse stretch from the White Sox ace to keep teams from at least mildly pursuing him.

4. In the prospect world, Reynaldo Lopez had a solid start in Charlotte on Sunday. He went six innings, giving up two runs while walking two and striking out four. Later in that same game, Zack Burdi blew a save and eventually gave up a walk-off triple. In Winston-Salem, Zack Collins walked for what seems like the millionth time, hit a double, and struck out twice.

5. I bet you thought I was gonna go this whole article without talking about Avisail Garcia. Well, I’m not. Against all odds, Garcia has put together quite a start to the 2017 season. He’s hit safely in every single White Sox game, except for one. In the game he didn’t register a hit, he was one of just two players to reach first base. In Sunday’s game he played the hero when he hit a two run homer in the 10th inning.

In a real life baseball game, a team opted to pitch to Jose Abreu rather than face Garcia in a potential double play situation. Some Twins fans even argued on Twitter that Garcia should have been intentionally walked! That is the world we are living in with this hot streak. Who knows if it will last for another half a season, month, week, or even for another single day. What there is to know is that a player who has been beaten down by fans, analysts, and maybe even himself over the past few seasons is tearing it up. Perhaps it’s the pressure to perform off his back. Perhaps it’s the need to prove people wrong. Whatever it is, it’s working for Garcia right now. It’s hard to predict the future. This streak is probably just a streak rather than a start of a whole different Garcia. Either way, it’s hard to not be happy for a guy finally punishing the ball after what has been a tumultuous start to his major league career.

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Preseason projections are the perfect meal to fill that void, as they provide our first glimpse into how the 2017 is expected, at least by one model, to play out.

In regards to the AL Central and, particularly, the White Sox, this season’s projections were not expected to be, nor were they revelatory. The Indians will be good and the rest of the division will be a muddled mess of mediocrity.

You can split hairs between the Twins, Tigers, White Sox, and Royals if you want, but it’s no secret that, more than any other division in the American League, there’s a clear line of separation between the favorite and the rest.

What’s particularly interesting about the White Sox win total is that it immediately leads to a few different lines of thought:

1. The White Sox aren’t done tearing things down yet. With a bonafide front-end starter in Jose Quintana still in the mix, as well as useful veterans like Todd Frazier, Melky Cabrera, Brett Lawrie, Miguel Gonzalez, David Robertson, and Nate Jones, they can get a whole helluva lot worse between now and the end of the season (they’re only projected to win two fewer games this season than last), something PECOTA obviously can’t predict.
2. The White Sox aren’t much worse off than a lot of other teams. It’s easy to view the White Sox through a microscope. You can easily pick out the team’s flaws, whether it’s the outfielders, catcher, or backend of the rotation, because you follow the team on a daily basis. But the rest of the division has different flaws of varying degrees, whether it be Detroit’s aging core and stars-and-scrubs approach, Minnesota’s youth and train wreck of a pitching staff, or Kansas City’s, well, PECOTA and the Royals have a history. You can nit pick between the four teams, questioning which team’s flaws are more glaring or more detrimental, but it seems clear that from, 1-through-25, there’s not a whole lot separating these teams.
3. The White Sox really screwed up. It’s been shouted from the rooftops in this little corner of the internet over and over again, our face is red and our eyes are bugging out of our heads. But the White Sox flat-out blew it by not successfully building around the cheap, talented core they had the last couple of seasons. It will be fun to follow and dream on the prospects the White Sox have and will acquire over the next few years, but given the division’s dearth of contenders, there wasn’t too much standing in their way on the path to contention.

PECOTA has been within 2-3 wins of projecting the White Sox win total in each of the last three seasons, but the main difference between those seasons and 2017 is that there’s no expectation of them half-assing an attempt at contention this time around. So while these projections are beneficial in setting expectations in most cases, the expectation here for the White Sox is that it’s likely to get a whole lot worse before long.

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Let’s operate under a different assumption, that this was actually one of the great battles of our modern times, that with both teams shoving out mostly helpless pitching, this game became a test of the limits of what each offense could force into reality with its will and skill. Surely a dinger-fest can have just as much drama as a pitcher’s duel, is all I’m saying.

1. When Tim Anderson ripped the decisive blow, a rippling two-run double deep into the left field corner in the top of the 12th inning, staking the Sox to a 13-11 lead, Hawk’s voice lacked its usual punch. Three innings earlier, when Avisail Garcia punched a bases-loaded two-run single back up the middle to put the Sox ahead 11-10, he called it out in his typical trumpeting call, but after David Robertson‘s seventh blown save, he was exhausted. Maybe everyone was.

2. As is always the case, taking an extra-inning lead on the road is a brief moment of jubilation before the grim calculus of determining how to protect it in the bottom of the inning begins to loom over the affair. Juan Minaya, pitching in the third major league game of his career, and entering his second inning of work, turned out to be not the correct roll of the dice. He threw one strike combined to the first two Twins hitters of the 12th, and his wildness pushed the precarious situation of Tommy Kahnle in a save situation to Tommy Kahnle in a save situation with the tying run already on base.

After getting a lineout right back to him from Trevor Plouffe, Kahnle won an eight-pitch war and struck out Max Kepler, but was not truly content to get three quick outs. He bounced a wild pitch to put both runners in scoring position, before making it irrelevant and walking Eduardo Escobar to load the bases. To end the drama, Kahnle went back to his old standard, getting hitters to rip balls back at his person. Eddie Rosario swung on the first pitch and lined a ball that caromed off Kahnle’s body, and tumbled weakly in the infield grass on the left side. Todd Frazier raced to the rescue, barehanding the ball and firing to first for the final out, where Jose Abreu wearily raised his arms above his head in triumph afterward.

3. It would be easy to forgive Abreu for being a little tired, as he had carried the Sox on his back for most of the game. He drove in seven of their first eight runs on the day, most of them coming on two massive three-run shots to the second deck in left at Target Field. He blasted a hanging curve from Twins starter Andrew Albers in the first, pinged another Albers curve on a 3-2 count for a single to right to score a run in the fifth and obliterated a Taylor Rogers hanger for a tape-measure blast in the seventh. Abreu is up 22 home runs on the season, and is within a stone’s throw of last year’s rate stats with his current .293/.346/.476 line. Making his recovery by crushing Twins pitching and September call-ups might be like returning time and again to a broken ATM, but the money spends the same.

4. The Sox started Anthony Ranaudo in this game, and despite his improbable no-hit bid against the Cubs in his debut, is about as ineffective as you will ever see a major league pitcher be while receiving repeated opportunities to start. After a 1-2-3 first, Ranaudo was tantalizingly close to escaping a bases loaded, no outs jam in the second, when it was revealed that all his efforts were just dramatic set up for the climax of Byron Buxton‘s coming out party, as he hammered a mammoth grand slam to near dead-center to tie the game at 4-4. Buxton homered three times in the four-game set, but Brian Dozier went deep in every game, including leading off the fourth against Ranaudo.

At least those guys were hot, backup catcher John Ryan Murphy just stepped off the bench and hammered a fastball out to left in the fifth, but it was only after Buxton followed that by banging a double that Ranaudo got pulled with two outs in the fifth.

A Dozier RBI double to score Buxton off the ever-helpful Matt Albers ended Ranaudo’s day with nine earned runs and 11 hits in 4.2 innings of work. His ERA is 10.13.

5. The Sox entered the seventh facing a 9-5 deficit, which they began trimming when Abreu launched his second blast, but was pushed back to 10-8 when Miguel Sano launched a moonshot to lead off the seventh against Albers; still in the game after 1.1 innings.

Garcia capped off the comeback in regulation, leading off the eighth with a double and scoring on an Adam Eaton groundout, and registered the final blow when the Twins’ Brandon Kintzler couldn’t close down the ninth. Kinztler walked Melky Cabrera and Justin Morneau, with a single to Frazier stacked in the middle. Garcia’s single up the middle put the Sox up 11-10 briefly, before Robertson gave up a leadoff walk to Sano and had Kurt Suzuki blast a high fastball to the wall in left-center to tie things back up and force extra innings.

Team Record: 65-71

Next game is Monday vs. Detroit at 3:10pm CT on CSN

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But as each disaster piles on top of each other, they will be pressed to answer if they are truly moving toward that goal by shoving Shields out to the wolves every five days for the rest of 2016. Not that they have a ton of alternatives. Anthony Ranaudo starts Sunday.

1. After two days already of Brian Dozier entering high fastballs from White Sox pitching into orbit, Shields floated him another in the first, and his thunderous clout erased an early 1-0 lead in the first inning. When Carlos Sanchez gave Shields the lead back by rapping an RBI single to left in the second, Shields answered by chucking a high-80s fastball up in the zone for a two-run blast to the second deck in deep left-center from Byron Buxton. As much hopelessness as was implied by the beginning of Shields’ night, his third inning was beyond the pale, beginning with a leadoff walk to Trevor Plouffe–he walked the leadoff hitter in all three innings he began–and was quickly followed by a third deck moonshot on another dead fastball to Miguel Sano.

After following that blast with a walk to Eddie Rosario, Shields’ evening ended with five runs allowed, four walks and three home runs in 2.1 innings. He’s allowed more runs in some starts since arriving in Chicago, but Shields was utterly hopeless Saturday night. There was no hope for him to get through a major league order with any consistency. Surely other people saw this.

2. Just as an addendum, any lingering optimism for Jacob Turner as a short reliever got a thorough torching as he tried to put out Shields’ fire. A throwing error by Todd Frazier on a Dozier ground brought home a run and extended the disastrous inning, but the only out Turner otherwise got on his own was when Rosario was thrown out at a home on a Juan Centeno single, so they split the difference, really. Plouffe hammered a hanging 3-2 slider out to center for a three-run home run that capped a six-run, zero earned-run appearance for Turner, and gave the Twins all the runs they would need. Given that it was 11-2, maybe it was a bit more than they needed

3. Adam Eaton blasting a leadoff home run to left off old friend Hector Santiago gave some early false hope of a good night, and after Sanchez singled home a run with two outs and advanced to second on a throw home while Alex Avila settled in at third, the Sox were a Eaton lineout finding turf away from a big inning in the second. Despite Santiago noticeably missing miles on his fastball, Tim Anderson was stranded at second after clocking a leadoff double off the wall in the third, and the Sox did not reach base again until Melky Cabrera led off the sixth with a booming solo shot to left. At that point, it all felt a little silly going through the motions.

4. Michael Ynoa is pictured because by finishing the nightmarish third inning, and stringing together two more scoreless innings while striking out four, he was by far the standout performer of the night. Perhaps he can be the next hopeful reliever the Sox can start piling opportunities upon. Juan Minaya also contributed two scoreless innings of his own in the second game of his career

5. The White Sox are now 21-34 against AL Central competition.

Team Record: 64-71

Next game is Sunday at 12:10pm CT at Minnesota on WGN

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On the mound for the White Sox was Carlos Rodon, who had a fantastic August where he went 3-0 with a 1.47 ERA in five starts. During those five outings he walked just seven batters while striking out 26.

Prepared for an odd pitcher’s duel between two starters that haven’t had spectacular seasons, I settled in to watch the game. What we got was certainly odd, but it was no pitcher’s duel.

1. Rodon was ultra-efficient, going seven innings while only using 79 pitches. A huge struggle for for him this season has been the number of pitches he uses to get outs, as he racks up a large number of both strikeouts and walks. Instead, Rodon only struck out five and walked just one Friday night, though he hit two batters in the first two innings. Despite a large number of baserunners, he was able to go seven quick innings while giving up three earned runs. Not quite the start that we grew accustomed to seeing from him in August, but still highly effective.

2. The Sox offense managed to touch up a pitcher who had been giving them fits in the past. In two starts this season against the White Sox before Friday, Gibson had only given up a single run while striking out 10 and walking four. Rather than stick to the status quo, Sox hitting awakened to force Gibson out of the game after 5.2 innings and five earned runs. Gibson did manage to strikeout asix, including Avisail Garcia three different times.

3. Jose Abreu stayed hot with a three hit-night while driving in three runs. In August Abreu hit .362/.414/.648 in 116 PAs with a .286 ISO. During the month of August, Abreu hit eight home runs, raising his season total from 11 to 19 in a single month. So far, he has continued his hot streak into September.

4. Speaking of hot, Todd Frazier has homered three times in the last four games. Friday, he hit home run No. 35 on the season, a two-run shot in the fourth, which allowed him to pass Robin Ventura for most by a White Sox third baseman in a single season.

5. In a game that bounced back and forth as the Sox worked their way back from a third inning three-run blast by Brian Dozier, the White Sox bullpen stepped up in the last two innings to finish out the win. Nate Jones entered in the game in the eighth when the score was still 8-4 White Sox and pitched a perfect frame. Michael Ynoa pitched the ninth after the Sox had tacked on another three runs, and left unscathed despite giving up a leadoff single.

Team Record: 64-70

Next game is Saturday at 6:10pm CT at Minnesota on CSN

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On the other end of that spectrum, starting for the White Sox was Jose Quintana, the now-deposed AL ERA leader. Quintana had reeled off eight-straight quality starts coming in and compiled a 1.81 ERA over that stretch.

This seemed like a night that would offer the Sox a bit more certainty than the typical ‘breaks of the game’ nonsense, but no. No no. No no no no. That’s not how it turned out.

1. It’s no small source of amusement that Thursday’s game went about playing exactly to type for roughly 25 minutes. Quintana struck out two in a perfect first inning, and after escaping three singles in the top of that first inning, Ervin Santana served up a center cut fastball to Todd Frazier that the Sox home run leader lasered into the left field seats for an early 1-0 lead in the second.

2. It turns out there was a bit of accurate foreshadowing in the earlygoing, it just wasn’t the Cy Young contender shoving nor the home run-addicted third baseman getting his power fix. The reason Santana was able to pitch over three hits in the first, was because after wunderkind Tim Anderson singled to center, he was drilled in the calf by a Melky Cabrera line drive while leading off first. Anderson was out as a result of the play, making him the only one of the Sox first eight runners on the basepaths that they did not simply strand, and then he left the game to nurse his injury after the top of the third.

3. The luck would continue. While the Sox put together a 2-for-14 night with runners in scoring position, the Twins went 4-for-8. Three-straight singles in the second, capped off by Kurt Suzuki winning a seven-pitch battle, would tie the game at 1-1, but the Twins would take the lead on a wild pitch. Against No. 9 hitter Byron Buxton, the strikeout-prone former No. 1 global prospect that the Twins have succeeded in turning into a taxi squad member this year, Quintana would typically seize the opportunity to minimize the damage. Instead, Buxton fouled off two pitches after falling behind 0-2, caught hold of a curve and launched it into the second-deck in left for a back-breaking three-run home run. Quintana would strike out the next four batters in a row, but never regained his air of supremacy, allowing a two-run blast to Trevor Plouffe in the fifth, after he caught hold of a seemingly well-located outside fastball.

From a runs and innings standpoint, this was unquestionably his worst start of the year. Yet Quintana struck out eight and walked none, and played the part of a dominant pitcher who got rather inexplicably nailed to great conviction.

4. The Sox were not lacking for offense–they collected 15 hits–but were short on offensive heroes. Jose Abreu pounded a tape measure home run to right-center in the sixth to reach 20 for the season, and led the team with three hits. Carlos Sanchez filled in for Anderson and smacked two doubles, scoring when Cabrera missed a home run by inches in the fourth, and knocking in Adam Eaton from first in the eighth. Avisail Garcia–who is being evaluated, you know–went 0-for-4 and struck out three times, cracking his bat over his knee on the last whiff of the night.

5. September callup Juan Minaya made his major league debut in the eighth, pitching a scoreless frame and getting over a leadoff walk when he struck out Suzuki while Alex Avila threw out Jorge Polanco at second.

Team Record: 63-70

Next game is Friday at 7:10pm CT at Minnesota on CSN

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1. Despite an offensive effort that was effectively nil after the first batter of the game, Sox pitching dragged the Twins through a war, full of baserunning errors and general sloppiness, but a war all the same. After getting a 1-1 game to the 12th inning, the Sox just ran out of competent relievers, and ran out very quickly. Dan Jennings started the inning, but hit Eddie Rosario on a full count. For his next trick, Jennings walked Byron Buxton, and was pulled for Tommy Kahnle. Kahnle introduced himself to all by walking Brian Dozier to load the bases, and when he dumped a 3-1 fastball in the dirt to Joe Mauer, everyone had their trip home.

2. Jose Quintana attempted to play the role of warhorse that saves the bullpen for the second-straight start, tilting over 110 pitches again as he attempted to take the game through the seventh. A ringing two-out double by Buxton ended this bid in the seventh, but he flashed ace-level stuff throughout the night, getting so much swing-and-miss on his curveball that he was able to throw it in on the hands of right-handers just as easily as he could dump it in the dirt. The nine strikeouts over just one walk were just one short of a season-high, and his most whiffs since June 11.

3. The forces of whatever it is that is haunting Quintana still enveloped him in the sixth inning. A bouncer off the bat off Dozier was cut off by Tyler Saladino streaking across from third, but he couldn’t get the ball out of his glove, allowing for an infield single. After a legit hard-hit ball from Miguel Sano turned into a hustle double due to some questionable execution, Kennys Vargas shanked a flair over first base to plate Dozier and tie the game at 1-1, but Sano was thrown out at the plate by Adam Eaton.  This play would have probably been Dioner Navarro‘s final moments on Earth if not for the plate collision rule. Quintana still had to deal with a comebacker that deflected off his glove and a wild pitch that he fetched himself before he could seal up the inning without another run.

4. Eaton was the defensive star of the night to say the least. In addition to catching Sano at the plate to hold the tie in the sixth, he collected his league-leading 16th outfield assist by gunning down Robbie Grossman trying to advance to third, defusing an eighth inning that looked threatening for Matt Albers.

5. On the second pitch of the game, Ricky Nolasco floated something high-80s and elevated to Eaton, and saw it swiftly pulverized to the upper deck of right field. Nolasco had been nothing but firebombed in two outings this season against the White Sox, and on the merits of this moment alone, it seemed it would be another productive night.

It was not. Justin Morneau would add a wall single in the second (and quickly get gobbled up in a double play) and it would be five innings before the next Sox hit.

Team Record: 50-53

Next game is Saturday at Minnesota on WPWR at 6:10pm CT

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