1. But what datapoint could be much more certain than Jerry Sands being a career .198/.283/.283 hitter vs. right-handed pitching. It’s clear as day. He’s a quad-A outfielder with decent pop but without the bat speed/recognition to deal with same-handed velocity. There’s a ton of these guys, and logic and numbers, and Phil Hughes blowing him away without effort his first two times up.

But now we all live in and have to ponder an existence where Sands reached out and pounded a slider out to dead center for a two-run blow in the seventh inning of the Sox third-straight victory.

Life is a relentlessly baffling mystery but sometimes it’s for the best.

(Sands struck out in his three other plate appearances)

2. After six shutout innings Wednesday night, Carlos Rodon has allowed just one run over 13 innings of work, and his best work still eludes him. He had a vaporizing, wipeout slider that he used for six strikeouts, including particularly gruesome abuses of left-handed Twins rookie Max Kepler, the last of which helped him escape a sixth-inning jam unscathed. Good movement on his fastball and the cold Minnesota air allowed him to pitch over five walks, some of which might have been prompted by a tighter than necessary strike zone. He’s at 10-straight quality starts, and is real, real good at this game.

3. Hughes doesn’t do a lot of mind-boggling stuff on the mound. He makes his living–and has found such a perfect home in Minnesota–by throwing strikes. Tons of them. With everything. Not overwhelming strikes, he mostly sits 90-93 mph and has a starkly below-average strikeout rate.

With that in mind, Hughes vaporizing the Sox lineup, cruising into the fourth before allowing a hit and striking out seven of the first 17 hitters he faced was a source of well-earned aggravation. He’s never going to be someone hitters will need to wait out to find something to cut on, but when a failure to drive anything is combined with Hughes coasting along at 10 pitches an inning, it looks like a clinic.

4. Worse yet, the White Sox made the least of the early major scoring opportunities they finally created. Melky Cabrera led off the fifth with a single and was doubled over to third by a suddenly lively Brett Lawrie, but they were both stranded when Hughes filleted through Sands and Alex Avila, and got Austin Jackson to beat one into the ground for the final out. Comparatively, a first-and-third situation with no outs and Jose Abreu at the plate resulting an RBI double play the next inning was a large upgrade.

5. Jake Petricka, Nate Jones and David Robertson combined for three perfect innings in relief to seal up the win. Petricka in particular flashed some of the best command on his sinker all season.

Zach Duke appeared, but was not perfect, and did not rack up any innings. His at least going 0-2 on Joe Mauer before allowing a double seemed like an improvement and probably was.

Lead Photo Credit: Bruce Kluckhohn // USA Today Sports Images

Phil Hughes‘ main claim to fame has been his stinginess issuing bases on balls. If we lower minimums to accommodate his 155.3 IP in 2016, he once again finished with the lowest walk percentage in the major leagues by allowing free passes to just 2.5 percent of the batters he faced, up from the 1.9 percent he issued in the previous year. Since he’s been pitching in Minnesota, throwing strikes has been the name of his game. Small sample size be damned, the White Sox are walking at a better rate than we’ve seen in the past, but as testament to just how impatient they’ve been at the plate on a regular basis, they are still in the bottom third of the league on the young year in walk percentage. That tidbit is unlikely to change tonight, but Hughes didn’t allow a walk in his first 2016 start, so at least getting him on the board in that regard could be considered a minor victory.

Carlos Rodon’s 2016 started with him scattering seven hits over seven innings en route to a two-run outing which importantly only contained a single walk. While Hughes has a reputation for limiting, Rodon has a reputation for distributing. Seeing his good and bad starts become sortable by walks over the course of the year would not be surprising. Pitch selection on a game-by-game basis isn’t terribly telling, but in Oakland Rodon threw his two-seamer the majority of the time, leaning less on his slider and still going to the change with restraint. Feel for the latter pitch should go a long way towards allowing him to get ahead of the count and utilize his slider as the ridiculous out pitch that it is to make hitters feel bad about themselves, and perhaps even their lives.

A third of the Sox lineup is hitting with some sort of frequency and power. That’s a nice way to put it. Another way to put it is that two-thirds of the Sox lineup is slapping sporadic singles and being generally unimpressive. Despite some timely hits from all three, Jimmy Rollins, Brett Lawrie, and Avisail Garcia have been the most lacking contributors, and some extra-base hits from any would help keep the spotlight off of the remaining slackers by way of staving off the next loss. Avisail will have to wait for his opportunity to crawl out of his hole, as Robin Ventura is instead electing to allow Jerry Sands to dig his own against RHP, the very clear weak side of his split.

The Twins, lined up behind a pitching staff not as established or threatening, have managed to get even less performance out of the bulk of their lineup. Joe Mauer and old friend Eduardo Escobar are the only players with above-average production so far, with nobody else really sniffing anything near actual productivity. The Twins offensive output is tied for last in the league with the Indians.

White Sox Lineup:

1. Adam Eaton – RF
2. Jimmy Rollins – SS
3. Jose Abreu – 1B
4. Todd Frazier – 3B
5. Melky Cabrera – LF
6. Brett Lawrie – 2B
7. Jerry Sands – DH
8. Alex Avila – C
9. Austin Jackson – CF

Twins Lineup:

1. Brian Dozier – 2B
2. Joe Mauer – 1B
3. Miguel Sano – DH
4. Trevor Plouffe – 3B
5. Eddie Rosario – LF
6. Eduardo Escobar – SS
7. Max Kepler – RF
8. Kurt Suzuki – C
9. Byron Buxton – CF

Lead Photo Credit: Bruce Kluckhohn – USA Today Sports Images