The cost-benefit analysis here for the White Sox becomes whether guys like Yeyson Yrizarri and Vieira are worth more than what they could have landed by adding additional $300K and below international free agents, and even years down the line it’s very hard to identify what that would have looked like in order to make that comparison. But the temptation of Vieira is obvious. Listed at 6-foot-2, 210 pounds, the Brazilian just turned 24 and made a one-inning major league debut with the Mariners at the end of 2017, and the guy throws really, really hard.

As you might imagine, guys on the verge of the majors who touch triple-digits don’t get dealt for IFA pool money unless the rest of the profile has problems, and Vieira’s does. He doesn’t really have a secondary pitch, and his command is suspect. Glancing at the stat line, it appears that minor league hitters haven’t been able to convert his command problems into home runs, but the walk rate and strike out rate are both worse than you’d like.

White Sox fans can hope for a Matt Thornton or Tommy Kahnle outcome; those are examples of a best case scenario with this type of player. The “Coop’ll fix ‘em” slogan has captured the organization’s greatest strength over his lengthy career as White Sox pitching coach.  But for all that Don Cooper is one of the best at what he does and has worked miracles in the past, there are limits to what even he can do, and it’s not an accident that 99th percentile outcomes like Thornton and Kahnle were acquired a decade apart. Chris Beck throws hard (okay, like 94-97 instead of the 97-101 that Vieira has registered) and has been in the organization his entire professional career and last year he was one of the worst pitchers in the majors. Mike MacDougal happened.

Moreover, the trade went through at the last possible minute such that he would be eligible for consideration for the “Next Ten” on the White Sox 2018 Prospects list and our prospect team chose to leave him off. He would likely be near the top of the 20-30 range, although I’m not even sure I’d put him as the next guy up, ahead of say, Ryan Cordell or Jordan Stephens.

So that’s throwing cold water on the excitement. All of that said, the more clay you give to Cooper to mold, the more chances you have at striking oil, to mix metaphors, and one suspects that Vieira isn’t the guy they ask for in this deal unless they have some sort of plan for how that could be done, which is an encouraging thought. And, given that 2018 is another rebuilding year, Vieira will likely break camp with the team and have plenty of chances to get innings against major league hitters, giving them plenty of time to make adjustments and evaluate what they have before they start playing meaningful games again.

And, it’s a lot more fun to watch a young guy who touches 102 work in a losing season than it is to see a retread act as a placeholder.

There are logical arguments to be made for trading either or both. That’s an argument for another day. However, while Rick Hahn indicated at this week’s GM meetings in Orlando that the White Sox are in no rush to part with either of them, their respective values on the trade market are going to be a source of speculation throughout the winter. So with that in mind, here are a three teams who could, hypothetically, feel the need to acquire one of them.

Jose Abreu

• The Colorado Rockies have always seemed like the most obvious landing spot. During the White Sox Winter Purge of 2016, they were rumored to be interested in making a deal for him, but instead foolishly threw $70 million over five years at Ian Desmond — who had never played first base before — and he promptly put up a 73 OPS+. The Rockies made the playoffs anyway, because baseball. Desmond’s contract and the Rockies seeming unwillingness to part with prospects would be a hang up, of course, as would the presence of prospect Ryan McMahon, a third baseman who is blocked at third by some guy named Nolan Arenado. The Rockies’ desire to acquire Abreu would ultimately depend on how willing they are to go “all-in” after a surprising playoff appearance in 2017.
• The Seattle Mariners got similarly poor production out of their first basemen in 2017. They entered the season with a first base platoon of Danny Valencia and my large adult son Dan Vogelbach, and after that flopped they acquired Yonder Alonso, who fell back to worth after a surprisingly All-Star worthy first half in Oakland and is now a free agent. The Mariners have the longest active playoff drought in baseball and Dealin’ Jerry DiPoto is about the only general manager out there more active than Hahn, but the major hangup here would be Seattle’s barren farm system.
• The Boston Red Sox got a surprisingly productive season out of Mitch Moreland at first base in 2017, but he’s a free agent and the team is starving for power. The Red Sox, of course, are recently familiar trading partners with the White Sox. They’re also a rich team that may be more apt to spend their money on the market instead of parting with more prospects. That’s not to say Dave Dombrowski wouldn’t, if he and Hahn found a mutual agreement. But the odds seem long.

Avisail Garcia

• The Oakland Athletics have already been rumored to be interested in Garcia, a move that would seem logical in a “nobody ever knows what the hell the A’s are thinking” sense. Oakland has been in “Are they rebuilding? OK they’re definitely rebuilding. But maybe they’re trying to win now, too?” mode for a few years now, so all bets are off in guessing what Billy Beane could be up to.
• The Toronto Blue Jays are seemingly set to watch Jose Bautista leave in free agency, an outcome that would leave a gapping hole in right field. Garcia would be a logical replacement if they’re willing to part with prospects. With Kendrys Morales entrenched at DH despite a poor 2017, however, there wouldn’t be another spot for Garcia in the event that his already shaky defense continues to be an issue.
• The San Francisco Giants are coming off a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year in a season where many had them pegged for the playoffs. With the likelihood that they move Hunter Pence out of a full-time role, right field would be a spot they would presumably target to upgrade as they look to put 2017 behind them. The Giants, like the Red Sox, seem more likely to upgrade their roster with money rather than via trade, and a National League landing spot is less ideal for Garcia given his DH-ness. Besides, could you imagine him patrolling that right field?

There are other potential landing spots, of course, but IF Hahn finds himself inclined to move either player, the market is likely the biggest obstacle to overcome. I mentioned in both the Red Sox and Giants bullet points that those teams are more likely to upgrade their positions of need with money rather than via trades, but the same could be said for most any team.

Abreu and Garcia both hold value of their own, of course, but why trade valuable prospects for them when you could throw money at a Eric Hosmer, Carlos Santana, Logan Morrison, Lorenzo Cain, Jay Bruce, etc.? Because of both the market and, in Abreu’s case, his non-quantifiable value to the clubhouse, the odds are that both likely stay in Chicago. But if teams fall short of their goals in free agency, things could change quickly.

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The Sox are fully embracing a rebuild for the first time in my lifetime. And while the White Flag Trade will forever live in infamy (and undeservedly so), no trade in franchise history has ever quite signified the admittance of giving up as trading Chris Sale to Boston did last winter. It was the right move for a team that had been treading water so long that the lactic acid was about to finally sink them, but it still stung like hell. Even in the lean times, you at least knew you were going to get to watch Sale, the most talented Sox pitcher since the Deadball Era, throw every fifth day. That always made things a little easier.

And it’s not like the team hadn’t tried to build contenders around him. They did. They traded for veterans and post-hype prospects. They grabbed pitchers off the scrapheap and signed lumbering sluggers and expensive closers and tried almost everything except drafting the young talent necessary to building a contender if you don’t have the willingness to spend like a top five payroll team, or spending as though they were in a contention window. And that was the major problem. The Sox were able to land what should have been a dominant core and was. But there was no support staff. Stars and scrubs doesn’t work. So Rick Hahn had to make the hard decision and trade away the likely 2017 Cy Young Award winner.

Which is the complete opposite decision the Seattle Mariners have made with Hernandez. Hernandez debuted to absurd and accurate fanfare as a 19-year-old phenom in 2005. Since then he’s won a Cy Young Award, thrown a perfect game, and pitched exactly 0.0 postseason innings. He was one of the most overpowering pitchers in the American League for more than a decade and put up a borderline Hall of Fame career, yet has only seen his teams finish above .500 four times in 13 seasons. The Mariners have made the same basic moves as the White Sox; trading for players to bolster the roster, signing aging sluggers, and drafting disappointing collegiate middle infielders. But every summer and every winter, the Mariners refused to trade their wunderkid in a move that would have easily brought back three to five top 100 prospects. King Felix is now old (well, 31), expensive, and less effective. The trade window is cemented shut and it looks like Seattle will extend their MLB-longest playoff drought to a 16th consecutive season.

There’s no guarantee that the prospects Chicago got back for Sale will pan out. Or the ones they got for Adam Eaton or most recently Jose Quintana. The White Sox haven’t made the playoffs since 2008 and won’t for the next season or two at least. But by biting the bullet and making the unpopular move, they’ve given themselves the chance at a brighter future that won’t involve sadly watching a franchise legend toil in obscurity.

Lead Photo Credit: Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports

1. Carlos Rodon was largely dominant over his first 6 innings, allowing just a solo home run to Robinson Cano. He walked just one while striking out six, mixing in sliders and a few changeup while mostly locating with the fastball. Rodon improves to 5-8 on the season with a 3.91 ERA,  8.65 K/9 and 2.86 BB/9. After some rough patches, Rodon looks to have taken a positive step in his sophomore campaign. If he manages to continue pitching as he has this month, his stock will look very high for 2017 and beyond.
2. Rodon departed after allowing back-to-back hits to start the seventh to Kyle Seager and Franklin Gutierrez, at which point Robin Ventura began playing matchups with a bullpen that remains quite depleted. RHP Chris Beck came into face the right-handed Mike Zunino, who inexplicably bunted, resulting in a force out at second. After Scott Servais pinch hit Adam Lind for Dae-Ho Lee to achieve a platoon advantage, Robin countered with Dan Jennings to counter the first-and-third. Jennings needed only one pitch to get Lind to scorch a ball to second baseman Tyler Saladino, who corralled a tough hop to turn two and escape the inning unscathed.
3. Taijuan Walker was mostly good for his first seven innings, but hit three batters in his start (Jose Abreu twice and Adam Eaton once). Eaton was hit on the forearm with a pitch that caused him to exit the contest, though X-rays came up negative and he is listed as day-to-day with a sore forearm.
4. The White Sox broke it open in the bottom of the eighth, chasing Walker with a Tim Anderson single/stolen base and a Melky Cabrera triple. The lead was enough for David Robertson to dance around a couple ninth inning singles before closing out the ballgame.
5. In going 2-for-4 with a double, DH Justin Morneau improved his White Sox line to .278/.308/.492 in 133 plate appearances. While the OBP leads a bit to be desired, the Morneau expirement has to be considered a success for the White Sox, to likely no avail. Barring an extension, Morneau will likely test free agency, leaving a White Sox DH position that hasn’t seen above league average production since 2012 once again empty.

The White Sox head to Detroit to play spoiler once again this week, though sending James Shields and Anthony Ranaudo to the mound Monday and Tuesday may make a series victory difficult. Wednesday’s game will feature a matchup between longtime AL Central titans Chris Sale and Justin Verlander in what should be an exciting, if disappointingly irrelevant, matchup.

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In his third start for the Sox, Anthony Ranaudo continued the trend of allowing more runs with each successive outing by yielding six on the night.  The scoring started early, letting up a pair in the first, cruising for a bit — retiring nine straight Mariners — before Robinson Cano ended the bid for recovery by launching his 29th homerun of the season.  When Ranaudo’s third trip through the lineup combined with a Tim Anderson error, the direction of his evening was clear. What was a tie game at the time became a Seattle lead, and Ranaudo would leave the game with the bases loaded for Dan Jennings to clean up and limit the damage.  Technically the damage was limited, but Jennings did promptly surrender a base hit, allowing two of his inherited runners to score and pushing the Mariners’ advantage to three runs.

For their part in the scoring, the White Sox got started quickly as well. Three singles and a run preceded the first out recorded, with two more singles and another run coming in the frame.  A brief moment of panic was had when Adam Eaton was seen holding his hamstring walking back to the dugout after scoring the game’s first run, but Eaton would remain in the game and show no signs of damage thereafter.

James Paxton threw 90 pitches in his five innings, nearly a third of which came in that two-run Sox first.  A six man bullpen was not enough for Scott Servais to worry about dipping into relief help early, but an unfortunate three-run third of an inning for Arquimedes Caminero put the Sox right back into a game they seemed perfectly content to lose control of.

Despite Jennings’ quick hiccup upon entering the game, he was able to get through an inning and third with no earned runs (charged to him, anyway), setting the pace for the rest of the night’s relief squad to go unscored upon as well.  Even Matt Albers got in on the effective fun, allowing no runs in his second straight outing, doing what he can to lower that 7.04 post All-Star break ERA.

David Robertson had his patience tested while trying to get his job done in the 9th inning of a tie game.  Having retired one, and with Ketel Marte on first with one out, two fans ran on to the field causing a delay.  Upon readying himself to resume play, another fan ran out; clear annoyance on the face and in the body language of Robertson announced another delay.  After a warm-up pitch or two, Marte took advantage of the confusion in routine by running on Robertson’s next offering to the batter Aoki, getting an excellent jump and putting himself in scoring position.  Thankfully, Robertson was able to strike Aoki out, and then get Guillermo Heredia to ground out and end the inning.

The top of th lineup would come up for the White Sox in their half of the 9th.  Adam Eaton lead things off with a base hit, his second of the night.  Tim Anderson was then tasked with sacrificing him over to second, and did so successfully.  The move had the effect of earning Jose Abreu an intentional walk, but Todd Frazier, responsible for knocking in two of the previous runs in the game, laced a game winning single into left field to plate Adam Eaton and earn himself a celebratory shower of…whatever it is they keep in that Gatorade bucket. Frazier came into the night with a .586 OPS in the month, and though both of his hits were singles, I’m sure mentally he could really use a multi-hit, multi-RBI night like this.

Lead Photo Credit: David Banks – USA Today Sports Images

And yet they still were able to tune up the Sox bullpen to snatch two games out of three, winning 6-5 in 11 innings Wednesday.

1. Leonys Martin‘s second home run of the game, and the third home run allowed on the day by the Sox bullpen, sealed a Mariners comeback from what was a 4-0 deficit in the second inning, and what was a 5-2 lead in the seventh.

Martin got a hanging slider from Dan Jennings–a poor reliever in his second inning of work–on an 0-2 count and drilled it out to left, giving the Mariners their second walk-off win of the week, after Adam Lind–who also homered Wednesday–walked it off on Monday. Thanks to a 1-5 west coast swing to start the second half, the Sox are now 10 games out of the AL Central, and have six teams in front of them for the final Wild Card. Six!

2. Jennings joined Nate Jones, who had Lind spray an outside fastball just over the left field bullpen to tie the game at 5-5 in the eighth, and Zach Duke, who came on in the seventh and allowed a massive two-run shot to the recently recalled Mike Zunino, among Sox relievers allowing home runs.

David Robertson, amusingly, pitched a perfect ninth inning and was the only reliever who wasn’t scored upon.

3. Besides ‘most handsome White Sox rotation member,’ Miguel Gonzalez will not earn any awards for his Wednesday performance, but was certainly functional over six innings and left with a 5-2 lead, which was also his strikeout-to-walk ratio. He was overly reliant on the lineout as a means to an end early on, and certainly earned every bit of the towering two-run bomb Martin launched off of him in the bottom of the second given the fat fastball he threw him.

Gonzalez still kept the Mariners scoreless through the sixth, and got taken out after a leadoff walk, only for the bullpen to nigh immediately add that as a run to his tab.

4. The White Sox offense was spunky enough–or so it was thought!–against a freshly activated from injury Felix Hernandez. When Hernandez didn’t get a call he wanted on a 3-2 delivery to walk Justin Morneau in the first, the Sox took advantage with Todd Frazier belting a three-run home run on the first pitch he’s ever seen from Hernandez. The next inning, Tyler Saladino, Adam Eaton and Melky Cabrera strung together three-straight two-out singles to plate another run, and Morneau made his first big contribution in the fifth when he drilled a high fastball for an RBI single to score Cabrera after a leadoff triple.

This all came with a getaway day lineup that rested Tim Anderson, still doesn’t have Alex Avila, and treats J.B. Shuck as a regular. They did ok, even well.

5. Jose Abreu went 0-for-4 and only reached base when Steve Cishek threw a slider at his butt. To his credit, he has one of the better statistical lines among players I consider it a nightmare to watch.

Team Record: 46-48

Next game is Thursday at 7:10pm CT vs. Detroit on CSN

Lead Image Credit: Joe Nicholson // USA Today Sports Images

After Chris Sale was thoroughly Quintana’d by the White Sox bullpen — or more specifically, David Robertson — in an agonizing loss on Monday, Quintana picked up essentially right where he left off in the first half on Tuesday. The All-Star pitched around a few walks, scattered six hits across six innings and allowed just a solo home run to Robinson Cano in a 6-1 victory over Seattle.

Quintana struck out five of the first seven hitters he faced, and was staked to an early 1-0 lead on a Brett Lawrie solo shot in the second inning. He allowed at least one hit in four of his six innings of work, but was able to escape mostly unscathed on each occasion.

The lone blemish — Cano’s solo shot in the fourth inning — came on a first pitch hanging curveball that was golfed out to right-center field. And while he battled control issues, walking three, he escaped two on, one out jams in both the fourth and fifth innings, and ended his night by getting Daniel Robertson to fly out to center after walking Chris Iannetta and Leonys Martin to load the bases with two outs.

Quintana got a welcome dose of good fortune for a team that has lost four-straight since the All-Star break and six of seven overall, the offense did its part against Wade Miley and a bad Mariners bullpen. Quintana left with the Sox leading 3-1 thanks to solo home runs by Lawrie and Melky Cabrera, and an RBI single by J.B. Shuck, and the Sox poured on some insurance in the ninth off the combination of Joaquin Benoit and David Rollins.

Todd Frazier took Benoit deep after Cabrera walked to lead off the inning, and Dioner Navarro completed the scoring with a double into the right field corner that scored Shuck.

Speaking of Shuck, he had a three-hit night and Tim Anderson had another multi-hit game after starting the second half 1-for-15 with seven strikeouts.

The bullpen had a rare, quiet night, with Zach Duke, Nate Jones and Carson Fulmer combining for three scoreless innings to preserve the victory. Fulmer faced two hitters, striking out Leonys Martin on an 89-mph fastball that may have been aided by a kind strike zone, and getting Adam Lind to ground out to first.

Team record: 46-47

Next game: 2:40 p.m. CT against Seattle on CSN

Lead photo credit: Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports

Only 4 of Chris Sale’s last 9 were quality starts. The 14-game winner is 5-3, 5.56 ERA, 1.43 WHIP, .291 opp. average and 61 Ks in last nine.

— Daryl Van Schouwen (@CST_soxvan) July 18, 2016

Saberists find themselves saying “homer-prone” a lot after a cursory glance of a mediocre pitcher’s peripherals don’t reveal anything else interesting or more telling, but Sale was very blatantly besieged by home runs over this stretch coming into Monday night. He allowed 12 bombs over just 56.2 innings, and allowed opposing hitters to slug .507 against him.

He wasn’t just not Sale-like, not racking up strikeouts like he used to and oddly interested in pitching to contact, he was bad and not helping his team, despite a surprising wave of run support leading him to a 5-3 record.

On those 12 home runs, I made some very basic notes:

May 24–high 90 mph fastball, June 4–high outside 92 mph fastball, June 10–outside 94 mph fastball, June 10–high 80 mph slider, June 10–high 96 mph fastball, June 15–high 96 mph fastball, June 26–low and inside slider, June 26–low and inside 91 mph fastball, July 2–high 93.5 mph fastball, July 8–high and outside 93 mph fastball, July 8–low 92 mph fastball, July 8–low and in 90 mph change or fastball

They are mostly fastballs, predominantly elevated, and with some exceptions, at velocity that would be expected of him in years past. For someone who has seen their strikeout rate plummet alongside a decision to cut his changeup rate in half, to go through a prolonged stretch of being punished by hitters sitting on elevated fastballs, while forsaking his tools for dropping eye levels and slowing down bats, reads as ignoring the warning signs of his own approach. Or at best, acknowledging it and choosing to endure.

Sale de-emphasizing strikeouts for the sake of endurance and conservation is only appealing on the basis that his escape tricks will be there when he needs them, but if a month and a half of being pounded isn’t enough to sound the alarms, what is? Does he listen to the alarms when they ring?

Monday night in Seattle would be an evening of redemption of sorts for Sale. His approach remained unchanged and inscrutable into the season’s second half, but his fortunes reversed. His peripherals were as ugly as ever–just six strikeouts, three walks, and really five free passes overall since he hit two batters–but who can argue with eight scoreless, one-hit innings? Sale certainly was aware of his spacious dimensions and made great use of the long flyout by way of challenging hitters to drive his fastball over the heart of the plate, but David Robertson coming on in the ninth and immediately imploding really lent a degree of magic to what Sale had accomplished earlier in the night.

Sale’s offspeed stuff remained as potent as ever. Of the 14 sliders and changeups which Mariners hitters even bothered to offer at, they swung and missed at eight, and only put another three in play (all outs). Other than that, he seemed consumed with trying to throw the perfectly spotted fastball, and did it enough times to make it look like a smart pursuit, but flirted with disaster enough to leave open whether his struggles had chastened him at all.

In the second inning, in his first career matchup against Dae-Ho Lee, Sale fell behind 2-1 before throwing Lee the perfect changeup: a tight, fading 86 mph pitch that dropped into the armside of the zone, with Lee swinging over the top of it as if on command. Sale responded by immediately throwing another to induce a weak groundout, before hiding it entirely from their second at-bat (and striking out Lee with just fastball-slider) and bringing it back once as a first-pitch strike stealer in the third at-bat, before it disappeared again.

And those were three of the 10 times he threw it all night, as kind of a specter to taunt a first-time hitter. It was incredibly effective, but only faintly seemed like a means to an end, and just as much a ghost for Lee to chase in future showdowns.

Post-game player quotes are not a great source of unvarnished truth, and players tend to err on the side of respect for their peers, but discussion of Sale by opponents throughout the year has stayed consistent with that of a small village trying to stay together and endure the monster that haunts them once or twice per season.

“That’s him…he’s that good” Nelson Cruz told Bob Dutton of the News Tribune.

“Chris Sale was Chris Sale tonight,” Mariners manager Scott Servais told the AP.

Sale is in his fifth year as a starter, and despite the sense that he’s buried on the South Side of Chicago, his renown around the league is on par with anyone’s, and the book on him is long. For someone who burst on the scene with an impossibly deceptive delivery, who looks like they should be throwing in a janky sidearm motion but comes out with a clean three-quarters release, who tinkers with the speeds of all his pitchers constantly, altering the looks he gives the opposition varies between a focus and an obsession with him.

He lowered his ERA to 3.18 with his effort Monday, to slide back down into top-10 in the AL, he widened his innings lead, and even though his teammates cost him a win, he burnished a Cy Young case that figures to lean on his monstrous reputation to give him a leg up on pitchers who have shown more consistence dominance. The irony is that he could earn his crowning achievement in a year that could pass by without Sale ever looking like himself, as he’d rather endure the bumps in the road to a change than wait for the diminishing returns of his previous ways.

Lead Image Credit: Joe Nicholson // USA Today Sports Images

Sale having a long outing was a good bet early after eight and nine pitch innings to start the game. He allowed a single to Franklin Gutierrez in the first, then settled in and cruised into the seventh. Working mostly fastball-change, he leveraged the slider where he needed it to dispatch the Mariners over the next five innings with the only blemish being a walk issued to Leonys Martin. In the seventh, things got a little rocky, as a self-made jam was created by hitting both Gutierrez and Dae-Ho Lee with sliders. He then used that same pitch to escape the jam by striking out Kyle Seager, thus ending the threat, but the suggestion that he was not in full domination mode was already made, and would become unfortunately important. Sale finished the evening after having completed eight innings and allowing just a single hit to go with his three walks and six strikeouts.

David Robertson, making his first appearance post-All Star break had some difficulty with the middle of the Mariners order, putting himself in a position to face Lee as the tying run with one out. After working a strikeout of Lee, Kyle Seager lined a single to center to get the Mariners on the board and cause Don Cooper to saunter out for a never pleasant 9th inning mound visit. It was not as productive as hoped. Adam Lind saw two pitches, the second of which he deposited just over the fence in right field, securing misery for all those that care about the success of the White Sox. Sale’s shakiness over his last two innings makes it tough to second guess his removal without the benefit of hindsight, but boy do I wish he was left in for the complete game.

On the positive side, ongoing fear of shutout was silenced early on when Tim Anderson took Wade LeBlanc into the upper deck in the first inning, acquiring a lead the Sox wouldn’t relinquish until that final pitch of the game. The additional tallies were acquired in the 4th inning — Todd Frazier, who seems to have every intention of staying relevant in the home run race, slugged his 26th long ball of the season, this a two-run shot that also scored Melky Cabrera. A cheapie did not exist between the two homers, as early measurements were 441 feet for Anderson’s shot and 427 for the dead-center blast by Frazier.

Not coincidentally, the last time the White Sox notched double digits in hits was the last time they scored more than one run. Of their 11 hits tonight, multi-hit games were had by Cabrera, Avisail Garcia, and Dioner Navarro. Navarro’s good fortune was such that he collected an infield single on a swinging bunt. It may have happened before, but it’s never developed as slowly as his roller to the left side of the infield. Melky’s knocks were accompanied by competent outfield play. Sale was letting the ball into the play with regularity, and a couple of the more threatening fly balls were tracked down by Cabrera, some with what a charitable individual could call a hint of grace. Some with what nobody could call a hint of grace.

Three runs is all well and good when you went through a stretch wondering if you’d ever score any again, but we’d be lying to ourselves if we were satisfied with that output against Wade LeBlanc. The weak spots are still glaring, despite Garcia managing to reach base twice tonight. Jose Abreu, who came into the contest with an OPS of .858 since the beginning of June hit a double in his first at-bat, and then looked downright lost in subsequent appearances, continuing a Jekyll & Hyde act he’s been performing quite a bit this summer.

A team with a pitching staff as shaky as the White Sox once Sale and Quintana are out of the way needs to put up consistent runs, and when they can’t bounce guys like LeBlanc early and stack runs when given those matchup opportunities, the hopes of seeing a season go past what’s already on the schedule are slim and growing slimmer. And of course, ultimately losing the game that pits LeBlanc against Chris Sale is a gut punch this season could have done without.

The strategic curiosity for sliding Anderson into the second spot of the lineup is probably only exceeded by him batting leadoff in the first place, but with his fifth home run on the season Monday, anecdotal evidence says the two-hole is where he belongs and will thrive. In reality it’s still an odd approach for handling the young shortstop. Playing a prime position well while carrying a league average bat in his first exposure to the game’s highest competition suggests he can handle himself no matter how strangely those in charge of him behave.

Team Record: 45-47

Next game is at 9:10pm CT in Seattle on WGN

Lead Photo Credit: Joe Nicholson – USA Today Sports Images