Heading into a day night double header on Monday against the AL Central foe Cleveland Indians, the White Sox found themselves 3 games back of the division leading Tribe, and 2 games under .500. It’s hard to say any of these games or series are “must wins,” but that doesn’t mean they aren’t important ones.
The Sox have dropped 4 straight series, as the team has lost all momentum since Philip Humber’s perfect game a couple weeks back in Seattle. Speaking of Humber, the righty took the bump in today’s early game…unfortunately.
Humber has not looked the same since recording the 21st perfect game in MLB history
Humber let up 8 runs in 2 1/3 IP, pretty much stripping his team of much of a chance in the game, especially considering how poor the south siders have been at the plate recently.
But when put in a comeback-situation, the Sox offense looked okay. They were able to put together 6 runs and make it a close game at the end, once again. The main reason that the game was able to get close was not because of the offense, but because of the next pitcher to take the mound.
Making his major league debut, lefty Jose Quintana was able to finish the ball game despite coming in early in the 3rd inning, only yielding 1 hit, while not letting another Indians player to cross the plate. With the number 5 spot in the rotation up for grabs, Quintana was able to throw his name into the discussion with the impressive performance. So while the young south paw was a positive, it’s tough to quite category the offense in that same category.
Jose Quintana pitching in the minor leagues
Yeah, it’d be easy to say that the team took the first step in turning the corner on offense by putting up 6 runs against the first-place Cleveland squad, but they were facing a rookie pitcher and were hitting without much pressure for most of the game, trailing by 4 or 6 runs.
If we see more timely hitting that helps the Sox get out to early leads and keep those leads, then we can put the terms “White Sox offense” and “positive” together.
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So the Sox headed into the night game needing a win, as being swept in a DH is something you don’t see very often. But unfortunately, the White Sox offense went back to being nonexistent. While Eric Stults was pretty good, letting up 2 runs in 6 innings, the Sox could not hold a lead. They got up 1-0 only to go down 2-1, and then tied the game only to go on to lose 3-2. It’s good because even in this rough stretch, they’re still pitching well, but their pitching has not been timely, which is as important as anything. I don’t have much more to say about his game…there was just nothing new there. We didn’t hit, so again we didn’t win. That’s it. If our hitters start putting up 5ish runs a game, we’ll start to get wins. If not, this will become a full-on downward spiral.