As the last full month of the MLB regular season gets underway Saturday night for the Sox in Detroit, some fans may jump to say it’s a “must win” game. However, that’s not the case. It’s a game that’d be very, very nice to have, but not one that the Sox absolutely need. They still have a multi-game lead over the Tigers and after Sunday, won’t have to play at Comerica Park anymore this year. But let’s take a look at the pitching matchup we’ll see as the Sox look to even up the series at a game a piece …
As GSB!’s Matt Hoeppner broke down in the series preview, Scherzer has been lights out of late. He’s 4-0 in his last four starts with a 1.33 ERA and has struck out 35 batters in 27 innings, to be exact. Despite all of those impressive numbers, he hasn’t been great against the Sox this year or throughout his big league career. Nonetheless, it’ll be a tall task for them to beat the Tigers’ heterochromia iridium (two different eye colors) starter.
He leads the major leagues with well over 11 K’s per 9 IP. Tigers’ starter of Friday night’s game, Doug Fister had also been near-lights out for quite some time, but the Sox were able to at least almostcome through against him. Considering the Sox are the league’s best hitting team with runners in scoring position, it’s surprising that they went 0-13 with RISP against him. If presented with those opportunities again, you can count on them getting more runs than they did off of Fister.
Liriano looks to move to 3-0 since the trade back in July. Credit: Getty Images
In the series preview (linked above) Matt also touched on how good Francisco Liriano has been since putting on a White Sox uniform. He hasn’t been beaten as a member of our club, and has only been bad one time. What’ll be key for him being able to continue that success Saturday night is being able to avoid the “big inning.” If he can do that, his pitch count shouldn’t get too high too early like it has a couple times of late. Besides that, Liriano just needs to keep the ball down – which is something I say before all of his starts – in order to keep the Tigers’ powerful bats at bay.
This would be a great game for the Sox to win for a few reasons. For one, it’d get their lead back up to 3.0 games and really ease the pressure off of Chris Sale, who will be facing Justin Verlander for Sunday’s bout in prime time. But secondly, it’ll let us Sox fans rest easy. This White Sox team fully deserves to have entirely supportive, enthusiastic, and optimistic fans behind them, as they’ve been shocking the baseball world for about four months now on a very consistent basis.
Maybe that makes me sound greedy, but for such a young team – from about half of the roster to the coaching staff – it’d really be nice for the pale hose to not have to get too caught up in any one game (especially with about a month left to play) so they can keep their eye on the ultimate prize down the stretch.
No matter what happens this evening, nothing is decided. Even if the Sox win convincingly, it still won’t technically go very far in deciding anything. But for a squad that has struggled so mightily in Comerica Park of late, it’d certainly go a very long way to help out their psyche. And for that reason, let’s get behind our Sox and start a big ‘ol “BEAT-DE-TROIT!” chant that can be heard all throughout Chicago.
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Posted by GSB! Founder & Managing Editor, Zach Gropper. Go, go White Sox!