April 9th: White Sox defeat Indians, 4-2

Done with the intense Ballpark in Arlington and onto the poorly-populated Progressive Field for a much lower-intensity weekday series versus the White Sox AL Central foes, the Cleveland Indians. If you follow my Twitter account, @Grab_Some_Bench, you would have saw my comments about the “swag” I observed in the Sox today. Alejandro De Awesome, I mean De Aza, led off the game with a rocket home run, giving the south siders an early lead. From the moment Alejandro rounded first base until Hector Santiago recorded the 27th out, the swag was shining down from the sky.

AJ Pierzynski’s bomb job with 2 outs in the first, giving the Sox a 3-0 lead before they even took the field, Alexei Ramirez and Gordon Beckham’s sparkling plays, and Brent Morel’s 2 out-RBI base knock, despite having trouble putting the bat on the ball in his past couple games were some of the moments that helped shed light on this team that was clearly more comfortable than in the Texas series. As I have said in previous posts, starting off at the Rangers was pretty much as tough as it could possibly get. Playing competitive and keeping it close for most of the series was about all they could do. What’s important is that they could move on and not let those nerves effect them from here on out. And in the first game of the Cleveland series, it seemed like the White Sox were able to do just that.
While the confidence was simply swag-tastic, the main point I want to cover in this daily update is the presence of the youngsters that we saw all throughout this game. Alejandro De Aza, Brent Morel, and Dayan Viciedo combined for 5 of the Sox 11 hits. De Aza and Viciedo continue to look like studs at the plate, and Morel was able to knock in a clutch 2-out run in the face of all the struggles he has had and criticism he has taken to this point. But I know what you guys are waiting for. You want to hear about your new potential ace, Chris Sale.
Making his first major league start, Sale went 6 2/3 innings while letting up only 3 hits and 1 run. He was not only getting outs, he was making many of the Cleveland hitters look baffled. Sure, he’s young and rough patches are inevitable. But this start proved to us that the young south paw is not nervous, and does know how to be a rotation guy. Once the season gets underway, it doesn’t really matter what rotation slots your 5 guys are in. I have a strong feeling that for at least a decent part of the season, Chris Sale will be the White Sox #1 guy. No disrespect to the guys in front of him now, but I’ve been “sold on Sale” since his rookie year when he was a late-season call-up. Minnesota Twins catcher told the media after facing him for the first time that he had high praise of Sale, and that he was not fun to face. If that doesn’t sell you, I don’t know what would.

Aside from the young fellas, the former All-Stars looking for a bounce back year looked good, too. Adam Dunn had a few very good at bats in which he saw a lot of pitches, fouled balls off, and made solid contact. Alex Rios collected a hit while making good contact on one than more occasion, as well. And that is exactly what we need to see from those ex-studs. As you can probably already tell, I get pretty emotional with my posts. I’m either very enthused, or, well…not so much. Today, Grop is happy. With the youngsters flourishing and the “comeback kids” as I’ll call Rios, Dunn, and Peavy all off to decent starts, our ceiling may be a little bit higher than most people in the media tagged it to be.

Tonight before I go to bed, I can gladly tell the Indians to please…grab some bench! Let’s just hope I’m this happy tomorrow evening as well. At around 6:00PM central today, many of you were asking yourself one main, lingering question: “Sale?” Who cares if it’s only 1 start, be happy, Sox fans! Today was an encouraging performance! And respond to the previous question as follows: “Sale? Sold!”