Pregame Notes: Feeling their oats

The White Sox have won four of their last six games. 

They’re also over .500 (7-6) in their past 13 games. Mostly they’re just hitting better than their horrendous start, and getting solid starting pitching as many as three times out of every turn in their rotation. Statcast’s Outs Above Average metric (29th) and FanGraphs Baserunning metric (25th) are not yet sold on the vision of the White Sox becoming a team that does the little things at a level that overrides talent deficits.

But the vibes are still good enough for Pedro Grifol to talk about the organization with more affirmative energy than usual, and he did not waste the opportunity. He began his pregame session with lauding Martín Maldonado’s game management Thursday night, especially in guiding Jordan Leasure through the bases loaded, nobody out seventh inning jam that kinda sorta defined the 3-2 victory. 

Such was the speech that it prompted a follow-up question of whether Grifol’s regard for Maldonado’s defense outshines an .095/.162/.159 batting line.

“I’m actually OK with the results at the plate,” Grifol said. “He hasn’t played 12 years because he hits .300. He’s played as long as he’s played because he does what he does behind the plate. And when you go back and look at his Houston years, they had a prospect there [Note: Assume this is Yainer Diaz]. They had a guy that can really swing it, and that guy’s playing every day and he’s having a good year. And Maldy was the one that caught. A future Hall-of-Fame manager, he wanted him behind the plate. There’s a reason for it.”

Dusty Baker could probably give a longer answer about the pushback that he, a Hall of Fame manager coming off a World Series victory received for that playing time allotment. Meanwhile in Chicago, with a very different situation all the way around, Korey Lee is starting Friday night and is definitely earning a larger share of the pie.

– An equally long string of praise was reserved for White Sox player development’s work with Bryan Ramos, who is acquitting himself well both on the field (.389/.400/.500), and in the clubhouse where his preternatural command of his second language is allowing him to be more vocal and engaged in team meetings than the average 22-year-old Cuban native spending their first week in the majors.

– Chris Flexen said there were some mechanical inefficiencies that he did a better job of controlling on Wednesday night in Tampa, leading to a season-best 93.1 mph average velocity with his fastball and a season-high eight strikeouts. But also some of it boiled down to simply feeling good that night, so there’s not one weird trick he can necessarily fall back to that will allow him to sit mid-90s going forward. It certainly helped him stay ahead while facing the Rays twice in three starts.

“I don’t know the exact number but we might have been 30 percent fastball, 70 percent off-speed [in the first start] and we were able to flip the script a little bit. The game plan was still very similar, but we were able to utilize the fastball a little more in counts we hadn’t in the past.”

It’s enough to keep Flexen in the rotation for the next turn, which in turn slots Brad Keller in a relief role, though Grifol emphasized that he wants to keep the latter stretched out for potential future starts.

"Just spoke to him,” Grifol said. “He'll stay in that role now for just a little bit. We'll continue to evaluate things as we go. Definitely want to keep him stretched out. Do not want to detrain him at all. I want to be able to keep him in a spot where we can just plug him in and go if we need it. It's actually a luxury that we've got right now with him and [Jared] Shuster and [Tanner] Banks where we can start a game and finish a game with two guys if we need to.” 

– Andrew Vaughn has reached base four times in the past two days, and came tantalizingly close to his first home run on Thursday night. Grifol claims the first baseman that he’s continued batting in the heart of the order despite a .194/.253/.254 start has reached the crucial “eff it” moment of any long slump.

“He's really at that stage where…” Grifol said with a pause. “I really can't use the word here, but he's at that stage he's just 'Who cares?' You know the word? Who cares? I'm just going to go play.”

First Pitch: White Sox vs. Guardians

TV: NBC Sports Chicago

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