Such is the 2024 White Sox season that even a true you can't predict baseball moment like their league-worst offense troubling American League Cy Young frontrunner Tarik Skubal is rendered moot by the fourth inning of a blowout loss.
Hagen Smith looked great during his professional debut in Aberdeen, Noah Schultz might be the top pitching prospect in baseball, and Drew Thorpe makes the future look especially bright if his last two outings can mostly be chalked up to a flexor strain.
Unfortunately we live not in the future, but the dismal present. Little of the long-term White Sox pitching reserves were on display Saturday night as Ky Bush and Touki Toussaint were tattooed by the AL Central's fourth-best offense. An organization that has never won back-to-back division titles could seal up consecutive 100-loss seasons by Sunday.
After 12 walks in his first two major league starts, the world at large just wanted Bush to settle down and throw strikes. It's fairer to say he avoided walks than pounded the zone Saturday night (36 of 60 pitches for strikes), and while Bush forced hitters to earn their way on, 90-91 mph and limited feel for his slider made for token resistance.
Two batters into the game, Matt Vierling and Andy Ibañez had already delivered two of the six batted balls over 100 mph exit velocity that Bush would yield on the night. Scattering eight hits over three innings would've been a tall task anyway. But the other four 100+ mph shots were clustered in a four-run Tigers third that also included Bush's only free pass of the night, and was led off by a 394-foot blast from Vierling that demonstrated how literal "fastball in on the hands" has to be if it's coming in at 91 mph.
Despite the distinct "game over" feeling that a 5-0 deficit against Skubal provided, the Sox opened the bottom of the third with hits from five of the first six batters, led off by a rocket left-on-left double from Dominic Fletcher. Of the five knocks off the Tigers' ace, only Brooks Baldwin's bloop single to right that held up upon reply review was a cheapie, and Skubal needed a soft Gavin Sheets lineout and a Korey Lee fly out to strand the tying runs on base.
Resulting optimism that the Sox would make a game of it, or that Toussaint can find a home as a multi-inning reliever were both greeted with a crippling blow mere minutes later. Toussaint's splitter-heavy attack (18 of 35 pitches!) would be more intriguing had it opened more auspiciously than three-straight walks to load the bases in the top of the fourth.
Tigers catcher Jake Rogers still is a few points shy of a .600 OPS on the season, but his two-run single sealed up Detroit's second four-spot of the night, gave him a game-high three RBI, chased Toussaint after two-thirds of an inning, and capped off the competitively relevant portion of the evening. Now that's multi-tasking.
John Brebbia yielding two bombs in the top of the ninth gave the Tigers three four-run innings on the night, and probably made a respectable season ERA irretrievable for him in 2024.
Bullet points:
*Grady Sizemore & Co. wisely used a first inning challenge to catch Ibañez failing to re-tag second for a weird-looking first inning double play. Ibañez was running on the play, pulling in Baldwin from short, and requiring Julks to make a sliding catch on an otherwise routing pop-up. In his haste, Ibañez popped up from his slide and briefly rounded second before darting back without re-touching.
*Julks batted leadoff for the first time in almost a month. Despite his regular playing time having largely evaporated, he rewarded the surprise choice with three hits off Skubal. Julks, Luis Robert Jr., Lenyn Sosa and Andrew Vaughn combined for nine hits at the top of the Sox order.
*Gus Varland relieved Toussaint with 2 1/3 innings of perfect baseball. Maybe he cleaned up against a Tigers lineup geared to face a lefty starter that had already scored nine runs, or maybe they should build the whole plane out of Varlands. Name your price, Twins.
*Bush sort of downplayed his velocity being diminished, but also sort of didn't. Sizemore acknowledged it, but didn't indicate a shutdown was under consideration.
"Overall, [my] body feels great," Bush said. "It’s just, I think [I’m] maybe at that point in the season. This is the most I’ve thrown in my career so, I think just getting through that threshold of innings and just keep working through it. I feel like over time, it will all sync up.”
*Miguel Vargas went 0-for-4 with a strikeout to drop to 5-for-58 in a White Sox uniform.
*Skubal failed to complete six innings for just the fourth time all season.
