With lauded catching prospect Edgar Quero headed to Chicago and Andrew Benintendi eligible to come off the injured list on Thursday, the White Sox offense could look very different in a few hours.
Few will miss the old look.
The Sox lineup didn't feature anyone with so much as a .600 OPS in their top-five hitters, and Nick Maton's team-leading two home runs are all that keeps the cut-off from being set lower. Given the depth of the struggles at the top of the order, it's notable that their performance is more accurately described as frustrating (0-for-8 w/RISP) than simply ineffectual, but not anymore welcome.
If there was an easy preseason critique of the White Sox offense, it's that Luis Robert Jr. is one man, and they obviously wouldn't be able to put the game in his hands every night. But on Wednesday, they managed to do so twice. In return, a still out-of-sorts looking Robert popped up a center-cut Osvaldo Bido heater to strand runners at the corners and end the third, and was sawed off by a Tyler Ferguson heater to ground out weakly and strand the based loaded in the seventh.
"He’s just gotta continue to swing at good pitches," Will Venable said of Robert. "I think that it’s going to turn for him here and for us offensively. We have to keep going and keep stringing quality at-bats together. These opportunities with runners in scoring position, we have to cash in there."
The Athletics won't write home about their 2-for-12 showing with runners in scoring position, but having anything to offer in the numerator separated them enough to seal up a series win. Tyler Soderstrom continued his reign of terror by fighting off a Tyler Gilbert sinker to left to leadoff the sixth, moved into scoring position on a groundout, and knotted the game at 1 when he scored as J.J Bleday followed the same recipe to win the left-on-left battle. Brooks Baldwin airmailing the cutoff man in an ill-advised throw home seemed like it would loom large as Bleday took an extra 90 feet. But Jordan Leasure walking Miguel Andujar before Gio Urshela sprayed a go-ahead two-out, two-run gap-splitting triple to right made it merely regrettable rather than relevant.
Baldwin's over-aggression on defense staved off an otherwise looming notion of building the whole team out of him. He opened the scoring in the third by golfing a cement-mixer slider out to right for his second home run of the year, and tophanded a 106 mph missile to deep left-center with a pair of runners on an inning later, which only Bleday's running catch at the wall stopped from being a game-breaker. Chase Meidroth slashed a hard groundout to spoil Michael A. Taylor's two-out pinch-hit triple in the sixth, so all the relevant youngsters went down with a fight at least.
"I thought the second one had a good chance, probably on a little warmer night it might go out," said Baldwin. "It’s just being able to keep my head more still, my eyes more still. Being able to see pitches earlier, closer to release. I think just being able to see the ball better has been allowing me to put better swings on balls."
Not to pigeonhole a developing young pitcher, but Jonathan Cannon is still at the point where the distribution of handedness across the opposing lineup can preview a lot about his night is going to go. True to form, three-fourths of the pitches Cannon threw Wednesday night were to right-handed hitters, and in turn he handed a 1-0 lead over to Gilbert with one out in the fifth. Sure he was at 88 pitches, but Cannon was also set to face lefties Lawrence Butler and Soderstrom a third time if he persisted much further. The pull made sense, even if the Sox weren't able to string together the coverage to make it look outright smart.
"I thought this was a big step in the right direction for me," Cannon said. "Obviously, I would have liked to go deeper in the game. But I'll take the zeroes."
Cannon enjoyed just a single 1-2-3 inning, but his navigation of traffic included his best work. A leadoff double from the lefty Bleday greeted him in the fourth, and it quickly became effectively a triple after a running sinker nearly hit Andujar and squirted away from Narváez. The next sinker handcuffed Andujar into weakly grounding out to a drawn-in infield, and the Athletics attack wilted in the face of Cannon throwing the entire kitchen sink at them. Luis Urías was frozen by a backdoor sinker, and Cannon pelted the outer half until Urshela tapped a comebacker to end the threat.
A quick hook prevented Cannon from having any chance to qualify for a win, but sometimes no hope is better than false hope.
Bullet points:
*Baldwin's sliding catch at the foul line in the second inning was so good that it baffled Andujar, who just stood at second in confusion as the Sox easily doubled him off first. Since the next two A's batters reached on a Lenyn Sosa throwing error and a walk, it came in handy.
*Andrew Vaughn's infield single was held up on review of whether Soderstrom's foot came off the bag at the last second. He was thrown at easily trying to advance to second on a pitch in the dirt a few moments later. Ball don't lie.
*Venable confirmed that Edgar Quero will be added to the roster and be in the starting lineup on Thursday. Omar Narváez was receiving well-wishes in the clubhouse postgame, and appears to be on his way out. He drew two walks on the night.
*Sox hitters struck out just two times through the first eighth innings before that rascal Mason Miller got involved. They're not overmatched in their at-bats, just under-powered.
