The White Sox, as you may have heard, have been outscored 37-7 since taking a 4-0 lead into the eighth inning on Tuesday night against the Royals.
The meager offensive production continued Friday night despite 12 hits, because Edgar Quero's eighth inning leadoff double was the only extra-base hit. Will Venable's proposed remedy will not surprise.
"Get on the fastball," Venable said. "Obviously [Cam] Schlitter tonight has got a really good one. He's going to be aggressive in the zone with it, it's going to be upwards of 100 miles an hour, and as we're finding places to start, we've talked about it all year, that's a good place to focus our attention."
As for stemming the tide of their pitching staff getting annihilated (10+ runs allowed in three-straight games), it falls upon Shane Smith to build off arguably the best start of his career and a 2.63 ERA in August.
"He's got a lot of different ways that he can beat you, different pitches that he can use in different ways," Venable said. "His ability to command those, starting with the fastball is going to be a real key for him. So as different lineups respond to him differently, he's got to reinvent ways to get outs."
⚙️⚙️⚙️
If the White Sox by some chance have a late lead to protect, it probably won't be Grant Taylor locking things down.
Both because he threw 26 pitches Friday night, and because he didn't get an out while doing that, and Venable is looking for a lower leverage spot to drop him in next.
"It's about his ability to command the zone," Venable said. "His stuff is always going to be elite, and we've seen a couple different outings here where there's been some walks. The Kansas City outing, where there's been just some soft contact that gave him trouble. So for Grant, I think it's just about staying focused on him and knowing there's going to be different results. But he's got to stick to his process and be aggressive in the zone and let his stuff play."
⚙️⚙️⚙️
The carefulness of Venable's wording about Lenyn Sosa's defensive decision-making is really artful.
"There's just a lot of situations that I think are really complex, and I think some guys are instinctually able to work through some of those," Venable said. "We've seen Lenyn in some of these spots where he's still a young player very much growing and learning some of these situations. So I think a lot of the development and kind of the focus for him is just when a play happens, just extracting whatever value we can out of it to make sure that we're learning something from it to be better for next time. I don't think it's one specific thing. I think it's just kind of situationally helping him understand all the different things that can be done."
First pitch: White Sox vs. Yankees
TV: CHSN
Radio: ESPN 1000 AM, WRTO 1200 AM (Spanish)
Lineups:
| Yankees | White Sox | |
|---|---|---|
| Trent Grisham, CF | 1 | Mike Tauchman, RF |
| Ben Rice, 1B | 2 | Kyle Teel, C |
| Aaron Judge, DH | 3 | Lenyn Sosa, 1B |
| Cody Bellinger, RF | 4 | Colson Montgomery, SS |
| Jazz Chisholm Jr., 2B | 5 | Andrew Benintendi, DH |
| Austin Wells, C | 6 | Will Robertson, LF |
| Anthony Volpe, SS | 7 | Curtis Mead, 3B |
| Ryan McMahon, 3B | 8 | Brooks Baldwin, CF |
| Jasson Dominguez, LF | 9 | Chase Meidroth, 2B |
| Cam Schlittler | SP | Shane Smith |
