The Indians are going to try to sweep the White Sox with one arm tied behind their backs.
Lucas Giolito was supposed to square off against the other team's ace for the second time in as many starts, with the hope that this one would go better than Opening Day. But no, Terry Francona is saving Bieber for their opener against the Twins on Thursday and starting Zach Plesac against the White Sox instead.
Given that the Tribe took two against the Sox with their fourth and sixth starters on the mound, using the fifth starter is not a bad strategy. Francona may as well see how far command alone works against the Sox while orienting his rotation to charge against a team that crushes damn near everybody.
This makes it a big start for Giolito, or at least larger than a start in the first week of the season should be. The White Sox are 1-4, which is also the balance of good starts and disastrous outings from their starting rotation. Carlos Rodón got knocked around early in the first and faded in the fourth Tuesday night, and it still qualifies as the second-most successful start by a Sox pitcher in 2020:
| Starter | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | K | ERA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dallas Keuchel | 5.1 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3.38 |
| Carlos Rodón | 3.2 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 12.27 |
| Dylan Cease | 2.1 | 7 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 15.43 |
| Lucas Giolito | 3.2 | 6 | 7 | 7 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 17.18 |
| Reynaldo López | 0.2 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 54.00 |
Keuchel aside, the Sox starters all struggled in different ways: Giolito's fastball command abandoned him, Cease couldn't lefties to offer at his spinning stuff, Rodón is trying to figure out how to pitch with less power with the juiced ball, and López might be done for the year with a shoulder injury.
Giolito gets the first crack at solving his issues. which he attributed to "not driving down on the mound," and which is reflected in the way he repeatedly missed high. Most seasons, a pitcher would get a few cracks at rounding into form, which is why the long view and the immediate are so difficult to negotiate this year.
For instance, Rick Renteria is correct when he says he "can't afford to magnify" the hole they've dug, which is true. He says he doesn't panic very much, which is indeed an attribute for a season of any length. But then he also says Nicky Delmonico is "going to hit anywhere I put him," which falls in that box of immediate bad ideas I wrote about a few days ago.
The White Sox have a history of blind spots so severe that fans kinda feel like they have to jump on them before they do too much damage. And it's such a history that when Ozzie Guillen slags Renteria between games for his lineups...
... it's even more troubling, because Guillen has his own part in this history. A sizable chunk of the fan base thinks Guillen should be managing the Sox, even though 1) it's mostly Guillen's fault that he isn't managing the Sox, and 2) he played a big part in the first three seasons of the White Sox's current postseason drought thanks to his own bad lineups and player preferences. (Hey, how did Jim Thome end up on the Twins, anyway?)
It's part of a troubling recent elevation of Guillen that also includes an interview with the Sun-Times where he mischaracterized player development in 2020 for the purposes of railing against it. I read this and don't see anybody interested in moving a team forward.
“I watch everything in a ballpark from that dugout. How the [bleep] did more managers not know that every time there’s banging from [the Astros’] dugout, a certain pitch was coming? What the [bleep] were you guys watching? The goddamn [analytics] book they gave you, the tablet, the iPad? Then anyone can manage. Right now, a lot of players do whatever they want to do because the coaches are a bunch of kids with no credentials. I had [a coaching staff with] Harold Baines, Tim Raines, Joey Cora, Greg Walker, [Don] Cooper — I don’t think he’s the best pitching coach, but he made you believe you were the best [pitcher] that night. Now, you have players that are like, ‘Who the [bleep] are you? I’m going to call my high school coach or my dad. They’re better.’ Then what are we even doing here?”
The White Sox's power structure is too tangled to allow them to aggressively pursue solutions from the outside, and the insularity of the White Sox has permeated the fan base to such a degree that a large portion of it looks at a guy who would only tangle those loyalties further while rejecting modern decision-making and sees a superior alternative. There's a great big baseball world out there, but this -- the repeated rapid disappointment, the panic, the anger, the resignation, the demands for previous ideas that already ran their course -- is what happens when nobody counts on the White Sox actually exploring it.
Perhaps Giolito rights himself tonight, the White Sox find their stride against a softer on-paper opponent, and this snapshot ends up being small-sample panic after all. Or another Marlins outbreak happens, and none of this could ever be taken seriously to begin with. The White Sox can only control so much right now, but they should take note about how little confidence they've inspired by what little is within their reach.
(Portrait of Lucas Giolito by Carl Skanberg)
