White Sox Minor Keys: Oct. 3, 2021
After rainouts scratched their attempts to play in Memphis on The Charlotte Knights actually got to get one more game in. It went as well as the bulk of their other ones, a 4-3 loss to the Redbirds that sank them to 2-6 over the 10-game mini-series format, but maybe the real Final Stretch was the friends they made along the way.
This concludes the Minor Keys for the season, at least as a daily fixture, but most of the prominent White Sox prospects aren’t done yet. The White Sox instructional league roster includes most of the key names from the lowest three stateside levels, including Colson Montgomery (ACL), Bryan Ramos (Kannapolis) and Luis Mieses (Winston-Salem).
The other noteworthy position-player prospects will be reporting to the Arizona Fall League starting on Oct. 13, and it’s a pretty good crop, all things considered:
Yoelqui Céspedes, Jose Rodriguez and Yolbert Sanchez need no eplanation, but Freeman and Moore are a couple of hard-throwing relievers who are on a trajectory to contribute to the White Sox bullpen over the next couple of seasons, at least if they can hold the gains they made in 2021.
For the time being, here’s the box score of the Knights’ final game, a loss that sent them to 47-81 on the season.
Memphis 4, Charlotte 3
- Romy Gonzalez capped off a breakout year by going 1-for-3 with a homer and a sac fly.
- Jake Burger’s big season ended more quietly: 0-for-4 with a K.
- Micker Adolfo was 0-for-3 with a walk and a strikeout.
- Blake Rutherford went 2-for-4 with his 30th double and a strikeout. He was also caught stealing.
(Photo by Bjoertvedt)
Author
I thought Jake Burger would be on this list. It seems like he needs at bats to make up for all the time he has missed.
Putting added stress on the body of a guy who missed so much time over the past couple of years might be tempting fate, though.
It’s also probably under his playing level. He’s at worst a quad-A player right now and the quality of the AFL is, what, roughly double-A (with high variance)?