If there's one thing the Cubs learned from playing the White Sox last year, it's that they should keep running.
In the only game between the two teams in 2024 that wasn't settled by a score of 7-6, Cody Bellinger scored from first on a double to left, even though Brooks Baldwin caught Andrew Benintendi's throw in just as Bellinger had stepped on third.
In the 2025 White Sox's first Cactus League game of the season on Saturday, Kevin Alcantara scored from first on a Michael Busch single to second thanks to a similar general unreadiness. Luis Robert Jr.'s soft flip from center achieved the purpose of keeping Busch at first, but because he bounced it in, Alcantara was given the green light rounding third. Compounding matters, the ball caught a spike mark or something, and took a high hop on Chase Meidroth, who in turn rushed a weak throw home that would've beaten Alcantara were it not off the mark.
So when looking back at the objectives Will Venable issued for his team in his managerial debut -- "We want to go in and win and execute all the things we’ve been working on in camp" -- he went 0-for-2, and they're 0-1 to start the season.
It wasn't all bad. In fact, the White Sox managed to limit nearly all the bad to that ugly five-run second inning, but our run-through of the other initial observations will open with the bad news that broke contain.
Prelander Berroa has an elbow problem
Berroa's second pitch of the 2025 season ended up on the Sloan Park berm in left center after Ben Cowles successfully turned around 96 mph on the inner third.
Berroa's 20th pitch the afternoon completed a four-pitch walk to Carson Kelly, ricocheting off the kneepad of Matt Thaiss and into the White Sox dugout along the first-base line. That loaded the bases, and yet that was the least of Berroa's problems. The stadium gun had Berroa's fastball at 93 mph, and when Ethan Katz came out to the mound, Berroa looked unusually crestfallen for a game that didn't count (see screenshot above).
Moments later, Katz signaled to the dugout for a trainer. James Kruk emerged, Venable soon joined him, and Berroa departed with Kruk after just one out. The White Sox said Berroa experienced right elbow discomfort, and the MRI results will tell the story.
UPDATE: White Sox say Berroa has a Grade 1 elbow strain, and that the next course of action is still being determined.
"We'll continue to evaluate it and hopefully he can come out of it, and it's good news on the other end of this little recovery period for him," Venable said. "But obviously very serious and just hopeful that he'll be all right."
The hope is that an inauspicious start to his 2025 isn't also the end, because while Berroa's erratic control made him a literal wild card in the White Sox bullpen picture, a prolonged absence would hamper the unit's upside.
Colson Montgomery played to his strengths
At some point this spring, the hope is that you'll see Colson Montgomery hit a ball he struggled to reach in 2024, perhaps to a part of the field he neglected. Montgomery only had two plate appearances to work with on Saturday, and he missed on his first opportunity by swinging under an elevated Justin Steele fastball for a strikeout in the first inning.
"I had a lot of jitters going into my first at-bat," Montgomery said after the game. "I was talking to Marcus [Thames] and I was like, ‘Well, I was happy I got my swing off.’ The result was whatever, but I knew going into my second at-bat, I was going to be good.”
Because Montgomery talked about it after the game, there's no way to tell if that analysis is results-based, but to the victor goes the spoils. He came to the plate in the fourth inning against Caleb Thielbar after Brandon Drury's leadoff double and took an inside-corner slider for strike one. Thielbar then followed with a fastball in Montgomery's preferred location -- lower third, outer third -- and Montgomery launched it out to center in such a fashion that all three players referenced in this paragraph knew it was gone upon contact.
This was the exact kind of pitch Montgomery punished last year, and he said Thielbar "threw it where I was looking," so perhaps a no-doubt homer for a player who could use a hot spring to justify the lack of obstacles between him and the starting shortstop job isn't as exciting as it could be. Glass half full, this swing suggests that whatever offseason work he put in to address weaknesses didn't diminish his strength.
Chase Meidroth was as advertised
If Sloan Park provided Statcast data, you could probably get a sense of Meidroth's game from one look at a simple pitch chart. He saw six pitches in each plate appearance. The first one resulted in a routine flyout to left field, and the second was a firm grounder to short that old friend Nicky Lopez booted.
He took the pitches he should take -- easy misses, pitcher's pitches early in counts -- and fended off a couple of borderline calls deeper in counts. His lone regret was fouling back a 3-1 challenge fastball from Thielbar in the fifth inning.
The Meidroth we saw on Saturday is the one we're supposed to see: quality swing decisions, with his ability to drive the ball an open question. It feels like you can click "Simulate to Regular Season" here.
Stray observations
-- Miguel Vargas does look a little different in the way Marcus Thames described to James on Friday ...
“They are just getting closer where he’s going to fire,” said hitting coach Marcus Thames. “They’re not out there that far, they’re just off his shoulder.”
... but it's something that looks more drastic from the side angle than on the center field camera. Like Montgomery, he didn't cause anybody to rewrite the scouting reports in his first two plate appearances, striking out looking against Steele, then drawing a walk against Julian Merryweather.
-- Robert went 2-for-2 with an opposite-field single through the right side in the first inning, and a high-sky double on the right-center warning track in the third, which is an ideal start for somebody who can be traded at any time.
-- For the second straight spring, the White Sox opened their Cactus League schedule against the Cubs. For the second straight spring, Tim Elko homered in his first plate appearance in that game, with this one bouncing off the top of the wall in right field.
In 2024, Elko followed his homer by going 3-for-25 with one walk and 10 strikeouts the rest of the way, underscoring the contact issues. Through two PAs in 2025, he's hitting 1.000/1.000/4.000, as he drew a walk in his other opportunity.
-- Oscar Colás started in left field and went 0-for-2 with a strikeout, and that much isn't worth relaying. He also failed to come up with a catch on a leaping attempt at the warning track, which compounded Berroa's problems in the fourth inning. That also wouldn't be worth reporting, except then Zach DeLoach converted the same exact opportunity to deprive James Triantos of extra bases in the fifth. It's the freshest of seasons, and still Colás can't shake the sense that he's destined to be the Goofus to somebody else's Gallant.
