Laundry took care of most of the damage, but Will Venable believes the hat he was wearing during his post-victory celebratory shower is "toast."
🗣️ WHAT WILL SAID pic.twitter.com/GdYmCJiObW
— Chicago White Sox (@whitesox) March 28, 2025
"Outside of the Gatorade shower with the boys, it wasn't much of a celebration, just enjoyed the night with the family," Venable said. "Just glad for the organization after a long offseason of working hard to have a good day. We know it’s just one win, but I thought it was meaningful with the fans and all their support."
"It was awesome to see Will fired up like that to get his first win," said Brooks Baldwin. "He's very energetic, but he doesn't really get in the way. If he wants you to know something, he'll come up to you and tell you. But other than that, he lets his bench coaches and stuff come and tell you what needs to be done. But he's very energetic."
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Baldwin is getting his first start of the year in right field as Venable floods the zone with as many left-handed at-bats he can manage against righty starter José Soriano, in the absence of many offensive mainstays. That includes utilityman Nick Maton at DH after a .289/.357/.632 showing in spring.
"He can turn around a fastball," Venable said. "He’s had some of the best at-bats for me this camp against velocity, which we like."
If this alignment allows the Sox to build any kind of lead, it will likely get pushed out in favor of the wave of defensive reserves this roster has at its disposal. If most of the position player crop is glove-first, they might as well use it.
"That was part of the plan with these guys and bringing them in and adding [Travis] Jankowski to the roster," Venable said. "The defense out there is elite. We want to lean on that, and we know that it’s going to make a difference and we saw that play out in game one.”
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Jonathan Cannon isn't old, but he's old enough that he's already had a year where he had a really sharp spring (2.45 ERA in 11 innings in 2024) that ultimately turned to be pyrite, and left him a little surprised by how much tweaking to his arsenal wound up being necessary in-season.
Comparatively, wrapping up a garish Cactus League showing (10.32 ERA in 11 1/3 innings this spring) with a solid performance in a minor league game, has Cannon feeling more like he made the necessary fixes in time for the games to count.
"You talk to hitters and especially early in spring training, guys don't go up with a plan," Cannon said. "They go up like 'Today I'm just going to go up and take the first two pitches, so I can see some pitches,' or 'Today I'm going to go ambush something.' It kind of goes both ways. There's no scouting reports being done. You're just going to throw all your pitches to where you want to throw them, work on execution. You might do well or you might not do well, but it's staying process-oriented through all that to make sure you prepare for the season."
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Fans have been vigorously booing Yoán Moncada at every opportunity so far, so maybe this headline is less of a joke than it felt like when I was writing it.
First pitch: White Sox vs. Angels
TV: CHSN
Listen: ESPN 1000 AM
Lineups:
| Angels | White Sox | |
|---|---|---|
| Taylor Ward, LF | 1 | Miguel Vargas, 3B |
| Nolan Schanuel, 1B | 2 | Luis Robert Jr., CF |
| Mike Trout, RF | 3 | Andrew Benintendi, LF |
| Jorge Soler, DH | 4 | Andrew Vaughn, 1B |
| Yoán Moncada, 3B | 5 | Nick Maton, DH |
| Logan O'Hoppe, C | 6 | Lenyn Sosa, 2B |
| Luis Rengifo, 2B | 7 | Matt Thaiss, C |
| Jo Adell, CF | 8 | Jacob Amaya, SS |
| Kevin Newman, SS | 9 | Brooks Baldwin, RF |
| José Soriano | SP | Jonathan Cannon |
