CHSN reporters Connor McKnight & Brooke Fletcher are often busy in the White Sox clubhouse corralling players to provide quick insight about themselves via the "Know Your Sox" segment, and I recently had to patiently wait to do an interview so that Connor could ask Erick Fedde about Korean food, so using this anecdote seems only fair.
Prior to opening day, McKnight's three-question query to Shane Smith ended by asking him if there's a phrase people regularly use that he hates.
"It's only spring training," was Smith's answer.
Two starts in, it reads like a blinking warning light on the dashboard. The poor fastball command that dogged his last two Cactus League has stalked Smith into the regular season, leading to a pair of blowout losses for the Sox, and a a season ERA that has too many digits for the right-hander.
Galling defensive mistakes have played a big part of the White Sox allowing 52 runs in their first six games, and Smith managed to take matters into his own hands on that front. Even after a leadoff walk to Jakob Marsee, Smith should have been out of the first having faced the minimum, but yanked the start of a would-be inning-ending Otto Lopez double play ball into center field to build an early jam. The 0-1 changeup that Liam Hicks blooped into center to open the scoring deserved a better fate, as did Smith's letter-high fastball that Connor Norby shanked down the right field line for an RBI double.
But Owen Caissie's two-run single to cap a four-run Marlins first was off a pretty grooved fastball, and only so much of the rest of Smith's grisly seven earned runs allowed in three innings could be pinned on the team's early-season tendencies toward defensive self-sabotage. Hicks continued his monster series by golfing a Smith slider -- which he struggled to get down in the zone -- just over a leaping Everson Pereira in right for a two-run homer in the second.
Already down 6-0 by the third, the White Sox pulled their infield in once more with two runners in scoring position and one out, only to watch a hard and low Javier Sanoja grounder sneak under Luisangel Acuña's glove at short and plate another pair. Strategic commitment to the research behind playing the infield in at nearly every opportunity probably means sticking with it through more than a week's worth of bad results, but all of the Sox' defensive decisions, including their evaluation of Acuña as a multi-position weapon, are inviting scrutiny at a time like this.
Shifting back to the broadcast, some could complain that the CHSN dedicated too much airtime on how brilliant and invulnerable Marlins starter Sandy Alcantara was, and how bleak the prospects were for White Sox hitters going in. But me, an objective and fair arbiter of my colleagues' work, would say they aptly prepared their viewers for the content of their broadcast.
In exchange for snapping their season-long streak of games with double-digit strikeouts, the White Sox offense collected just three two-out singles in nine innings against Alcantara. The increased contact didn't lend any increased feelings of competitiveness for the Sox offense, as Alcantara completed his second career Maddux on 93 pitches. He allowed just four baserunners, with a running fastball off Miguel Vargas' fingers and a Tristan Peters bunt accounting for half of that sum.
Bullet points:
*White Sox starters have allowed first-inning runs in four of six games thus far.
*Everson Pereira's feet had a tough week, rolling and ankle on the right field wall on Monday and fouling a pitch off his left foot in the fifth, and departing the game on Wednesday. The Sox said Pereira is day-to-day with left ankle soreness.
*Hicks is probably unknown to Sox fans and not in a great position to get familiar anytime soon, but he's being efficient with his time. He had nine RBIs in this series and fell just a few feet on an eighth inning fly out from 10.
*Smith's seven earned runs allowed are a new career-high.
*Mother Nature has pushed up the White Sox day off. Thursday's home opener has been postponed to 1:10pm on Friday.
