Pregame notes: A land of contrasts

The White Sox lead MLB with 10 players who have made their major league debut this season--most recently, David Sandlin--yet sit comfortably in the second AL Wild Card spot and have a clubhouse where competing for a division title is openly discussed. Guys who came here trying to reclaim their spot in the majors now find themselves serving as pitching staff leaders.

"It’s definitely strange," said Anthony Kay. "I’ve never had that role on a team. Being 31 years old, I didn’t consider myself a veteran. It’s been really good. Just trying to keep things light with all the guys and trying to treat it like any other day with them."

Meanwhile, their general manager Chris Getz is traveling this weekend for in-person scouting related to the whole thing where the Sox have the first overall pick in July's MLB Draft. Yes, he's expected to see UCLA's Roch Cholowsky in person, but teams preparing to pick 1-1 usually aren't coming off back-to-back months at or above .500.

"Our floor has been raised, certainly and the expectation for what it looks like every day should be elevated from where it was last year," said Will Venable. "It’s great to get those results, but we still are focused on the things we do well and leaning into those and the things we need to work on and continue to improve those. Record aside, that’s the continued focus. But certainly two months of playing .500 baseball or better is a good indication that we’re headed in the right direction."

Despite engaging in an all-time deadline teardown last summer, being two games under .500 after losing 15-2 on Wednesday, and entering the season with similar rebuild-scaled expectations, the Minnesota Twins are the closest team behind the Sox in terms of both the division and the AL Wild Card. They also scratched their starter Kendry Rojas due to posterior elbow soreness barely more than an hour before first pitch, and will have Simeon Woods Richardson lead a bullpen game.

Or at least you would imagine it would be a bullpen game, since Woods Richardson threw two innings in the first game of this series. The switch away from a left-handed starter prompted the White Sox to flip back to their typical top-five in the lineup, and put Rikuu Nishida back in.

Baseball, like life, is an endless barrage of unpredictable chaos. Attempting to understand it is folly.

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Asked Venable if this is the product of intentional strategy or informing hitters to not use challenges in certain game situations.

"In some scenarios where we have one left and we have the lead in the eighth or we're hitting in the ninth and want to preserve those for the defensive side and want to make sure our catchers have those available," Venable said. "We're still growing here with our offensive approach as far as firing off some challenges. I still think there's some opportunities later in games if we have two challenges in the sixth, seventh inning on the offensive side, there are some spots where we can still challenge.

We're still figuring it out, but organically it feels like the guys are more judicious with the challenges and saving it for the catchers."

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Munetaka Murakami hits balls hard and far. Anyone seeing this?

"When he hit that ball [out to left field] yesterday, [Randal] Grichuk made a comment to be about that would be a right-handed bomb," Venable said. "Not just a homer, but it would be a bomb for a righty. Just very impressive and not something you see very often."

First pitch: White Sox vs. Twins

TV: CHSN

Radio: ESPN 1000 AM, 107.9 FM La Ley (Spanish)

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