Pregame notes: Just trying to get back-to-back series wins against the two best teams in baseball

The White Sox nearly got perfect game'd on Saturday, while their pitching staff walked 10 batters and allowed three home runs, but the vibes remain high. Possibly due to some realism about what they were contending with.

"Honestly I think he pitched better than his line," hitting coach Derek Shomon said of Yoshinobu Yamamoto. "We only struck out seven times. It felt like he could have walked away with 20 punchies, realistically. He was on it and attacking the zone early, staying in the zone.

Once he realized we didn’t take anything away from him, he didn’t have to live on the edges as much. He was able to fill it up over the middle to avoid the walks. so he had everything going for him and we had a couple of players come up and go, ‘This is kind of electric to watch even though we are the ones on the receiving end.’ Respect is respect.

I will say of the group yesterday and I told them this in the hitter’s meeting: I have to give them credit for not getting down. The vibes were good the whole time. They were still trying to have fun with it, understanding what is happening. Not laying down but you know, not beating themselves about what was going on."

The Sox are 7-5 and still averaging 5.1 runs per game since Munetaka Murakami went down with his hamstring strain. Group mindset and swing decisions are being cited a lot for how that's been possible.

"Our whole thing is nine guys for all nine innings, next guy up, they've just leaned into that," Shomon said. "When [Murakami] pulled up that day, you felt it for a second. You felt it for a second like 'Oh sh--,' but it didn't last. We talked about this in the office after that game. We were proud. We didn't feel like the dugout completely shut down after that, which is a testament to these guys going 'OK, sucks, but we have to move forward, next guy up, move on.'"

⚙️⚙️⚙️

If Kyle Teel gets through his rehab work for his right knee sprain on Sunday without issue, expect him to begin a rehab assignment with Triple-A Charlotte on Tuesday.

The Sox are staying on rotation through their series in New York this week (Davis Martin, Anthony Kay, Sean Burke), but with Noah Schultz getting through his second bullpen session fine this weekend, expect him to join up with Teel with Charlotte next week as well.

"It feels really good," Schultz said of his right knee. "There's going be highs and lows with it. It's just kind of managing it and being able to stay on the field."

Perhaps a good measure of how Schultz is feeling is that his takeaways from his most recent bullpen were less about testing out his knee, and more about refining pitch shapes in search of the whiffs he feels like his slider should be generating more consistently. While he has a natural east-west orientation to his delivery, Schultz often finds success popping four-seam fastballs at the top of the zone, and essentially wants to create a similar dynamic with his slider; he's refining a second version of it that drops more than it sweeps.

"I'm adding a [pitch] shape that has more depth off the bottom, to get more whiff below the zone," Schultz said. "Because [the whiff rate] was something that wasn't as high as before. So in addition to the horizontal one, one that gets down a little bit more. Just stuff like that, throwing more four[-seamer]s to get more chase below a little bit too."

At his best, Schultz has precociously well-rounded arsenal that allows him to work north-south as well as he does east-west, and now that he's feeling healthier, he's working on getting back to being good.

If that's cause for the Sox to try to sneak through a bullpen game in Detroit and simply re-insert Schultz into the rotation afterward, well, that remains to be seen.

⚙️⚙️⚙️

Bryan Hudson is opening for Erick Fedde on Sunday.

First pitch: White Sox vs. Dodgers

TV: CHSN

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

Lineups: