A closer look at a Charlotte Knights winning streak
The Knights’ 8-1 rain-shortened loss at home on Sunday was typical of most of the team’s games this season: The pitching staff puts the club in such a huge deficit so early that the offense finds itself in too big a hole to battle back.
Coming into Sunday’s contest, however, the team had by far its best run of the season, winning six of seven.
And the formula for that success was simple: The pitching kept the team close, and the offense got a crazy number of clutch hits late.
In that seven-game span, the starters gave up a bit more than two runs a game (16 runs) while the pen was a bit better — 12 earned runs in 37⅔ innings. The numbers look even better when you subtract an 11-8 win in the middle of that seven-game streak.
(I’d list all the guys who pitched well in that stretch, but there are so many that it would be simpler to note the guys who struggled, and that is just mean.)
The offense, meanwhile, responded with several late rallies, ending the seven games a whopping 25-for-66 with runners in scoring position.
Pretty much everyone got into the act, including Jake Burger and Lenyn Sosa, each of whom hit homers in back-to-back games; along with the usual suspects, Carlos Perez, Adam Haseley, Mark Payton, Blake Rutherford and Zach Remillard.
Yolbert Sanchez and Laz Rivera contributed a few key hits as well, as did a couple of spot starters, Nick Ciuffo and Xavier Fernandez.
“They’ve come up with big hits and our pitchers are keeping us in ball games,” acknowledged hitting coach Chris Johnson. “There were a couple of games when we didn’t do too much early but we kind of got it going late. That is a testament to the pitchers. We couldn’t do that if they don’t keep the games close.
“And then we stay at it,” Johnson said. “We stay consistent with our at bats. We stick to our approach and if you do that over the course of a nine-inning game as a team, I think you break out at some point.”
What Lies Ahead?
The million dollar question, of course, is whether the seven-game stretch is a blip in an otherwise lackluster season.
Who knows, right? But there’s hope because the White Sox have tweaked the composition of the pitching staff over the past several weeks, dropping or demoting underperforming guys and bringing in reinforcements (Davis Martin is back, for now, from Chicago; Lane Ramsey has come off the IL; Jason Bilous has been promoted; and Tobias Myers was claimed off waivers).
And those reinforcements include a couple of starters, which has mercifully allowed the Knights to move away from having to throw so many bullpen games. They rarely win games when they roll out seven, eight or nine hurlers a game, because a couple of guys inevitably struggle and put the team in a big, early deficit, and only the pitch clock keeps games from being a total slog.
I’d feel a lot better about this winning streak if I thought any of these guys would be a plus contributor at the major league level any time soon, but aside from maybe Sosa, the rest seem like flawed options with an average ceiling (Burger, Martin, Sanchez) or ones who will never stick on a 26-man roster.
You have some more fringe guys in AAA:
Depends on Roster management if they will ever be part of the roster, and could break out to have a more set roster spot. AAA seems to be where the MLB ready “fringe” is (Hasley, Payton, Rutherford, Adolfo, etc)
The weak system has the prospects at lower levels like AA:
Yeah, I’m anxious to see what Bilous can do the rest of the season. With Lambert in Chicago and Martin in the role of spot starter, Bilous is “the next guy.” (The Sox think so — he’s on the 40-man.)
Last year’s roster was a more typical Knights’ roster, with a lot of guys with MLB experience — Mikie Mahtook, Matt Reynolds, Tim Beckham & Marco Hernandez — who could have helped out the White Sox in an emergency. This year’s team has that kind of experience in the OF with Haseley and Payton. The infield has a lot of interesting guys on the cusp of the big leagues — Burger, Romy Gonzalez, Remillard, Sosa & Sanchez — but next to no MLB experience other than Jake.
Laz is not anything.
Remillard is strictly AAAA and may never even see a complimentary cup of coffee for his career org effort.
Romy has a long way to get back in the fringe picture with competition already upon him.
Romy was hurt and is doing well on Rehab assignment. I would have preferred Remillard got Lenyn’s roster spot until this offseason, as him sitting on bench and having versatility in MLB would have been fine. Laz hit well last year, but not this year. Just a Quad A, cup of coffee type. But I think either of those made more sense than burning on option year for Sosa.
It was more the 100 ABs that Romy had before he got hurt that was the issue. We’ll see how things go but the injury time off came at a time when others were rising and that has hurt him.
I agree on Sosa, the chance of him being a Lenynator were just not realistic enough to put him on the 40 man early. We’ll see if it hurts us in the rule 5 draft.
Sosa would’ve needed a spot on the 40-man roster after the season regardless, so there’s no Rule 5 impact unless you would’ve left him exposed to it.
I thought he had one more year, my bad then.
Yeah, i was more thinking if he does not clearly take off, it was a waste to burn an option year this year. But this team pays utility players for 3 year contracts, so being able to cycle 26th-man UT IF is not their plan, I guess.