Gamethread: Cleveland at White Sox

While Sox bats have heated up nicely of late (yeah, yeah, much of the damage was against lefties destined to spend the summer in pleasant minor league parks, including one who got shipped out before his hair was dry from his postgame shower, but heating up is a whole lot better than what was going on earlier), starting pitching has cooled down — to a level of Arctic in the case of Dallas Keuchel (yeah, yeah, first spring outing doesn’t mean much of anything, but why have the White Sox been so hush-hush about why his first spring outing came so late?) to Chicago Marchish in the case of Lance Lynn.

Any starting pitching question among The Big Three makes today’s appearance by Dylan Cease loom larger than before. Will Cease continue to be Helen Keller to Ethan Katz’s Anne Sullivan, with the mastery he showed against that other team in town, when he tossed three innings of one-hit ball? Inquiring minds want to know (yeah, yeah, panicky minds — but we’re White Sox fans, so panic is our natural state).

Cease shouldn’t be lacking in support, with the Sox lineup mostly full of people who will be there come April 1:

That lineup will be facing one Cal Quantrill, who thus far this spring has demonstrated that not every new pitcher Cleveland comes up with is a superstar. Or even superokay. The righty threw decently, if not impressively, as a reliever for the Padres and Tribe last year, but has walked seven in 8 ¹⁄₃ innings so far in 2021.

Cease gets the benefit of facing Cleveland hitters who may be in a starting lineup in Ohio this season — but mostly in Columbus or Akron. So it shouldn’t be hard to look good:

Cesar Hernandez DH
Jordan Luplow LF
Ben Gamel CF
Bobby Bradley 1B
Yu Chang SS
Bradley Zimmer RF
Owen Miller 2B
Tyler Freeman 3B
Austin Hedges C

Our writer/photographer Sean Williams is shooting the game for us today, so you’ll be seeing a lot of his shots on site this year from these games.

Game time is 3:05 CT Central, and it’s supposed to be streamed various places, so pull up an easy chair in front of a computer and enjoy.

Also, programming note from dutiful correspondent Schoolly_D, MLB Networks’ “30 in 30” profile of every MLB team arrives at Camelback Ranch to discuss the White Sox today at 6 p.m. CT on MLB Network (replay at 4 a.m. Sunday).