Gamethread: White Sox at Yankees

After wasting a brilliant pitching performance by Carlos Rodón on Friday night by failing to score against New York’s No. 5 starter — a lefty — the White Sox today face the challenge of trying to hit against one of the best pitchers in the game in Gerrit Cole — a righty.

Of course, they also face the challenge of trying to overcome the screwups of the resident Hall-of-Famer Baseball Person who last night, having watched Evan Marshall get crushed in the eighth, only surviving thanks to a rocket liner turned into a double play by Yoán Moncada, decided it was a good idea to send Marshall out to face the meat of the Yankees order in the ninth instead of replacing him with, oh, say, our gazillion-dollar Wizard from Oz. You and I and anybody else who has ever heard about baseball would have made that switch, but, then, we’re not in the Hall of Fame and the HOFBP is, as he will be glad to remind us all.

Taking on Cole will be Dylan Cease, so we get to see whether it’s a Good Dylan day or Bad Dylan one. If the former, it could be another awesome pitchers’ duel. The Yankees are strong favorites, but Cole had his first bad outing of the season last time out, giving up five earned in five innings to the Rangers, of all teams, so there is hope.

Trying to avoid Cole slaw-ter will be a White Sox lineup led by Tim Anderson, who is trying to escape a mini-slump that has brought his average down 33 points, to .298.

The Yankees counter with what has to be the game’s only 255-pound, .182-hitting leadoff man (need we mention his 13 K’s in 37 appearances?).

First pitch is slated for 12:05 p.m. Central, NBCSCH on the idiot box, WMVP 1000 on the boombox. Might be worth paying more than usual attention to the commentary. The normally admirably independent Jason and Stoney sounded last night like somebody strongly reminded them who signs their paychecks.