Gamethread: Tigers at White Sox

The White Sox will begin a series tonight against the Detroit Tigers, who are coming off of a four-game series sweep against the Guardians, outscoring Cleveland 28-10. Unfortunately, I have some bad news for Detroit, because we have our mighty mustache on the mound, and it has long been confirmed that Dylan Cease is part-owner of the Tigers.

The White Sox were able to pick up a game against the Twins in the AL Central race yesterday, and are now one game behind the Guardians, and 5 ¹⁄₂ behind Minnesota. The South Siders could absolutely use some more wins in the AL Central, so we are hoping that the Good Guys can pick up where they left off Wednesday.

Dylan Cease has pitched against Detroit 11 times in his career thus far, and it’s like he has cast a spell over them, as he is 10-0 with a 1.91 ERA — that’s pretty good, right? Outside of a few rocky starts, he has still been exceptional this year, posting a 2.51 ERA over 86 innings, and is ranked third among pitchers in strikeouts with 125. Dylan’s slider has been effective as ever, which is excellent considering he throws this pitch almost as much as he throws a fastball — 38.4% for the slider, 41.2% for his fastball.

Beau Brieske is on the bump tonight for Detroit, and is in his first season as an MLB starter. So far this year he is 1-6 over 69 ¹⁄₃ innings pitched, posting an overall 4.54 ERA with 46 strikeouts. Beau seems to struggle a bit away from Detroit, as his away record is 0-5 with a rough 6.09 ERA — I’d say that’s pretty nice for the White Sox tonight!

The White Sox offense will be lead by a blazing-hot José Abreu, who is batting .475 (19-for-40) with six RBIs and nine runs in his last 10 games. Our other hot hitter right now is Seby Zavala. He may be the third-string catcher, but Seby has been a catalyst for the bottom half of the lineup, driving a .882 OPS in his 18 games played and even producing seven RBIs and a .367 batting average over his last 10 games. So, naturally, Tony has him on the bench tonight. We will continue to lean on Luis Robert and Eloy Jiménez while we hope that Tim Anderson can get back to being his All-Star caliber self. He has been struggling a bit since the beginning of July, only batting .115 with three hits. When Tim is hitting, the White Sox are hitting — so getting his bat going would be key over this long stretch of division games.

Let’s take a look at the starting lineups for tonight!

Miguel Cabrera has been one of Detroit’s top hitters, though we don’t have to face the wrath of Miggy tonight. Victor Reyes has been making solid contact as well, batting .500 with nine hits and six RBIs over his last six games. Javier Báez will move into the 4-spot tonight, though he should hopefully still be strikeout city with Cease the Strikeout King on the mound. The Detroit lineup has not been too much of a struggle for Dylan in the past, and we can ideally expect him to settle in quickly tonight as well.

You can catch the game on the usual channels — with Jason and Steve on NBCSC and also on AM 1000. Let’s kick the series off with a win, how ’bout it?