Opening Night Gamethread: White Sox at Astros

I don’t write many of these gamethreads/recaps any longer, so if I am on the byline you know the game must be one no one else wanted to take important. And, what ho, it sure is!

The White Sox, once proud enough to think that in 2021 their rebuild had pulled even with Houston’s tank-until-the-last-fan-is-murdered-then-improve-but-when-things-stagnate-revert-to-a-plastic-trash-can-to-cheat-your-way-to-an-LCS-streak-and-false-dynasty, now gets to see their Opening Day pushed to night and then invariably further delayed by some sort of Astros ceremony that will see uniquely gaudy Texan FREEDOM rings doled out to 1,500 players and employees who three decades from now will find their fourth fingers melted off by chemicals in the metal unknown to and untested by the FDA and EPA.

So, let it sink in, White Sox, as you gaze and the pomp and yawn through the circumstance: This could have been you.

Instead, we are coming off of a .500 season that frankly seemed far worse, as the White Sox chased the surprise greatness of a 94-win season with complete avoidance of their preseason coronation a year ago. Their flounder provided our (fans’, SSSs’) fodder to somehow dig deep and prevail through 162 games where the club was never (that can’t be ... rarely?) either three games better or worse than .500.

If there’s one thing this Decade of Hahn has done to me as a fan, it’s that the pride I carried in the White Sox has been eroded. Traditionally, the White Sox were competitive, and if you feel flirting with .500 is the same as basement-dwelling because hey, no ring, well, we are different sorts of fans. Shame has been introduced into the lexicon of my fandom, and that I will not forgive.

But is is a new season, a brighter or at least different outlook, and hey, it’s not Leury García starting in right field in the most important game the team has played in six months, it’s New Leury Romy González!

All told, this lineup could do some damage this year. Fingers crossed.

Speaking of Leury, he was officially waived off of the team, as the White Sox cut down to a 26-man roster before the game. Paying García $16.5 million to produce -1.0 WAR goes down as Hahn’s third-worst free-agent signing ever, at -$20.9 million in surplus value. If you guess the two worse signings from a value standpoint, I’ve got some SSSbuxxxxx (street value $1USD/.0000002005¢SBX) headed your way.

And speaking of Romy, it doesn’t speak too well to our roster construction that New Leury is now starting on Opening Day instead of old Leury. Most of us are quick to say, hey, nothing against Leury, Tony just overvalued and overused him. Can’t argue with Pedro Grifol running with Romy’s hot hand (and power!), but if we’re 15-15 a month from now and Romy is rocking 0.2 WAR and 18 starts, all they changed was the nameplate over Leury’s locker.

Here are the cheaters:

No José Altuve, no Justin Verlander ... hey, let’s face it, new faces, same old jagbags.

As you can see in the tweet above, the roof of their clown juicebox ballpark is closed tonight, but I’m sure the choo-choo is all dieseled up and ready to roll some coal. It’s an ESPN game, 6:08 p.m., with our radio broadcast on WMVP-AM 1000.

Postgame, I’ll have your recap, Melissa Sage-Bollenbach is on the Six Pack and Jacki Krestel takes the Bird App. And we’ll have a postgame podcast up on site within a couple hours’ of game’s end.