Gamethread: Rays at White Sox

Ten games. It’s just a fraction of the baseball season, but when you don’t win any of those games, 10 games can feel like an eternity. Almost two full weeks without going to bed with the vague warm sensation of a win, even in an already-lost season.

That’s where the White Sox are, entering this evening. On the verge, at least, hardly even a month into the season, of solidifying this decrepit team in the history books as one of the more pathetic (and perhaps without a doubt the most disappointing) teams in the long history of this franchise.

The last time they lost 10 straight? July 26 to August 4, 2013, about 10 months after Rick Hahn officially ascended to the general manager’s chair. Before that: 1976. Congratulations, Rick — Even for the second franchise in the second city, an organization that has yet to make the playoffs in two consecutive (full) seasons in over 50 years of divisional play and the other 70-odd of which came with only seven other teams in the league, that maintained the second-longest championship drought in the league for decades with hardly a hint of acknowledgement, whose ballpark has been a laughingstock for 30 years, that’s spent the last century being twice as well-known for intentionally losing than for anything they ever won, you’ve still managed to find even lows and depths for the White Sox that haven’t been probed for a half-century.

With all that being said, and little else to be said, here is the lineup that Pedro Grifol has tasked with avoiding that 10th straight loss in the third game of this four-game set with the Tampa Bay Rays:

Countering Lance Lynn for Tampa Bay is second-year righthander Calvin Faucher, who will be supported by the following Tampa Bay lineup:

First pitch is at 6:10 p.m. CT; It will be broadcast on NBC Sports Chicago and WMVP AM 1000, as per usual.