Gamethread: Guardians at White Sox

While we all let the Lucas Giolito and Reynaldó Lopez trade sink in, there (unfortunately) is still White Sox baseball to be played today. The Cleveland Guardians (51-51) are back in town, and just two games behind the Minnesota Twins for the lead in the abysmal AL Central division race. The White Sox (41-62) are well out of the running for the playoffs, and there’s so much uncertainty to what this team will look like five days from now, let alone next year.

It will be start No. 16 for Cleveland righty, Tanner Bibee, and he has had a pretty decent year all around, sitting at a respectable 3.14 ERA. He has thrown fewer innings than Dylan Cease — 83 compared to Dylan’s 113 2⁄3 — but his WHIP is slightly better at 1.19, and he has walked significantly less batters, which has continued to be a big problem for Cease.

Dylan Cease hasn’t been as dominant as he was last year, getting himself into jams that a bad defense isn’t able to manage behind him. He walks too many batters, with a 1.31 WHIP and 47 walks on the year — a trend that many of our pitchers, both bullpen arms and starters, have struggled with. Dylan isn’t striking out batters at the same clip as the last couple of years, but he is still 12th in the league with 138. That’s still not the most on the team, as Lance Lynn leads Sox pitchers with 144.

If the White Sox end their five-game losing streak, it will Luis Robert Jr., Tim Anderson, and Eloy Jiménez who will lead the way Robert has continued to slug at an impressive .557, and remains second in the league in home runs (28), only behind Shohei Ohtani. We will still be seeing Jake Burger over at second, and for what it’s worth (not much), he has been playing alright over there. Does it mean I condone it? No, I just simply am choosing not to care anymore.

Here’s how the White Sox will line ’em up tonight.

Dylan Cease will hope to keep Cleveland slugger and White Sox killer Josh Naylor at bay. Naylor is batting .305 this year, and has 15 home runs — I’d really like to not see a repeat of last May, when Naylor smoked two bombs, including a grand slam to tie the game. And let’s not forget that there are TWO Naylor brothers now, with Bo waiting for his own chance to terrorize the South Siders, I’m sure. Steven Kwan still remains one of the top batters in the league in terms of batting average, and has barreled 25 doubles this year.

ESPN has the White Sox at a 55% chance to win this game. Maybe it’s because I’m still wallowing in sadness from last night’s trade but who knows — maybe they will win out of spite. Catch the game at 7:10 p.m. CT on the usual spots at NBC Sports Chicago and ESPN-AM 1000.