Gamethread: White Sox at Royals

It really is impressive that in spite of reaching new heights in embarrassing ways to lose to the Kansas City Royals this week, the White Sox — who remain a game-and-a-half up on the Rockies for the third-worst record in the league, and the highest possible chance at the No. 1 overall pick in the draft — are still a full 9 1⁄2 games ahead of the Royals in the standings. The Sox could lose and the Royals could win every game between now and September 15th, and they’d still be having a worse season. The AL Central is absolutely incredible.

Touki Toussaint makes his 11th start for the Pale Hose after doing well to keep them in the game his last two outings, totaling 10 1⁄3 innings of three-run ball. Toussaint has yet to face the Royals this season, a relatively aggressive team that he can probably bait into whiffs and bad contact against his big curveball, if he can keep it away from the middle of the plate. Touki’s fastballs aren’t much of anything special, so he’ll need to draw outs early in the count with his breaking and offspeed stuff to make it through the lineup two or three times against a team that can still hit the straight ball.

Jordan Lyles is on the bump for Kansas City, and is also the subject of one of my favorite fun facts.

Granted, that didn’t stop the White Sox from allowing him to collect all 27 outs from when he saw them earlier this year in a bizarre, complete-game loss, and a loss to Jordan Lyles would certainly be a fitting cap on an 0-6 road trip to begin Chris Getz’s tenure as GM. Fortunately for Getz and Pedro Grifol, who is in dire need of a link to the thesaurus.com entries for “culture” and “accountability,” Luis Robert Jr. is back in the lineup tonight after a four-day absence. His presence bumps Oscar Colás back to right field, but with Eloy Jiménez getting the day off, Gavin Sheets remains in the lineup at first base.

Thirty games worse than .500 and they’ve got nobody else, huh? Getz must be some farm director.

On the other end, Salvador Pérez is getting a breather, and this is the lineup the Matt Quatraro is submitting in support of Lyles. Kansas City’s ability to piece together a lineup that makes a fan of a .380 team think that a loss would be genuinely contraction-worthy is kind of impressive.

First pitch is at 6:40 p.m. CT, as per usual, the game will be broadcast on NBC Sports Chicago and ESPN AM 1000. See you in the comments!