And so it
begins, the marketing of a rebuild wunderkind.
The White Sox on Sunday announced the call-up of Michael Kopech via
Twitter. If nothing else, the news seems
to have fueled the Sox to score six runs in the fourth inning in their comeback
7-6 win over the Royals.
As for
yesterday, Kopech’s major-league debut took place before 23,133 excited fans at
Guaranteed Rate Whatever. Amazing how
many fans the TV cameras spotted wearing Kopech jerseys. The cynic in me thinks the young Kopech
checked all his Rick-Hahn boxes long before the jerseys were ready. But this is not a time for cynicism, or
wouldn’t be if only GM Hahn would call up slugging outfielder Eloy Jimenez to
join Kopech.
Now, for the
particulars. Kopech needed 50 pitches to
get through two scoreless innings; four of the six outs were strikeouts. This being the White Sox and God not being a
particular fan of the South Side, the game was delayed by rain after Kopech retired
the Twins’ Joe Mauer on a called third strike to end the Minnesota and didn’t
resume for a good—or bad, depending on your allegiance—52 minutes; the length
of the delay meant Kopech was finished for the evening. But the right-hander definitely showed enough
for me to start counting down the days to his next start. That would be Sunday in Detroit, if I’m not
mistaken.
Clare called in
the afternoon to tell me that James Shields picked up Kopech at the
airport. My daughter wondered if Shields
might be transitioning to a career as an Uber driver. I was more worried he might expose the rookie
to a bad case of gopheritis. Luckily, my
fears were unfounded, at least on a rainy Tuesday night on the great South Side
of Chicago.
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