Smartly Said and Doe

Luis Robert Jr. walked up to the plate in the ninth inning yesterday looking for his third homerun of the series against the Angels. Instead, Robert took a fastball to his left forearm from reliever Jacob Webb. The White Sox centerfielder stole second and third on consecutive pitches before scoring on a triple by Andrew Vaughn. That put the Sox ahead 8-5 in what ended as a 9-7 Sox win. What a coincidence that the Sox and Angels don’t meet again in the regular season. If they did, I’d like to see if Shohei Ohtani merited a pitch to the ribs for hitting seven homers against the Sox. We’ll never know. But at least we know that Zach Remillard made a difference batting leadoff for the first time in his major-league career. The twenty-nine year old rookie responded by going 2-for-4 with a walk, two RBIs and a run scored; the two outs were borderline strikes called on full counts. No, Remillard isn’t the second coming of Nellie Fox. He’s just an intelligent player who right now is showing how to get A-level results out of B-level talent. I also heard him use the word “reiterate” in a postgame interview yesterday. I checked. Remillard went to Coastal Carolina all four years.