Exhale

The White Sox brain trust—hey, no laughing—can breathe. Michael Kopech didn’t implode on the mound yesterday afternoon at Citi Field. The confounding righthander went 5.2 innings, giving up one run on two hits in a 6-2 Sox win over the Mets. And so it goes. The twenty-seven year old flashes a glimpse of talent; people get excited; and then he spends weeks, if not months, in egg-laying mode; Kopech recorded his first win since May 24. In the immortal words of Lee Dorsey (with a shoutout to Devo), how long can this go on? As you’d expect, Sox manager Mickey Mouse enthused over his pitcher’s performance during his postgame press conference. “He really worked hard these past five days with” pitching coaches Ethan Katz and Curt Hasler. [story today on team website] “They made a ton of adjustments both physically and mentally. He went out and executed.” You don’t say. Of course, Mouse implied that Kopech wasn’t working hard before that. He also left unanswered exactly why all these physical and metal adjustments were necessary in the first place. We are, after all, getting close to August. How long does a team wait for a player to figure it all out?