Same Old Same Old

Jose Abreu hit his third homerun in two games, and it pretty much ended the Twins’ season, a 3-2 win sending the Astros to face the Rangers in the ALCS. I still think it made sense for the White Sox to let Abreu go at the end of last season. He was thirty-five, and his power numbers looked to be dropping. On top of that, he was keeping Andrew Vaughn stuck in the outfield. Abreu did up his RBI total from seventy-five to ninety with Houston, but his batting average dipped from .304 with the Sox to .237 with the Astros. Is Abreu HOF material? Interesting question, given that he didn’t break into the majors until age twenty-seven. So, amassing most of his 953 career RBIs after the age of thirty is pretty impressive. You could say Minoso-like, even, and that gentleman is a HOFer. No such questions surround Lance Lynn. After his performance last night, Lynn is pretty much done. What do I mean by “performance”? Think four gopher balls served up to Diamondback batters in the home half of the fourth inning. Things got so bad for Lynn that Gabriel Moreno, the fourth and final Arizona batter to go deep, did it twice. After a ball went just foul down the right field line, Moreno parked the next pitch over the wall in left-cent at Chase Field. To his credit, Lynn faced reporters after the game, though he didn’t say he had to pitch better, a promise he made after nearly every start his last two seasons with the Sox. Usually, when a pitcher loses it as quickly as Lynn seems to, he tries to remake himself, top to bottom. How do you reinvent Lance Lynn? Chicago native Alek Thomas had himself a nice game with the Diamondbacks, collecting two hits and making a nice running catch in deep center field to rob Chris Taylor of extra bases in the ninth inning. This is the twenty-three-year old’s second season with Arizona. Thomas has hit .231 with thirty-nine RBIs both years. He keeps getting a chance to play because of his exceptional defense. Did I mention he’s from Chicago, or that his dad Allen used to be the Sox strength and conditioning coach or that the younger Thomas used to shag fly balls during White Sox batting practice? The Sox picked Steele Walker seventeen places ahead of Thomas in the second round of the 2018 draft. Walker was released by the Tigers, his fourth organization, this summer. The Cubs picked Brennen Davis ahead of Thomas. Injuries have slowed Davis’s progress through the organization. But neither team saw fit to draft a player now headed to the NLCS. Maybe Chris Getz could acquire Thomas for Oscar Colas.