Night and Day

The White Sox opened the season Friday night against the Twins by losing 10-5.  Lucas Giolito gave up a homerun on the first pitch of the game/season, and you things were likely to  go south from there.  Yesterday afternoon, the Sox hit five homers to rout Minnesota 10-3 behind Dallas Keuchel and four relievers.  Go figure.

 

Two games does not a season make, but every game is worth a factor of 2.7, so here goes:  Luis Robert crushes the ball; Eloy continues to crush the ball; Yoan Moncada is on fire; Tim Anderson I’m not worried about; Yasmani Grandal and Leury Garcia, I am.

 

All night I hear from Steve Stone how Giolito was missing his spots, and I’m wondering what it takes to get him to find them.  I also wonder why Grandal can’t catch the ball, given that’s what catchers are supposed to do; he had one passed ball, with a wild pitch I would’ve scored as pb #2.  And Grandal couldn’t hit the ball out of the infield.

 

Word on the street is Giolito likes to throw to James McCann, who caught on Saturday and got three hits, including a homerun.  Again, two games but not two games.  Let’s see which catcher has the better record eleven games into the sprint.

 

Me, I don’t much care for Leury Garcia.  He versatile in an average sort of way.  He’s played six positions, he’s pitched, he switch-hits.  And on Friday he butchered nearly every ball that came his way at second base.  I wanted the Sox to keep Gold Glover Yolmer Sanchez, and what I saw Friday constituted plenty of proof.

 

Maybe I should note here that Garcia homered from both sides of the plate on Saturday and drove in four runs.  I’ll be quiet now, at least for a while.