Old School

The White Sox executed two sacrifice bunts—I repeat, two sacrifice bunts—in extra innings on their way to a 5-4, eleven-inning win over the Guardians to earn a doubleheader split last night. The big story here was reliever Mike Vasil, who threw three scoreless innings for the win. Talk about old school. Vasil pitched out of bases-loaded jams in both the tenth and eleventh innings. In other words, he pitched to contact and survived to tell the story. So far on the season, the 25-year old waiver-claim has a 4-3 record with a 1.59 ERA in 22 relief appearances over 51 innings. With only 44 strikeouts, Vasil is the kind of pitcher the analytics’ people love to hate. May he continue to get it done. Unlike, say, hitting coach Marcus Thames. The Sox totaled eight hits for two games. In a 4-2 loss in game one, they managed a homerun from Luis Robert Jr. and a single from Chase Meidroth. Both Meidroth and Kyle Teel have been struggling lately. If those two don’t hit, there goes your rebuild. Yes, Edgar Quero is hitting (.269 with 20 RBIs) and Lenyn Sosa (a two-homer game two), too. But why don’t I hear anything about how Thames has helped them? For that matter, Colson Montgomery walked three times last night, which gives him six in 28 plate appearances. That matters because there were concerns that Montgomery was swing-happy. So far, so very good. Is Thames responsible for this newly found plate discipline? Curious minds would sure like to know.