With a comfortable lead over the Indians in the AL Central approaching double digits, it only makes sense to think about October.
White Sox manager Tony La Russa doesn’t like going there, though. A baseball lifer, he swears the baseball gods exist — up in the sky, probably, judging by his glances in that direction when he mentions them — waiting for opportunities to punish baseball people who make assumptions.
Like the postseason is a lock.
With a 9 1/2 game lead over the Indians in early August going into their 9-1 loss to the Royals before 22,793 fans at Guaranteed Rate Field Wednesday, the Sox should be making preparations for October, and the first one involves keeping their starting rotation as fresh as possible. To that end, Wednesday starter Lucas Giolito started on six days rest instead of the usual four, a night after Dylan Cease did the same.
Veteran lefty Dallas Keuchel is actually building in step with a mapped out plan that began during spring training, so he will start on four days rest in the series finale against the Royals Thursday. Lance Lynn will face the Cubs on six days rest Friday at Wrigley Field and Carlos Rodon, who hasn’t pitched beyond four innings in his last two starts with lower velocity readings, pitches on eight days rest Saturday.
While the Indians were losing to the Blue Jays, the Sox entered Wednesday matching their largest lead of the season and the biggest lead in baseball’s six divisions. They were trying to move 20 games over .500 for the fifth time this season.
“It just makes sense,” La Russa said. “When pitching a baseball, as a starting pitcher especially, when you go out there and you’re successful and you get into the last part of the game, it’s a lot of effort and you repeat that every fifth day, it seems like it’s four days rest but it really isn’t, they’re working.
“Most of the time it’s mental as well as physical.”
The starting rotation is the backbone of this team, and it needs to be cared for. Sox starters led the AL in ERA (3.35), strikeouts (660), strikeouts per nine innings (10.15), opponents on-base (.287), slugging (.371), OPS (.658) and WHIP (1.14). The rotation has allowed two runs or fewer in 67 games, the most in the AL.
All-Stars Lynn (2.07) and Rodon (2.49) are first and second in ERA.
Giolito was rounding into his 2019 All-Star form with a 1.71 ERA over his previous four starts but was off kilter Wednesday, allowing three home runs, six runs and eight hits (no walks). Ordinarily, La Russa would have tried to get another inning out of his starter but he pulled Giolito after four innings and 81 pitches.
Edward Olivares, Carlos Santana and Michael Taylor hit homers against Giolito, who had allowed one homer in five July starts. His ERA climbed from 3.67 to 3.98.
Royals righty Carlos Hernandez allowed one run on two hits over five innings, the run coming on Jose Abreu’s 19th homer. Abreu is four homers shy of Harold Baines (221) for fourth on the Sox’ all-time list. Abreu also had a routing throw from second baseman Cesar Hernandez glance off his glove for an error.
Ryan O’Hearn’s two-run homer against Jose Ruiz hiked the Royals lead to 8-1.
Giolito simply wasn’t at his best, recording two strikeouts and getting 10 swings and misses. He led the AL with 335 swinging strikes going in.
“He wasn’t right,” La Russa said. “He usually makes pitches but he had trouble locating pitches. Just a tough night. Same thing for our offense, four hits. We got beat.
“A guy goes out there 30-something times you’re going to have a game like that. Man is not a machine.”
