Gamethread: Guardians at White Sox

Cease vs. Bieber? Be still, my pitching-duel-loving heart!

Happy Sunday, White Sox fans! We’ve got a good one on tap for you this afternoon, as the Chicago White Sox take aim at the second-place Cleveland Guardians in the finale of a four-game set.

Our favorite right-handed mustache connoisseur Dylan Cease (9-4, 2.15 ERA, 1.18 WHIP) and 2020 Cy Young winner Shane Bieber (4-5, 3.24 ERA, 1.13 WHIP) will toe the rubber today in the kind of pitching matchup dreams are made of. If the White Sox have any hope of breaking through, the offense will need to be on top of their games.

And they’ll have to do it with this group of scruffy nerf herders, absent of team RBI leader Luis Robert, who is currently on the IL, and without Yasmani Grandal, who went 4-for-7 in yesterday’s action. And, I guess, also without Josh Harrison, who had some leg tightness in his last at-bat yesterday and had been yanked today in favor of Leury García. Which ... OK, I don’t think anyone cares much, except now we get to keep making jokes about how much Tony La Russa loves Leury Legend.

The Guardians send ’em out like this and have mercifully left José Ramírez off of today’s lineup card. (Now, can we do something about Josh Naylor, please?)

First pitch is scheduled for 1:10 p.m. CT and can be found in the usual places. I’ll see y’all in a few hours, when we will hopefully be recapping an exciting White Sox win.