Gamethread: Diamondbacks at White Sox

The latest South Side reclamation project makes his spring debut

It’s a lovely March Monday afternoon in the city beautiful, and you probably have much better things to do than take in another spring training game that doesn’t count. Not that you can actually watch or listen to this one anywhere. I guess you’ll just have to be there. Perhaps the White Sox organization doesn’t want their fans to find out how awful they’ll be yet?

If you watched Chicago’s offseason moves and thought to yourself, ‘wow this team will struggle to score runs,’ rest assured those fears look valid. The Pale Hose currently own the 29th-best team OPS of .628. They are also dead last in team batting average, OBP, and run differential. Of course, spring training numbers don’t count, and we are only in the second week of March. And yes, most of these at-bats have featured Quad-A depth and other minor league flotsam instead of major league regulars, but they haven’t exactly inspired confidence. If these numbers are any indication of things to come, I think we are in for a long summer.

At least we live in the best city:

Here’s how manager Pedro Grifol lines them up this afternoon:

And for the visiting NL Champion Diamondbacks:

On the bump for the Good Guys, newly acquired righthander Michael Soroka makes his Sox spring debut. Soroka, 26, an All-Star and Rookie of the Year runner-up in 2019 with the Atlanta Braves, looks to get his young career back on track after missing extensive time due to injury.

The Calgary, Alberta product features a four-pitch mix: a four-seamer, slider, sinker, and changeup. But since you can’t actually watch Soroka pitch this afternoon against the D-backs, you’ll just have to use your imagination.

So sit back, relax, and enjoy following this one on Gameday at 2:05 p.m. CST. Or just check back here at South Side Sox for a recap of all the action none of us could see.