The White Sox want to put Tuesday’s 14-2 Beantown beatdown behind them, and they’ll do so by turning things over to their hottest starter. Last night was a five-alarm pitching disaster: Davis Martin was apparently tipping his pitches and, as a result, got smoked for nine runs over five innings.
Enter Sean Burke (7-5, 3.04 ERA, 1.10 WHIP), who has been dealing. Over his last seven starts, he owns a 1.45 ERA, 0.88 WHIP, and he’s been mowing down hitters at a clip that would make a weed whacker jealous.
Statcast loves him, too — 90th percentile in pitching run value, 94th with the fastball, 83rd in strikeout rate. The plan for Burke should be pretty simple. He needs to climb the ladder with heaters, then drop the hammer with a breaking ball that grades out miles better than Sonny Gray’s. The catch is that Boston’s bats are molten right now. Andruw Monasterio, Ceddanne Rafaela, and Caleb Durbin are all hitting north of .300 in the last few weeks, so Burke will need to keep the hard contact to a dull roar.
Boston throws Sonny Gray (12-2, 2.93 ERA, 1.17 WHIP) at the Good Guys, and he’s been nearly as nasty — 2.64 ERA in his last seven appearances. The fastball still pops, but Statcast says there’s a crack in the armor. The chase rate is still solid, but the breaking ball has gone soft, the strikeout rate has dipped and hitters aren’t flailing like they used to. The assignment for Chicago’s bats is to avoid getting greedy, lay off the junk, and drag Gray into deep counts where he might make a mistake.
The good news for Sox fans? Munetaka Murakami is on a heater (.292/.370/.604, .974 OPS last 15 days) and Meidroth is right there with him (.308/.417/.538, .955 OPS). If those two keep raking and Burke does his thing, the Sox have a real shot to square this series before Thursday’s getaway day.
Here’s how Will Venable sends them out against Gray.
This is how the Red Sox will lineup versus Burke.
First pitch is scheduled for 6:10 p.m. CDT. The game will be televised on CHSN and can be heard on ESPN Chicago 1000.
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