The White Sox are set to conclude their season series against the Minnesota Twins under the bright lights of Sunday Night Baseball. Bryan Hudson will be the opener for the Sox, his eighth time appearing in the role this year. He’s been largely effective to this point, allowing three earned runs over eight innings leading off a game, with five of those seven stints being scoreless.
It’s a selection of opener that would seem to indicate a confidence in him beyond the simple platoon advantage, as the Twins
2-3-4 hitters will all be facing Hudson from the right side. Manager Derek Shelton is alternating his lefties and righties at the bottom of the lineup, so given that José Urquidy lines up as today’s logical bulk man despite being on somewhat short rest, it might not be surprising to see Will Venable try to stretch Hudson for two innings to start things out against this lineup:
Venable counters with the team’s A-lineup, so to speak, against soft-tossing righthander Bailey Ober. He’s found a solid level of success against the Sox in the past, holding them to two runs (one earned) over five innings just last week, and running an overall 3.56 ERA in 16 starts countering the Pale Hose, the most he’s ever seen of one team. Chase Meidroth and Colson Montgomery have both notched homers against him, so having already connected on homers in consecutive games, a hope for what has already seemingly become a patented homer binge from Montgomery may be alive and well.
This is a Sox lineup that has zero postseason experience beyond platooner Andrew Benintendi and, if you want to count it, Munetaka Murakami in his native Japan. Playing in prime time on national TV doesn’t exactly have the same caché in baseball as the prestige of being featured on Sunday or Monday Night Football, but NBC’s decision to flex the Sox to this game should be taken with some pride. Does anyone care to guess the date of the last time the South Siders played a) on Sunday night b) at home c) while in first place?
At least we’ll have a friendly face in the booth. While I certainly wouldn’t want Jason Benetti to push the boundaries of his professionalism, there is a real part of me that wants to judge, by his approach to tonight’s game, whether we have any long-term hope of what would probably be the most joyous Chicago sports reunion since the words “I’m back” hit the newswires.
First pitch will be broadcast on NBC and Peacock at 5:20 p.m. CT. though Len Kasper and Darrin Jackson will be there with their usual radio broadcast on WMVP AM 1000. See you in the comments!
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