WHITE SOX POSTGAME: Munetaka Murakami GOES DEEP, Chicago Drops Series to Pirates | CHGO White Sox

Sean Anderson (0:04)

Hey, yo, welcome to the CHGO White Sox Post Game Show, coming to you live from Studio West, Upper West Loop offices here in the downtown of Chicago. I'm your host, Sean Anderson. Alongside me, Malachi Hayes, sports reporter for South Side Weekly and contributor for South Side Sox. And the man in the middle, Herb Lawrence.

Herb Lawrence (0:22)

Hello.

Sean Anderson (0:22)

You can follow him at EchnerWall23, you can follow Malachi at PintorKeyboard, you can follow us at CHGO underscore White Sox. We are coming to you live after a White Sox loss of 4 to 2 against the Pittsburgh Pirates following a loss yesterday, 9 to 3 However, Cleveland loses, Houston loses.

How are we feeling? Because this game was frustrating. I can't tell anyone otherwise. But nothing happened today.

Malachi Hayes (0:51)

I mean, you took another day off of the calendar. Your magic number shrunk by one number. So if you're a glass half full kind of person, you can look at that. All the teams that you needed to lose lost today.

Now, did you take care of your own business versus a far inferior team in these Pittsburgh Pirates, which they haven't looked like in this two game set so far? No, you haven't taken care of business. You got crushed yesterday. Today, I thought Davis Martin was good, and we will get to some more of him. And I wanted him to pitch a little bit more, because I think he only threw 68 pitches. But if you're not going to hit, it's really hard to win. And the White Sox didn't hit for a long time in this game. And when they did, hit it right to the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Herb Lawrence (1:38)

Yeah, this might sound like kind of a loser mentality in some ways. But I agree with Cleveland losing and Houston losing. I feel pretty bad about this one, but I could feel a lot worse.

There's very little that can happen, I think, between now and the end of the season, over the next 17 games. It's really going to change our evaluation of what the Sox are going into a potential playoff series. So I'm thinking of it as just hang on for dear life, get there however you can. If that means going five and 15 and hoping Cleveland goes four and 16, so be it, just get there. And they didn't get closer to getting there today, but they didn't get further away either.

Sean Anderson (2:18)

And as Herb mentioned, Vassel number now at 15

Here's, I think, the one thing that we just have to ground ourselves with. The White Sox have 75 wins. The Guardians have 73 losses.

The White Sox are still five games above 500 I understand like nothing has been resounding about this team's play since August that they're going to run away with the division. They still might win it. And even though they don't look like killers, this is still the White Sox possibly winning a division.

Herb Lawrence (2:50)

And, you know, I'm sure we'll get to the play by play in the individual details of today's game in a little while. But you look at this game and the difference in this game was about, you know, three inches on a line drive to the third baseman. Six, six months ago, you know, three months ago in May or June, the way the ball was rolling for them, that ball gets down the line. They tied the game and they have a great comeback win. That's not how it rolled out this time.

But do we really think those two teams with those two different results, the May-June Sox that had those breaks go that way and the one of the last month or two where they haven't had those breaks go that way? They're not, they don't strike me as super different teams. So again, maybe, maybe kind of loser mentality. Just throw your hands up and say, so be it. But it really feels like that's just baseball sometimes.

Malachi Hayes (3:35)

Yeah, that's the law of average is going to, you know, average out. And the play that I think that typifies where the White Sox are right now, you get Miguel Vargas coming off the bench and he is hung the fattest sweeper I've ever seen, high in the zone, middle. And he just misses, I mean, pops it up in a pop file.

That's where the White Sox are right now, where they get cookies and they miss the cookies. I mean, I don't even think Munetaka Murakami's home run was a cookie and he hit the hell out of that ball, high and hard. And still, it wasn't enough. I mean, all the hard hit balls were hard hit right at the Pittsburgh Pirates. And what can go wrong has been going wrong for the White Sox as of late. It's just all their luck is swinging back to the other side. Luckily for the White Sox, the Cleveland Guardians are a bad team. Maybe the White Sox are slightly better, but they're not that bad as the Cleveland Guardians had so many chances to overtake the White Sox. And they're like, yeah, we're just going to be bad ourselves. We're going to lose two out of three to the Minnesota Twins or lose to the Baltimore Orioles, who are still fighting technically for something. But yeah, I'm glad the Cleveland Guardians are not the Cleveland Guardians of last year, which chased down the Detroit Tigers in September, because this thing would have been way over in the White Sox. We've been looking at a first round matchup with the was it the Astros?