If the White Sox defeat the Yankees Tuesday night at Yankee Stadium, they will have a 4-0 record in June. What’s more, they will own their first four-game winning streak of the season.
Is this too much to expect from a team whose expectations have been repeatedly dashed since the fall of 2021? Is it too much for manager Pedro Grifol to ask?
From a team that went 8-21 in March and April, 14-15 in May with a 10-20 record on the road, it seems like a lot. But it would be a mighty fine — dare we say necessary? — way for the Sox to get started on this toughest month of their schedule yet.
At 26-35, the Sox are in survival mode, treading water and trying to sustain something — anything — to give fans who have watched the team go 133-137 (plus 1-3 in the 2021 postseason) since Tim Anderson’s walk-off homer against the Yankees in the Field of Dreams game in August 2021, reasons to become engaged again. Trading wins and losses will make it easy for the front office to decide what to do as the trade deadline approaches. Winning series in June against teams with winning records might make it seem like this team is actually worth keeping.
Stay tuned.
And brace yourselves for series against the Yankees (36-25), Marlins (32-28 through Sunday), Dodgers (35-25), Mariners (29-30 through Sunday), Rangers (38-20), Red Sox (30-29 through Sunday) and Angels (31-30) in June. Eleven of those games are on the west coast.
Perhaps the Sox learned from their spring folly. If you notice them swinging at fewer bad pitches and walking fewer hitters, you might be equipped to believe that.
“We’re going through something that’s going to be educational for us down the road,” Grifol said this past weekend.” We never want to go through this, but we are going through it. It is what it is. We’ve just got to learn from it and move on make sure that we have the awareness to be able to stop it down the road.”
The Sox were in the process of sweeping a three-game series from the Tigers of the weak AL Central while Grifol was saying that. Grifol sees no need to focus on the gift that is the AL Central, where the front-running Twins are 31-29 and everyone else is below .500. He’s a one-game-at-a-time manager, he says, but he has said there’s no use even thinking postseason until the Sox get to .500.
Grifol likes seeing some of the little things that help teams win, like Yoan Moncada making a read on third base and not trying to score on a ground ball with the game tied. Moncada’s judgement paid off when a wild pitch allowed him to score the winning run Saturday.
The things in plain view for all to see are the bullpen that features Kendall Graveman and Keynan Middleton riding 13-game scoreless streaks with Liam Hendriks rounding back to form in his comeback from cancer, as well as a starting rotation with a 3.53 ERA in the last 23 games. And the team is healthy.
The Sox are “continuing to develop as a team” under Grifol, the rookie manager.
And so this important stretch begins Tuesday night, and it’s the Sox who might be on the good side of injury luck with Yankees megastar slugger Aaron Judge day-to-day with a sore toe from crashing through an outfield wall.
Ordinarily, this would be a month for the Sox to try and play .500 baseball. Because of the hole they’ve dug for themselves, they need to demonstrate they’re not as awful as they’ve seemed by having a good month against good teams while keeping in mind the all-important September schedule begins with 16 games against the weak AL Central. The Sox finish the season with the Nationals, Red Sox, Diamondbacks and Padres.
We’ll see what they’re made of, and soon.
