Same old story for the Cubs and new hope for the White Sox

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For the fourth consecutive game, the Cubs offense consisted entirely of one solo home run.  This time the homer was off the bat of Kyle Schwarber.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough as the Cubs lost to the Pirates 2-1 in 11 innings.  Jose Quintana pitched well for the Cubs, going five innings and allowing one run.  A parade of relievers kept the Pirates scoreless through the tenth.  Brandon Kintzler came on in the eleventh and quickly got two outs before giving up a game winning homer to Adam Frazier.  

Russelling up a baserunning blunder

The Cubs missed a chance to score in the top of the eleventh when Addison Russell was picked off third.  The Cubs subsequently loaded the bases but the inning ended when Albert Almora was called out on strikes on a pitch that appeared outside.  As Jose Maddon said, the Cubs offense has to get better.

What's with Reynaldo?

As for White Sox fans, in many ways Sunday was the most wonderful day of the year. First of all, the Sox came back from a 6-0 deficit to defeat the Royals 7-6.  Reynaldo Lopez gave up six runs in the second inning to put the Sox in a huge hole.  Lopez’s tendency to get rocked like that in early innings is perplexing.  Lopez lasted only two innings and the performance left his ERA at 4.72.  His stuff is far too good for that.

Break out the offense

The Sox put up six runs themselves in the fourth inning.  Avisail Garcia took a brief timeout from his massive slump to hit a three-run homer.  Tim Anderson hit a two-run shot and Omar Narvaez added a solo homer to tie the game.

Narvaez also drove in the eventual game winning run in the fifth.  The inconsistent White Sox bullpen gets a gold star for their performance Sunday.

When did the White Sox bullpen get respectable?

Hector Santiago pitched four scoreless innings and picked up the win.  The win upped his record to 5-3.  After Santiago, Jeanmar Gomez pitched 0.1 of an inning and Xavier Cedeno added another 0.2 of an inning.  Luis Avilan continued his excellent work with a scoreless eighth inning.  Thyago Vieira and Jace Fry combined to pitch a scoreless ninth.  Fry got the save, his second.

In a challenging season, it seems Ricky Renteria and Don Cooper have cobbled together a decent pen.  The sad thing is there was a lot of carnage during the process.  Maybe the Sox are through trading away decent bullpen parts for a while.

Will Kopech make the Sale trade look better?

As nice as Sunday’s win was, the news that the Sox were calling up prize pitching prospect, Michael Kopech, was even bigger news.  Kopech has been tearing it up in AAA going 4-0 with an ERA of 1.84 in his last seven starts.  Kopech struck out 170 hitters in 126.1 innings overall.  To say his start against the Twins Tuesday night his highly anticipated is an understatement.  I wonder when Eloy Jimenez will be brought up?

In the, “I’ll take injured pitchers for $500, Alex”, Yu Darvish’s rehab start lasted only an inning before he left the game with elbows discomfort.  What a disappointment he’s been.  While Michael Kopech makes his White Sox debut Tuesday night, the guy he was traded for, Chris Sale, is back on the DL for the second time.  Sale’s delivery has always made him the subject of injury speculation.  While he’s generally been healthy during his career, this recent trend of DL visits has got to be concerning to the Red Sox.

From the This is Getting old Dept.

The Bears defeated the Broncos 24-23 Saturday night.  The biggest news to come out of the game was Leonard Floyd’s injury.  Floyd injured his left hand.  It may or may not be fractured.  Floyd seemed to be the Bears' version of Yu Darvish.