The top of the fifth inning of Tuesday night's game against the Minnesota Twins summed up White Sox baseball for me this season.
The Sox were trailing 2-1, but they had a promising start to the inning. Singles by Nick Maton and Andrew Benintendi put runners on first and third with nobody out against struggling Minnesota starter Bailey Ober, who entered this game with a 6.16 ERA.
The table was set for the No. 3 and No. 4 batters in the Sox lineup, Luis Robert Jr. and Andrew Vaughn.
Well, you can guess what happened, and none of it was good. Robert had a chance to do damage on two middle-middle changeups from Ober, but he fouled both of them off. Having gotten away with a couple of mistakes, Ober then came up with a quality pitch, acing Robert with a fastball on the corner for a called strike three.
Vaughn jumped ahead in the count 2-0, but you wouldn't know he was at an advantage based upon the pitch he swung at -- a breaking ball down and on the outside corner. It was a pitch that was designed to get Vaughn to roll over, and he obliged, bouncing into a 6-4-3 double play.
Inning over. No runs.
Why swing at that pitch when you are ahead in the count? Who knows?
A potential big inning was derailed, and the Sox went on to lose 4-2.
Robert is now hitting .151 with a .527 OPS. Vaughn is batting .145 with a .461 OPS. These are the guys the Sox are counting on to be the big run producers in the middle of the lineup.
No wonder they are 5-18. It's time to move on from both players. Hopefully, that will happen sometime in 2025.
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