Liam Hendriks speaks; Keynan Middleton(!) closes out a victory for the White Sox

White Sox closer Liam Hendriks met the media Wednesday and made his first public comments since announcing his diagnosis with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in January.

Hendriks, wearing a shirt that read "struckout cancer," is in remission, and all systems are go for him to head out on a rehab assignment later this week. He'll join Triple-A Charlotte in Gwinnett, and Sox manager Pedro Grifol said Hendriks will need four or five appearances with the Knights, according to a report from MLB.com's Scott Merkin.

There hasn't been a lot of positive news this season, but there's no question Hendriks' improving health is the feel-good story of the year for the Sox. If he returns to pitch effectively so soon after treatment, it would be remarkable. 

People around the game of baseball, not just in Chicago, are pulling for him.

Meanwhile, on the field, the Sox have won three in a row. They secured their first series win of 2023 with a 6-4 win over the Minnesota Twins on Wednesday at Guaranteed Rate Field.

And get this ... the Sox bullpen was excellent, with four relievers combining to throw four shutout innings after starter Dylan Cease labored to get through five innings. 

Keynan Middleton, who started the season in Triple-A, earned his first MLB save in two years. He faced four batters in the ninth inning, striking out three and walking one. The final strikeout came against All-Star shortstop Carlos Correa, who came to the plate representing the tying run.

Middleton has been a pleasant surprise. In 11 appearances since his recall, he's posted a 2.89 ERA, and now he's being trusted in higher-leverage situations. He might stick in the bullpen, even after Hendriks returns.

Gregory Santos (1-0) got four outs and earned his first major league win. He deserved it, because he pitched out of a bases-loaded, no-outs jam in the top of the seventh, while the score was tied 4-4. And it wasn't just any jam either -- he had to face Correa, Byron Buxton and Trevor Larnach, the 3-4-5 batters in the Minnesota order.

Correa grounded to shortstop, and Tim Anderson threw home to get the force at the plate. Buxton bounced back to the mound. Santos knocked the ball down with his pitching hand, gathered the ball quickly and threw home for the force and the second out. Then Larnach struck out swinging on a 3-2 slider.

The Sox grabbed the lead in the bottom of the inning on an RBI single by Eloy Jimenez. Pinch runner Billy Hamilton scored from second base on an infield grounder in the bottom of the eighth inning, giving the Sox an insurance run that they ended up not needing.

Luis Robert Jr. hit his sixth home run of the season, a 3-run shot in the first inning. In his second game back from the injured list, Anderson went 3 for 4 with three singles, a walk, an RBI and a run scored.

The Sox are 10-21 and will look for a three-game sweep Thursday afternoon. Lucas Giolito starts for the South Siders. Minnesota will counter with Pablo Lopez.

White Sox make 11 roster moves, beat Twins in 10 innings

Tim Anderson

Andrew Benintendi's two-out RBI single in the bottom of the 10th inning lifted the White Sox to a 3-2 win over the Minnesota Twins on Tuesday night at Guaranteed Rate Field.

It took 30 games, but the Sox (9-21) have finally won two in a row for the first time in the 2023 season. But the biggest news of the day came during the afternoon, when the club announced a series of 11 roster moves.

In the 40-plus years I've been following this team, I don't think I've seen anything quite like it. I guess you might say it's indicative of the fact that things have not been going well. 

Let's take a look at the comings and goings.

Who's here?

• Tim Anderson (sprained knee) was activated off the 10-day injured list. He played shortstop and batted leadoff Tuesday night for the first time since suffering the injury April 10. The Sox went 3-15 during his 18-game absence.
• Hanser Alberto (groin strain) was activated off the 10-day injured list. He appeared in Tuesday's game as a late-inning defensive replacement and scored the winning run as the ghost runner in the 10th inning.
• Veteran right-hander Alex Colome had his contract selected from Triple-A Charlotte. Colome served as the Sox closer in 2019-20. He pitched two-thirds of an inning Tuesday night and gave up a game-tying solo home run to Minnesota's Nick Gordon.
• Outfielder Billy Hamilton had his contract selected from Triple-A Charlotte. This is also his second stint with the Sox. He was a member of the 2021 AL Central championship team. He appeared in Tuesday's game as a pinch runner in the ninth inning. He stole a base, but was stranded at third.
• Pitcher Sammy Peralta had his contract selected from Triple-A Charlotte. The 24-year-old has never pitched in the majors. He figures to be deployed as the second lefty out of the bullpen -- or maybe the first lefty, given how bad Aaron Bummer has pitched this season.

Who's gone?

• Veteran relief pitcher Joe Kelly was placed on the paternity list. This move was expected Tuesday.
• Right fielder Oscar Colas was optioned to Triple-A Charlotte. The decision to give the 24-year-old rookie a starting job proved premature, as Colas batted .211/.265/.276 with only one home run in 25 games. He'll need to work on his plate discipline before he can return to the majors. Once again, right field looks like a sore spot for the Sox.
• Second baseman Lenyn Sosa was optioned to Triple-A Charlotte. The 23-year-old is not ready for the big leagues at this time. He batted .151/.167/.245 in 16 games with one homer. With Anderson's return, Elvis Andrus moves from shortstop back to second base.
• Utility player Romy Gonzalez was placed on the 10-day injured list with right shoulder inflammation. A fake injury? You decide. Gonzalez is batting .139/.139/.194, and he's struggled at every position he's played defensively. Had he been optioned to Charlotte, no one would have batted an eye.
• Veteran reliever Jake Diekman was designated for assignment. The lefty was the only acquisition made by the Sox at last season's trade deadline, and he was a disaster. He had a 6.52 ERA in 26 games with the Sox in 2022. This year, he was 0-1 with a 7.94 ERA in 13 games. The evidence suggests the 36-year-old's career might be over.
• Minor league pitcher Franklin German was designated for assignment to clear space on the 40-man roster for some of the additions noted above.

How much impact will these moves make? My thinking is that Anderson is the only one that moves the needle, but it's clear that Sox brass is shaking it up to try to save this sagging season. 

What else is there to do right now?

White Sox bullpen remains a disaster

Andrew Vaughn hit a 3-run homer to cap a seven-run rally in the bottom of the ninth inning Sunday at Guaranteed Rate Field, lifting the White Sox to a 12-9 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays.

With the win, the Sox (8-21) snapped a potentially season-killing 10-game losing streak and overcame yet another spectacular bullpen meltdown.

Don't let the final score fool you, folks. This game was not a slugfest. In fact, the Sox led 4-2 after seven innings, before the whole thing went off the rails in the eighth and ninth.

The Rays scored five runs in the top of the eighth inning to take a 7-4 lead. The Sox answered with one in the bottom of the inning to make it 7-5. The Rays increased their lead to 9-5 with two runs in the ninth.

Fortunately for the Sox, the Rays (23-6) chose to use two of their weaker relievers -- Jalen Beeks and Garrett Cleavinger -- in the bottom of the ninth. Closer Pete Fairbanks was evidently unavailable, and the Sox pounded the lesser Tampa Bay bullpen arms for an exciting and improbable victory.

Is this the type of win that can turn a sagging season around? Sadly, no, that seems unlikely. Outslugging your terrible bullpen is something you can do every now and then, but trying to do that regularly is not a recipe for long-term success.

I would have been happier if the Sox had won 4-2 on Sunday, as opposed to this wild finish. Why? Because having relief pitchers who can record big outs and post shutdown innings IS a sustainable way to win games over a 162-games season.

Unfortunately, the Sox have nothing of the sort. Their bullpen, coming into Monday, ranks last in MLB with a 6.86 ERA. Almost everyone has been bad, but let's look at the current members of the bullpen -- starting with those who have struggled the most:

Aaron Bummer. The man who is supposed to be the primary left-handed reliever in the bullpen has a 9.64 ERA through 13 appearances. He can't retire lefties, who have a .417 OBP against him. He can't retire the first batter he faces either. So far this season, the first batter Bummer faces has posted a .500/.615/.700 slash line. At Guaranteed Rate Field, he has a 16.62 ERA and a 3.231 WHIP over seven appearances. That's ridiculously bad.

Reynaldo Lopez. The man who would be closer has a 8.76 ERA in 14 appearances and a home run problem. Lopez did an incredible job of keeping the ball in the park in 2022, when he allowed only one homer in 65.1 innings. So far in 2023, he's allowed five home runs in only 12.1 innings. He might not be healthy either. After surrendering three runs in the eighth inning (including a go-ahead home run) Sunday, he was removed from the game with biceps discomfort.

Jake Diekman. Here's another left-handed reliever who can't get out left-handed batters. As a matter of fact, lefties have an OBP of .500 against Diekman. Is he aware that he's supposed to have the advantage in those situations? It sure doesn't look like it. Diekman has a 7.94 ERA, and he's lucky it's not worse -- given that he's walking 10.3 batters per nine innings, and has a 2.118 WHIP.

Joe Kelly. Hey, he struck out the side in the seventh inning Sunday! That represents Kelly's first positive contribution to the 2023 Sox. As usual, he's been injured. He's made only five appearances, with a 7.71 ERA. The two-year, $17 million contract he signed with the Sox before the 2022 season remains some of the worst money on the team's books.

Jimmy Lambert. After not giving up an earned run over his first seven outings of the season, the roof has caved in on the right-hander. He's allowed 10 earned runs over his last seven appearances. In fact, he's allowed six runs earned runs over his past two innings of work, causing his ERA to balloon from a respectable 3.27 to an ugly 6.92. Lambert appears to be suffering from overuse, having appeared in 14 of the team's 29 games. 

Kendall Graveman. The veteran's ERA has shot up to 5.56, largely because he's given up three home runs in his last three appearances. He pitched in three of the four games against Tampa Bay, and got taken deep in all of them. A home run allowed Friday night cost the Sox a game in the ninth inning.

Keynan Middleton. The journeyman didn't make the roster out of spring training, but he showed enough to get a call-up early in the season. He's struck out 13 in seven innings pitched over nine appearances. He has a 3.86 ERA in middle-leverage work. In other words, he's been fine. It's a sad commentary that he's the second-best pitcher in the Sox bullpen.

Gregory Santos. The guy who made the club as the 13th pitcher on the staff out of camp is actually the Sox best reliever. Santos has been performing a lot of low-leverage work and middle inning relief, but he has a 1.88 ERA over 13 outings. He's struck out 16 batters in 14.1 innings. This is an inexperienced pitcher -- he has only 18 MLB games under his belt. It's unclear whether he's ready for a higher leverage role. He might get an opportunity, just because everyone else stinks.

After Sunday's game, I saw people on social media criticizing Sox manager Pedro Grifol for bringing Lopez into the game. I guess that's understandable, since Lopez lost the lead, but who exactly should he have brought in? (Santos had already been used.)

There just aren't a lot of good options here. The Sox find themselves nine games out of the AL Central lead on May 1 for a lot of different reasons. Chief among them is the fact that this bullpen is terrible.

White Sox rebuild arc vs. Cubs rebuild arc: A comparison

The current era of White Sox baseball started Dec. 6, 2016. That was the day general manager Rick Hahn traded All-Star pitcher Chris Sale to the Boston Red Sox for four prospects -- Yoan Moncada, Michael Kopech, Luis Alexander Basabe and Victor Diaz.

As we all know, Moncada is now the starting third baseman (when healthy) on the South Side, and Kopech is a member of the starting rotation (when healthy) -- although neither has fully lived up to the hype that surrounded them as prospects. Those other two guys in the deal flamed out, but that's not the point of this blog.

The point of this blog is that the Sox are now in Year 7 of this grand project, and it hasn't yielded the promised results. From day one, I was skeptical of Hahn's master plan. The fact is, my view was the minority one. Most Sox fans bought in.

Why did they buy in? Well, let's remember what the baseball climate was like in Chicago in winter 2016. The crosstown Cubs had just won the World Series for the first time in 108 years, the culmination of a five-year rebuild executed by then-team president Theo Epstein.

Sox fans looked at that and thought, "Yes, this is the way forward. It worked for them. It can work for us, too. Let's do it!"

But there was one key difference: The Cubs were put in the ditch by their former GM, Jim Hendry. There was an ownership change on the North Side, and a new regime was brought in -- led by Epstein -- to take a fresh look at some old problems. Hendry and the old guard were fired.

On the South Side, the Sox have had the same owner since 1981. They've had the same GM since 2013. Those people were responsible for the franchise bottoming out from 2013-16. You can't change the owner, but at minimum, Hahn should have been replaced. Instead, he was given a second chance to rebuild the club, and frankly, he's done little with it.

Let's compare the arcs of the respective rebuilds on both sides of town. For purposes of this exercise, we'll look at the Cubs from 2012-18, and we'll look at the Sox from 2017 to present day.

So, for the Cubs, "Year 1" is 2012. Year 1 is 2017 for the Sox. Year 2 is 2013 for the Cubs and 2018 for the Sox, so on and so forth:

Year 1

Cubs: 61-101, finished fifth in NL Central

White Sox: 67-95, finished fourth in AL Central

Year 2

Cubs: 66-96, finished fifth in NL Central

White Sox: 62-100, finished fourth in AL Central

Year 3

Cubs: 73-89, finished fifth in NL Central

White Sox: 72-89, finished third in AL Central

Year 4

Cubs: 97-65, NL wild card, won NLDS, lost in NLCS

White Sox: 35-25, AL wild card, lost in first round of playoffs (pandemic-shortened season)

Year 5

Cubs: 103-58, NL Central champions, won NLDS, won NLCS, World Series champions 

White Sox: 93-69, AL Central champions, lost in ALDS

Year 6

Cubs: 92-70, NL Central champions, won NLDS, lost in NLCS

Sox: 81-81, finished second in AL Central

Year 7

Cubs: 95-68, NL wild card, lost in NL wild card game

Sox: 6-10 through first 16 games.

What do we notice here? There are two things in common. Both teams put their fans through three years of intentional losing, but when the Cubs came out of it in the fourth year, they had an elite team. The Sox were good, but clearly not among the elite teams in the AL. 

Both of these rebuilding projects peaked in the fifth year. The Cubs' rebuild resulted in that World Series. The Sox rebuild peaked with a division title and a quick ouster from the playoffs.

After the Cubs won, they were still contenders for two more years. Despite a decline in play, they still won a playoff series in Year 6, while the Sox finished 11 games out in their division. The Cubs were a playoff team in Year 7, too. There's 146 games to go in Year 7 for the Sox, but it's not looking good so far.

This is not to say the Cubs were the model rebuild. Look to the Houston Astros for that. They've made the ALCS in each of the past six seasons. They have made the World Series four times, and they've won it twice -- 2017 and 2022.

Basically, I'm seeing three levels of rebuilds here. At the top of the pyramid, you have the Astros. They were trash for four years, from 2011-14. But once they started climbing, they got to the top in 2017 and have stayed there ever since.

The Cubs are in the middle tier. They got to the top in 2016, but they couldn't stay there. The championship core was disassembled in 2020-21, and they've started anew with a different group of players.

At the bottom tier, we find the Sox, who put their fans through three seasons of intentional losing -- all for a grand total of two contention seasons.

You read that right: The intentional losing on the South Side of Chicago lasted longer than the contention window. It shouldn't be a surprise that fans are so pissed off. They were promised parades. They were promised contention for "multiple championships." Instead, they got a 2-5 record across two playoff appearances.

Whoop dee doo. Soon it will be time to start over. Sox fans can only hope someone other than Hahn will lead the next rebuild.

Tim Anderson hits the IL; White Sox lose two straight at Minnesota

The 2023 White Sox are starting to look like the bad sequel to the box office bust known as the 2022 White Sox.

Tim Anderson, who was limited to 78 games last season by injury, once again hit the injured list Tuesday. He's out 2-4 weeks with a sprained knee after a collision with Minnesota's Matt Wallner during a botched rundown during Monday's game.

Anderson joins Eloy Jimenez (hamstring) on the sidelines, along with erstwhile reliever Joe Kelly (groin), who was hurt running in from the bullpen during a bench-clearing incident Sunday in Pittsburgh.

Third baseman Yoan Moncada did not play in any of the three games against the Twins. He's listed as day-to-day with back soreness.

That leaves Luis Robert Jr. as the only man standing among "the core 4" of Sox position players. All of that feels eerily familiar.

Also eerily familiar is bad defense. The Sox lost, 4-3, in 10 innings Tuesday night when Hanser Alberto's throwing error allowed the Twins to score the winning run.

Remember when Rick Hahn said the Sox were going to stop putting first basemen in the outfield? Well, there was Gavin Sheets in right field on Wednesday, and he fell down on a routine fly ball that was scored a "triple," leading to the first Minnesota run in an eventual 3-1 Sox loss.

The Sox have played four series so far this season. They've lost three and split one. Two weeks into the season, they have yet to win consecutive games. Their record is 5-8.

During the three seasons of intentional losing (2017-19), we were assured that a prolonged "contention window" was coming. Whatever window there was seemed to close after a quick playoff exit in 2021.

Sox fans, are we having fun yet?

White Sox bullpen locks up 4-3 win in Minnesota

Dylan Cease

There is no such thing as a "big game" in April, but it felt as though the White Sox needed a win Monday against the Minnesota Twins.

They were coming off a lackluster series in Pittsburgh, during which they lost two of three games. Ace Dylan Cease was Monday's starting pitcher, and he was facing a short-handed Twins lineup. Byron Buxton took a scheduled day off, while Carlos Correa and Joey Gallo were out of the lineup with minor ailments.

Well, it wasn't pretty, but the Sox won, 4-3, behind four scoreless innings from a combination of four relief pitchers.

Cease (2-0) earned the win, but his outing was limited to five innings because poor infield defense cost him three runs and about 15 to 20 extra pitches. Hanser Alberto made two miscues -- one an error and one not (because you can't assume a double play) -- that cost the Sox a run in each of the third and fourth innings.

Elvis Andrus and Gavin Sheets both made errors in the bottom of the fifth that cost Cease a third run. 

Cease's final line: 5 IP, 3 H, 3 R, 1 ER, 6 Ks, 2 BBs.

But for all his shortcomings on defense, Alberto delivered the decision blow of the game -- a 3-run homer off Minnesota starter Kenta Maeda (0-2) that capped a four-run fourth inning. Andrew Benintendi and Sheets singled. Yasmani Grandal singled, scoring Benintendi, and setting up Alberto's blast on a hanging slider.

Cease exited the game after 99 pitches. Jimmy Lambert worked a scoreless sixth, and Kendall Graveman worked around a single to deliver a scoreless seventh.

Aaron Bummer got two outs in the eighth, and left with the tying run on third base. Reynaldo Lopez struck out Michael A. Taylor to end that threat, then worked a 1-2-3 ninth with two strikeouts for his second save of the season.

The Sox are 5-6.

White Sox designate pitcher Jose Ruiz for assignment

The White Sox on Friday designated relief pitcher Jose Ruiz for assignment and selected the contract of right-hander Jesse Scholtens from Triple-A Charlotte.

Ruiz, who has made 177 relief appearances with the Sox from 2018 to present, was off to a terrible start this season. He's been in four games, allowing nine runs, eight hits, four walks, two HBPs and three home runs over 3.2 innings pitched.

The season ERA for Ruiz? 22.09, which is higher than the 21.60 ERA posted by utility infielder Hanser Alberto in his two pitching appearances.

That will get you designated for assignment.

Scholtens, who just turned 29 on Thursday, has never pitched in the majors before. He was a ninth-round draft pick of the San Diego Padres in 2016. Up until this year, he had been in the Padres organization.

He made one start with Charlotte this week, giving up four earned runs in four innings. He's stretched out as a starter, so that means he can work in long relief for the Sox. That's a role that is needed right now.

Through seven games, the Sox have received only one quality start -- Dylan Cease on opening night. With starters failing to go any deeper than five innings in games, the Sox bullpen has been taxed early. They need a guy who can give them multiple innings in relief.

Scholtens is getting the opportunity. We'll see what he does with it.