The Chicago White Sox took a 9-14 record into Wednesday night’s game against the Arizona Diamondbacks, looking to build on an 11-5 win the previous evening that gave them three victories in their last four games. The first pitch was set for 8:40 p.m. CST at a time when Chicago’s offense had suddenly started to look dangerous again.
The White Sox scored 33 runs over their last four games, including four home runs Tuesday, when Sam Antonacci added an inside-the-park homer and Munetaka Murakami hit his ninth of the season. That kind of production matters because Chicago had not scored more than nine runs in any of its first 23 games before this recent surge, a stretch that has given Will Venable’s club a reason to think the bats may be coming around.
Anthony Kay was scheduled to start for Chicago. He entered at 1-0 with a 2.60 ERA and a 1.27 WHIP in four appearances, and his longest outing had lasted 5 2/3 innings. The Diamondbacks countered with Eduardo Rodríguez, who was also 1-0 and brought a 1.96 ERA and 1.22 WHIP into his fifth outing after throwing two quality starts and holding opponents to a.218 batting average.
The matchup came one night after Chicago’s 11-5 win, a game that marked the first time the White Sox had scored more than nine runs in one of their first 23 contests. That is the tension hanging over this series: whether one hot week is the start of something real or just a brief break from a slow opening month.
For the White Sox, the next answer begins with Kay trying to keep the offense in position to extend a 33-run offensive explosion. For Rodríguez and Arizona, it starts with whether a pitcher who has been hard to square up can quiet a lineup that has finally found some thump.