Stabilized pitching staff, strong defense yield White Sox sweep
· Yahoo Sports
When the White Sox returned to Chicago after their 1-5 opening road trip, there was a collective sense that they needed to regroup. Coming into the season, expectations were high that the Sox could at least take a step toward being a team that puts three consecutive 100-loss seasons behind them, but after the first week, things were looking bleak.
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“You look at that road trip and you could say that this season, all the momentum we’ve had, all the excitement we’ve had all offseason, if that carries into this homestand, you could say that it might be too much to overcome,” Davis Martin said.
The rain that postponed Thursday’s home opener may have been a much-needed blessing in disguise. It gave the White Sox a chance to stabilize themselves, from the coaching staff to the players in the locker room.
“I think it starts with Will [Venable] saying ‘Hey guys, this isn’t what we did in spring, this isn’t the kind of baseball that we practiced and drilled in for six, seven weeks in spring training,'” Martin said. “The rain delay off day kind of came at the perfect time. Gave everybody a day to kind of collect their thoughts at home, settle in at Chicago and come to the field excited, ready to go for this homestand.
“I think it was a culmination of it, but there was a visible effort and conversations being had of ‘Hey, we need to steer this in the right direction now.'”
Three games later, with a sweep of the defending American League champion Blue Jays under their belt, the White Sox look like they have righted the ship, or at least not let the opening road trip carry over at home. Key to doing that was getting the pitching staff sorted out. Grant Taylor as opener worked in back-to-back games to begin the Toronto series, and Martin cruised for six shutout innings on Sunday en route to a 3-0 White Sox victory.
That’s quite the shift from how they looked through the first six games, when the Sox posted a league-worst ERA of 7.63. The pitching staff looks in better shape, and the opening week stumbles might have been at least partially due to adjusting to a lot of new faces in player development and on the coaching staff.
Pregame meetings and planning look a little different than even just last year, and Martin’s quality start on Sunday — the first the Sox have had in 2026 — might be a sign that the new process is settling in.
“I like the routine we have this year,” catcher Edgar Quero said. “We focus a little bit more on that stuff this year, and I’m happy for that. The result is coming right now, and we’re feeling pretty good about that too.”
Key to the pitchers performing more like they did this weekend all season is encouraging them to attack the strike zone and trust their defense to make plays behind them, manager Will Venable said. Considering the Sox were one of the worst-ranked defensive teams in baseball in 2025, that’s perhaps easier said than done, but the results so far this year have been encouraging.
They’re still not great through the very small sample size of nine games into the 2026 season, but there are plenty of positive signs. Just the last two days have provided a defensive highlight reel from the Sox, with contributions coming from multiple spots in the field. Miguel Vargas has played an impressive third base, Luisangel Acuña made a sliding catch in center field on Sunday, and newcomer Tanner Murray joined in on the glovework in his debut.
Called up before Sunday’s game when Everson Pereira was placed on the 10-day injured list, Murray made what his starting pitcher called a momentum-shifting play at shortstop when he nabbed Addison Barger’s ground ball up the middle and threw him out at first with the bases loaded in the third inning.
“If you look at the turning point of that game, he solidified that win for us,” Martin said.
Murray popped out twice at the plate, but that play was as satisfying as getting his first major league hit, Murray said. Before the game, he emphasized his willingness to do whatever the Sox needed to help the team win, up to and including being the waterboy.
“I almost fell over when I got it,” Murray said. “I turned around and saw hundreds of faces and I was like, Mune’s got me somewhere over there. I threw it to him, he made the play and we got out of the inning.”
Those kinds of plays are a part of the overall recipe that Venable knows the Sox need to keep their pitchers going after opposing hitters the way he wants them to.
“It makes a huge impact,” Venable said of his defense. “We are asking our pitchers to be aggressive within the zone. We know contact is going to follow that. To have a defense go out there and turn those balls into outs, it means everything.”
Sunday’s defensive performance supported the pitching staff and allowed them to scatter the Blue Jays’ hits enough that despite Toronto getting on base nearly as many times as the White Sox did, they only got a runner as far as third base one time all afternoon.
Though the negative momentum of the first week could easily have carried over into this first homestand and likely buried any hopes of the Sox taking a positive step forward this season, the frustrating part for fans is that things don’t work as easily in reverse. Three good games against the Blue Jays can easily be negated in the next series or next road trip. Continuing to move in the right direction is a much slower process.
But maybe a series sweep so early in the season is a good sign in that regard, just as much as it was a showcase of how the Sox will need to win games all year.
“Contributions from everybody. With the way our group is set up, that’s how we are going to have to win games,” Venable said. “It’s going to have to be with defense. It’s going to be with different guys on offense. On the pitching staff, we had guys coming out of the bullpen today who were able to throw effective innings.
“We need every single one of those guys to come in those big situations. Everyone on the roster has to contribute. I think this weekend was a really good example of how important that is to have contributions across the board.”
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