Seven days, seven long EXCRUCIATING days is all that is between you, a cold one, your television, & White Sox Baseball. At last it is game week, kinda. The Sox begin the 2018 Regular Season a week from today in Kansas City, so let’s get you caught up on what you should know before the season officially starts.
Spring Training is almost wrapped up and the White Sox roster is nearing finalization. The first glimpse of this was yesterday afternoon, as the final starting rotation was provided by manager Rick Renteria.
#whitesox starting rotation of (in order) Shields, Giolito, Lopez, Gonzalez, Fulmer "sounds right," manager Rick Renteria said.
— Daryl Van Schouwen (@CST_soxvan) March 21, 2018
This comes as a bit of a shock to me and most of White Sox Nation as a lot thought that Hector Santiago, who has been having an impressive Spring was going to be the 5th starter. Nonetheless it’s Rickys team, so for now we stand by this.
The injury bug has been floating around Camelback Ranch as of late, so here’s a list of some bigger names that have suffered injuries this spring:
Nicky Delmonico (separated shoulder, expected to be ready for opening day)
Tyler Saladino (concussion, expected to be ready for opening day)
Jose Abreu (hamstring tightness, expected to be ready for opening day)
Eloy Jimenez (left knee tendinitis, recovered)
Luis Robert (sprained thumb, out ten weeks)
Jake Burger (ruptured achilles, out for season)
Micker Adolfo (sprained UCL, recovered)
Alec Hansen (forearm soreness, recovered)
phew.. that was almost as painful to write as it probably was to read. These injuries prove that it vital to have depth at every position throughout your organization. Most of them are minor, but injuries like this do flare up during the course of the MLB season so it is always good to be prepared.
Season Prediction:
the moment you have all been waiting for.. as I mentioned earlier this week on the debut episode of ChiSoxWeekly our new podcast…
http://soundcloud.com/user-635533424/white-sox-nation-podcast
it is about the time of the year we start rolling out some predictions I have a few I want to get to today.
AL Central Standings
1.Minnesota Twins
2.Cleveland Indians
3.Chicago White Sox
4.Kansas City Royals
5.Detroit Tigers
nothing extraordinary here, the Twins got good and the Tigers got.. well the Tigers are going to stink. middle of the pack up for grabs.
Team MVP
Batting: Welington Castillo
Pitcher: Lucas Giolito
Defensive: Tim Anderson/Yoan Moncada
a lot of people misconstrue the meaning of MVP which stands for Most Valuable Player, it’s pretty easy to get but yet people get caught up in notoriety and statistics but don’t really look at the full landscape and that is why I picked who I picked. Castillo will be the most important bat in the Sox offense this year. If the Sox want to be good this year, Giolito has to turn a corner. Moncada and Anderson are going to save a lot of runs for years to come as a duo, they start that chemistry in full effect this year.
All Stars
Jose Abreu
Avisail Garcia
The reason Abreu is here is because I believe it is going to be a down year in the Al for first baseman, especially within the division. With Hosmer and Santana gone look for Abreu to accumulate more votes than normal. Avi made the cut because he’s had an awesome spring and once you’re on the All Star radar, you don’t fall off until you prove you don’t belong.
Record
77-85
I firmly believe that this could swing 5 games up or 5 games down but this team is still a year away in my opinion, maxing out at 82 and bottoming out at 72 wins.
With one week until opening day we hope to bring you a few more stories and at least one more podcast before its showtime. be sure to follow @ChiSoxJonda, @ChiSoxMkz, @ChiSoxWeekly, & @WhiSoxNationChi on twitter for all your White Sox Updates!
