The White Sox won the battle of the bullpens in game one of the AL Wild Card Series against the Houston Astros, as Hagen Smith delivered the best start of his young major league career. The White Sox had many chances to put the game out of reach and couldn’t do it, but they were still able to pull off the win by three runs.
Now, as we head into game two this afternoon, Sean Burke will take the mound with the chance to send the White Sox to the divisional series, where they would play the Cleveland Guardians. This will be no easy task, as the Astros will send their ace Hunter Brown to counter Burke.
The two faced off earlier this season, as back on July 25th, Burke threw 6 innings, giving up just two runs, while Brown threw seven scoreless innings, striking out seven. The Astros would take that game by a final score of 4-1.
Brown gave up just two hits to a White Sox lineup that featured a majority of the playoff roster, minus Kyle Teel. Tristan Peters and Munetaka Murakami were the only two White Sox to get a hit off of Brown that game. The White Sox will need to step up against Brown tonight if they want a chance to clinch it. If they put in at-bats like yesterday, they will certainly have a fighting chance.
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Sean Burke also threw 5.2 scoreless innings against Houston on September 1st. In total, he’s thrown 11.2 innings against the Astros, giving up just two runs. If anyone on the White Sox has had success against the Houston lineup, it’s Burke.
Burke also seems to be motivated, as he dropped a pretty insane quote. From James Fegan of the Chicago Sun Times, Burke said “This is my life. No family—no girl, no kids. This is all I do.” If that doesn’t fire you up for today’s game, I don’t know what will.
The White Sox are certainly going to need a long outing from Burke tonight, as the White Sox used five pitchers in yesterday’s win. At this point, Grant Taylor, Hagen Smith, and likely David Sandlin are all unavailable to pitch today. Jordan Hicks only threw 17 pitches and Sean Newcomb only threw 19, so they could be available if needed.
Outside of Burke, that leaves Erick Fedde, Huascar Brazoban, Noah Schultz, and Bryan Hudson as the relievers likely to see some innings today. It is unclear what the plan is for Davis Martin and Anthony Kay, as they could be candidates to start game three if necessary.
The White Sox have liked to use lefties to try and neutralize Yordan Alvarez, so don’t be surprised if you see Kay come in to get an out or two.
I would imagine we see the White Sox run a similar lineup from yesterday, as they were able to get a lot of guys on base. However, if the White Sox want to go deep into the playoffs, they will need to improve their situational hitting.
Overall, the Astros have a top-heavy lineup. If they can limit the damage from the top 5 hitters and not get caught sleeping on the other guys, they will have a chance to win this game. Most importantly, the White Sox need to put in good at-bats against Hunter Brown and not try and do too much. The Astros bullpen is taxed after throwing 8 arms out there yesterday, so they need to keep eating into their ‘pen.
Brown has put up the worst BB/9 of his career this year, so the White Sox need to be aware of that and make him get deep into the count. If they can get runners on, one clutch hit can change the outcome of the game.
The White Sox are playing with “house money” this year as Chris Getz likes to say. However, they have a chance to make some noise if they can pull off one of these next two games, and if they can play like yesterday, I don’t see a reason why they can’t clinch it today.
