It’s a busy night for me, not too many of us have ever accomplished the MLB and MiLB recaps in the same night (I would guess me, Hamster, Melissa, Kristina, Joe, but I may be missing someone). However, that’s to say your recap tonight might be brief — particularly if it gets off to another 7-0 start or whatever.
Anyhow, did anyone else miss the Tigers falling asleep and Cleveland starting to charge at them in the division. I was ready to gift-wrap it to Detroit in May, but here we are with the Guards just six games back (and five in Steve Stone’s favorite, the loss column). So what might have been an early-fishing-trip appointment series with Cleveland (like, when Minnesota comes back to town) just playing out the string instead will be the visitors trying to treat the Good Guys like easy pickings,
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One game in, that pattern is holding.
Sean Burke is on the hill tonight, and I’ll let smarter people evaluate how good or bad he’s been or trending. A 4-8 record, 4.23 ERA, 110 2/3 innings seems like it would qualify Burke as the team’s top starter, especially excepting the now-departed Adrian Houser and currently-rehabbing Martín Pérez. I’ll take a peek to confirm.
Yep, he’s the workhorse and tied with Davis Martin for top WAR (a hmm maybe he’s average 0.9).
Let’s drill into the innings. The five in the rotation (Burke, Martin, Aaron Civale, Shane Smith, plus now-departed Jonathan Cannon) have 448 1/3 innings (generally speaking you’d want 580 at least, but OK there have been injuries and Civale wasn’t here all season) and you MUST have better than a collective 2.7 WAR.
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Yes, you read that right … the FULL ROTATION (and everyone has at least Civale’s 51 1/3 innings with the team) is barely an average (2.0) MLB starter. Or, said another way, Houser’s 3.0 in 11 starts STILL outpaces the rest of the rotation, combined. The White Sox had better give Mike Vasil (2.4 WAR) some starts in Cannon’s absence, piggyback him with Tyler Alexander or something. There’s no one in the minors to call up, unless they’re going to hail mary a Shane Murphy or Tanner McDougal outta Birmingham.
Anyway, no, I won’t get off the Keep Adrian Houser train. Ah well. Here’s your goodies for the game:
Game time is 6:10 p.m. CT, and I’ll be here for some kinda recap postgame, hopefully with some polls.
