Sharing Sox Podcast 53 — Ides of September Edition

White Sox couldn’t have an easier schedule if they drew it up themselves

As the White Sox head into the final 18 games of the regular season, SSS duty geezer Leigh Allan and his son and west coast correspondent, Will, gaze into ye olde crystal ball and see an immediate future mostly full of teams that wouldn’t even be in the major leagues if relegation existed. That, of course, bodes well for the effort to gain home-field advantage in round one of the playoffs, especially since the Astros still have to face Oakland six times and Tampa Bay three.

The conversation then ventures into the more murky depths of the horrible inefficiency of White Sox pitchers, especially the starters, as evidenced by the nifty, 184-pitch game on Tuesday night, which was roughly a month’s worth of pitches for Mark Buehrle. That led to discussion of the old idea of pitching to contact (hello, Greg Maddux!) and Will enjoying a nice rant about how pathetic it is that pitchers these days seem to think going 3-2 on every hitter is a great strategy, and how detrimental it is to the game.

That left plenty of time to talk about keeping Eloy Jiménez from hurting himself in the outfield, the importance of getting Adam Engel back from the IL, and using a six-man rotation the rest of the season (spoiler: We support it).

Oh, yeah — also a little chat about whether to pick up Craig Kimbrel’s $16 million option for 2022. Very little chat — just two big capital letters and a bunch of exclamation points. Plus a bunch of praise for TA, YG, and LR.

All of which didn’t even leave time to express dismay over having Zack Collins back in town, and the fact Rick Hahn left the Sox in the lurch, stuck with either Collins or Seby Zavala as backup catcher.

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