Gamethread: White Sox vs. Giants

White Sox look to bounce back from a bad loss yesterday, with old friend Carlos Rodón making his San Francisco debut.

All right Sox fans — let’s just pretend that yesterday didn’t happen, yeah? The Chicago White Sox (5-2) look to bounce back today against the San Francisco Giants (1-4) at Camelback Ranch.

For the White Sox, righthander Reynaldo López takes the mound in his spring training debut. After getting Lasik surgery, López bounced back in 2021 with a 3.43 ERA over 57 ²⁄₃ innings pitched, also posting a solid FIP of 4.19. The new-and-improved Reynaldo is much more promising, and it will be exciting to see how he follows up last year’s performance. Given the current holes in the White Sox rotation, he may need to become a more reliable piece of the pitching staff, shuffling between a spot-starter and relief role, as he did in 2021.

On the bump for the Giants will be All-Star pitcher and White Sox legend, Carlos Rodón. Rodón came in as somewhat of an unknown for the White Sox last year, after years of battling injuries, even having Tommy John surgery in 2019, making it difficult to say how successful he would be as a pitcher in the big leagues. He came out of the gates hot, throwing a beautiful no-hitter in April (which should have been a perfect game, let’s be real), pitching in the All-Star game, and posting an impressive 2.37 ERA.

As Rodón entered free agency, White Sox fans were hoping for him to be re-signed to make another push for the postseason, but since Jerry doesn’t like fun, the Giants signed him for two years, with a one-year opt-out that puts the contract hardly north of the QO the White Sox could have made. At the very least, Rodón is in the National League, so we can all still quietly root for his success — except for today when Luis Robert takes him yard (sorry, Los).

Here are this afternoon’s lineups:

The first pitch is scheduled for 3:05 p.m. CT and you can listen in on the radio at ESPN 1000. Let’s get a W!