Gamethread: Giants at White Sox

Aaron Civale will make his third South Side start, as Chicago hosts San Francisco for new a three-game series

The San Francisco Giants (44-37) are in town for a three-game set to take on the White Sox (26-55), who are coming off of yet another series loss after dropping two of three to the Diamondbacks. The South Siders are 3-7 in their last 10 and their offense is batting just .218 over the past 30 days — ranked 29th of 30 teams.

With this excellent offensive support behind him, Aaron Civale will be making his third start for Chicago after being traded for Andrew Vaughn just two weeks ago. In his two games (12 innings) with the White Sox, Civale has given up seven runs on seven hits and is 0-2 with a 5.25 ERA. Not great, but we are looking for basically anyone to eat some innings, so it will have to do. Also, Vaughn is gone, so let’s try to just focus on the bright side.

On the offensive front, Mike Tauchman (.850 OPS) is holding down the leadoff spot with Chase Meidroth, Andrew Benintendi and Miguel Vargas behind him. The lineup essentially drops off a cliff after that, though we have been seeing decent batting performances from Kyle Teel (.782 OPS) and Lenyn Sosa (.977) over the past couple of weeks. Notably, Luis Robert Jr. is out of the lineup after exiting the game early a few days ago with hamstring soreness in the first inning on Wednesday.

The Giants will have righthander Landen Roupp on the mound, making his 16th start of the season. Roupp has been solid this season, with a 3.67 ERA across 76 innings, and has been even his past seven games, with a 2.50 ERA. Roupp tends to favor his sinker, but it’s also the pitch that has the highest opponent batting average at .355. The righty throws his curveball quite a bit as well, with much greater success (.157 opponent BA). The South Siders have the seventh-most strikeouts in the league over the last two weeks, so they could very likely continue to struggle with this tonight.

The Giants have a bunch of dangerous batters, and recently acquired Rafael Devers in a wild trade with the Red Sox. Even in a small sample size, Devers is leading the team in OPS (.836). Heliot Ramos will hold down the leadoff spot, however, and is close behind Devers with an .825 OPS. Ramos also leads the Giants in home runs (13).

The best news about a Friday home game? The White Sox are an unbeatable 5-0 in Chicago on Fridays!

First pitch is set for 6:40 p.m. CT, 4:40 p.m. PT for all you pacific coasters out there. The game can be viewed in the usual location at CHSN, or tuned into the radio at ESPN Chicago AM 1000.