Will Venable ready to adjust as needed as White Sox try to shake late-season funk
ST. LOUIS, Mo. – With losses in nine of their last 12 games and their division lead shaved down to the bone, the announcement of Saturday’s White Sox lineup seemed to reveal the kind of major shake-up for which the offense’s September struggles had been calling.
Colson Montgomery and Braden Montgomery–both entering Saturday with an OPS under .600 for the month–were shifted to the bottom two spots of the order. Kyle Teel, projected preseason to be a middle of the order fixture but easing back from an ankle injury, was moved up to second.
Instead, manager Will Venable defused such notions of a big, reactive change.
“The change in lineup is not about performance or anything,” Venable said.
Near the end of Year 2 of the White Sox under Venable’s stewardship, it’s imprudent to assume he’s trying to send a message through the lineup when platoon matchups are the more likely explanation. Sure enough, his expectation that the Cardinals were planning to piggyback right-handed starter Kyle Leahy with left-hander Cooper Hjerpe drove a strategy geared around left-handed bats at the top of the order.
Of course, with the White Sox fighting for their playoff lives, there’s a world where this order has some staying power.
“Maybe we score a bunch of runs and we want to keep it exactly the same,” Venable quipped.
But is there a major adjustment coming as the White Sox suffer through their worst baseball of the season at a decidedly inopportune time? The window for a proactive response to the second half fades of Montgomery, Munetaka Murakami, even spitfire rookie leadoff man Sam Antonacci, has closed. Caleb Bonemer and his 37 minor league home runs could be an intriguing option next year, but there’s no late-season offensive impact waiting for the call in Triple-A Charlotte.
“We played together all year, the vibes aren’t down,” said Chase Meidroth. “We have to move forward and find a way to win.”
Hitting coach Derek Shomon is grinding through adjustments in the batting cage, but from a deployment perspective, there’s not many transformative options. Instead Venable has largely kept the faith with his existing core, and his players echo the same steady confidence. What this Sox roster lacks in postseason experience, they make up for in experience in absorbing losses and trusting things will get better.
“There’s been parts of the season where we weren’t pitching well, we weren’t hitting well, we weren’t doing this or we weren’t doing that,” Davis Martin told the Sun-Times. “We came out of it every time.”
“We know things are going to pass and we are going to get back on track when we need to,” said Colson Montgomery.
The question obviously also extends to the pitching staff, especially where using Sean Newcomb as an opener in front of him did little to stanch the bleeding from trade deadline acquisition Luis Castillo. Newcomb, the heavily-used rock of the bullpen all year long, has now been charged with runs in four-straight outings, even though Saturday night was a case of Castillo allowing an inherited run to score, as the right-hander saw his velocity drop into the low-90s, was pulled after less than three innings of work and now has a 7.76 ERA in a White Sox uniform
The Sox do have starting pitching options in the minors that could be worth exploring, and that could begin as soon as Sunday. Venable contends that if anything, he’s ready to respond to how his players are performing in the moment more than ever.
“If we’re in early-April, May baseball, you’re kind of spreading out the love, spreading out the opportunity to make sure guys are plugged in,” Venable said. “Now it’s just about one day, and today, and how you’re going to win that game.”
During this skid, Venable has spent some postgame sessions lamenting moves that haven’t worked out, but insists he’s not hesitant to pull the trigger on some new ones going forward.
“If there’s adjustments that are necessary,” Venable said, “We’re going to make them.”