The St. Louis Cardinals have an upcoming series against the Chicago White Sox

After dropping three of four to the Miami Marlins the St. Louis Cardinals are headed to the south side of Chicago to take on the White Sox. The White Sox at 37-52 are fourth in the American League Central. The Cardinals are 36-51 and fifth in National League Central. It is a heavyweight bout.

Per wRC+ the White Sox rank 25th in the league with an 89. Their lineup only has one qualified player with a wRC+ over 120: Luis Robert. Robert is slashing .272/.333/.569 with 25 homers for a 144 wRC+. Rookie Zach Remillard made his debut on June 17 and in 54 plate appearances is slashing .348/.434/.413 for a 141 wRC+, but also has .457 batting average on balls in play.

The White Sox have also struggled on the pitching side. Per FIP the starters are 24th in league with a 4.63 and the relievers are 27th with a 4.52. There are a few relievers that might be inflating that, though, as there are four relievers with a FIP under four: Gregory Santos — their best reliever, Aaron Bummer, who has a FIP of 2.63 and an ERA of 7.85, Joe Kelly, and Keynan Middleton.

The only starter listed for this series is the starter for Friday evening, Dylan Cease. With a 3.85 FIP and 27.4% K-rate, Cease has been the best starter for the White Sox. He throws a 4-seamer and a slider about the same amount of the time and rotates in a curveball on occasion. He 4-seamer comes in pretty fast at around 96 mph, but his slider has been his best pitch in the past. In fact, per Baseball Savant’s Run Value metric, it was the most valuable pitch in baseball in 2022, blowing every other pitch out of the water at -36 runs. This season at -1 runs per 100 pitches, it has not been nearly has valuable (that -36 total runs amounted to -2.7 runs/100 in 2022), but it is still a really good pitch. It has a 40.2% wiff rate and just a .214 batting average against.

So that’s the White Sox. It was really interesting to evaluate this team because though they have a similar record to the Cardinals, the Cardinals appear to be quite a bit better on paper, which just really illustrates the absurdity of the Cardinals season so far. The Cardinals are far from a great team, but the White Sox team stats are what I would expect from a 36-51 team. That’s baseball for ya!

Matchups:

Friday, July 7 at 7:10 pm CT: Jordan Montgomery vs. Dylan Cease
Saturday, July 8 at 1:10 pm CT: Miles Mikolas vs. TBD
Sunday, July 9 at 1:10 pm CT: Steven Matz vs. TBD