May 20, 2013; Chicago, IL, USA; Chicago White Sox designated hitter Adam Dunn (32) is congratulated by first baseman Paul Konerko (14) for hitting a three run home run against the Boston Red Sox during the first inning at U.S. Cellular Field. Mandatory Credit: Rob Grabowski-USA TODAY Sports

Every day is a good day to prove yourself in the major leagues, but Monday night was a particularly fine time for Dylan Axelrod to show himself capable of side-stepping through a top-flight American League lineup, right before a starting rotation gig goes on the chopping block.

The independent league graduate-level pitching came from the visiting side, as Jon Lester couldn’t close out any of the first two innings of the night, and threw the Red Sox into a hole they could not finish climbing out of before losing 6-2.

To start things out for Lester, a two-out single allowed to Alex Rios, followed by a walk to Paul Konerko, one-upped with starting 2-0 to Adam Dunn before grooving a fastball to him and falling down a deserved 3-0.

More unforgivable was Lester getting the first two outs of the second inning, but letting a double from Tyler Greene prolong his misery. Alejandro De Aza knocked Greene in by rolling a ball up the third base line that Will Middlebrooks whiffed on for the second-straight double, and Alexei Ramirez sliced another shot into the right field corner for the third-straight double of the inning.

With Axelrod at the helm, that outburst more or less salted away the game. Dylan’s only cluster of poor play came in the third, when he issued his only walk of the night to Stephen Drew and had a low fastball golfed out for a two-run bomb by Jarrod Saltalamacchia. The offer was Axelrod’s usual shade of vulnerable, but too low for it to even count as a mistake.

Robin Ventura pulling Axelrod after six innings and only 83 pitches seemed like a product of a generalized cautious approach with the journeyman hurler rather than a reaction to trouble. Why test Axelrod another time through the order when trusted relievers can be used the rest of the way? After all, Axelrod had struck out two guys all night and his success didn’t make much sense.

Well, the thing about that is…Matt Thornton didn’t step in with his good control, walked two batters and allowed them home with a two-run double off the bat of Will Middlebrooks that missed leaving the yard by a couple feet. Even with Dayan Viciedo providing a run of insurance with a two-out RBI single in the fifth, Jesse Crain and Addison Reed both put the tying run on base in the eight and ninth innings.

Luckily for Crain, David Ortiz popped up a high fastball that he clearly though he should have hammered–though at 96 mph at the letters, that may have been hubris talking–and luckily for Addison Reed, Will Middlebrooks’ booming fly ball to dead center–first of all, he was lucky it went to dead center–died a foot or two short of the wall.

It might be the mark of a good team–talking about the Red Sox here–that a game where the White Sox seem to get every decisive hit and rip out the guts of their opponent within the first hour, was still a nervy affair by the end.

Team Record: 20-23

Box Score

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May 15, 2013; Minneapolis, MN, USA; Chicago White Sox outfielder Dayan Viciedo (24) is congratulated by third base coach Joe McEwing (47) after hitting a home run during the fourth inning against the Minnesota Twins at Target Field. Mandatory Credit: Brace Hemmelgarn-USA TODAY Sports

But even the barrage of Dunn home runs of the past two days is not enough to talk me into the idea of “Dunn’s back!” He’ll need to drag his statistical line all the way back to fool me.

Dayan Viciedo, as many times as he’s broken my heart waving at curveballs 19 feet below the Earth’s surface, still offers hope, still hints at something that could be great whenever a ball he doesn’t get all of travels 350 feet. He stuck his butt out and protected on an outside fastball on Monday and flung it 310 feet down the right field foul line. It was amazing.

A week after returning to the lineup from an oblique strain, Dayan Viciedo is doing very, very, very well and it is very exciting. He’s 8-18 with five walks, two home runs, a double, a sacrifice fly and four strikeouts since swinging so hard that he pulled a muscle. Dayan has teased with a more patient approach before–near the end of 2011, specifically–and he’s gone ballistic with power before–like last May–but to see the two working in combination is exciting, and it’s natural to look for reasons it’s not just a blip.

Before his injury, Viciedo was swinging at over 55% of the pitches he saw thrown in his general direction. That’s the type of rate that could put him in the top-10 in baseball by the end of the season.  Since coming back, Viciedo has swiftly knocked 10% off that figure, which about how often Adam Dunn has swung this season.

One week is very much in the realm of “he’s seeing the ball well right now” and the insane surge of batting average with balls in play that accompanies most hot streaks is there too, but swing rates normalize quickly. Not ’53 swings out of 117 pitches seen’ quickly, but swiftly enough that a conscious decision to hold back a bit is noticeable pretty quickly. It certainly was obvious early on when Adam Dunn tried to do the opposite.

Also encouraging is Dayan doing his most recent spate of damage against right-handed starters. Historically he’s been able to punish what he gets a hold of from the right side, he simply struggles to pick much up and has a 15 to 3 K/BB ratio against right-handers before.

It’s also worth mentioning that Kevin Correia and Mike Pelfrey are marginal right-handed starters who cannot exactly rush it up there, but Dayan needs to make his living pulverizing lefties and conquering bad right-handers. With his bat speed, all of these guys are giving Viciedo pitches he can handle, it’s a measure of reigning himself in and allowing good opportunities to come to him.

This is all jumping the gun, but Viciedo and Conor Gillaspie are all there is of hitters 25 or under on the team. It’s either watch them and suffer through their development or stick your head in the sand until Courtney Hawkins comes up.

Follow James Fegan on Twitter @JRFegan

May 15, 2013; Minneapolis, MN, USA; Chicago White Sox outfielder Dayan Viciedo (24) is congratulated by catcher Hector Gimenez (38) after hitting a home run during the fourth inning against the Minnesota Twins at Target Field. Mandatory Credit: Brace Hemmelgarn-USA TODAY Sports

With Paul Konerko only now coming back from a brief sabbatical, a sad struggling offense has had to slowly come to grips with the idea that a new era is afoot, and that new heroes will have to emerge.

Apparently, they’ll be just fine, at least as long as they’re facing the Twins

On the strength of their third-straight 10-hit game (the streak started with this series), the White Sox scored a season-high nine–nine!–runs behind two–two!–Adam Dunn–Dunn!?!–home runs, making a winner out of Dylan Axelrod and a series-loser out of the Twins in a 9-4 victory.

Dayan Viciedo and Adam Dunn dominating a game offensively wouldn’t have sounded like a Wayans Brothers’ parody last May, but given the horror of the last month, there was a positively Bunuel-ian vibe to the way the pair reeled in and abused Twins starter Mike Pelfrey. Dunn saw an absurd 31 pitches in five plate appearances. Viciedo averaged over four pitchers per PA.

Dunn wiped away an early 2-0 deficit in the third inning by swatting a high full count changeup over the 411-foot sign in dead center field. The eight pitch at-bat was laborious for Pelfrey, but nowhere near as brutal as the 10-pitch at-bat Dunn worked him before crushing a line-drive RBI double off the wall in the fourth. Despite getting an 0-2 count, Pelfrey simply had nothing to put Dunn away with, and though he’s typically abominable at contact, Dunn kept fouling off pitches until he got a particularly ineffective sinker to crush.

The inning prior, Dayan Viciedo drilled a towering fly-ball, opposite field solo home run off another high inside sinker, which gave the Sox their first lead of the day (3-2). Dunn and Viciedo now have each homered in the past two games, and Dayan has been piping hot since returning from his injury. 

In 6 games back from DL, Dayan Viciedo has 2 HR, 6 RBI, 5 BB, and a .520 OBP

— Christopher Kamka (@ckamka) May 15, 2013

And Dunn, who added another two-run bomb on Josh Roenicke in the eighth inning, put together an easy contender for his best game of the season, and possibly his best ever as a White Sox too. He went 3-4 with a walk, five RBI and 10 total bases. Meanwhile, steady hands Alex Rios and Conor Gillaspie reached base seven out of the 10 times they went to the plate and scored four times between them, so it wasn’t entirely a ‘black is white, cats are friendly, bacon is healthy and tastes terrible’ type of day after all.

It was the appropriate offensive outburst for a battle of back-end starters. While his counterpart couldn’t escape the fifth inning, Dylan Axelrod spread out his beating (nine hits) over 5.1 innings and only allowed three runs. He was wisely pulled after walking his first batter of the game in the sixth, shortly after he had been visited by Herm Schneider for discomfort in his leg.

Matt Lindstrom was disappointingly shaky in relief of Axelrod after coming on with a single runner on, one out and a 5-2 lead to protect. He allowed a stolen base, an RBI single to Jamey Carroll and a Joe Mauer double in rapid succession. The only out he garnered still plated a run, and brought Justin Morneau up to the plate with the tying run at third base. It was early in the game still, but Ventura fired his one left-handed bullet and brought on Matt Thornton to jam Morneau up and in to close out the threat.

Ventura’s aggression paid off, as a two-out Jeff Keppinger–yes, the guy we’ve been writing about–double broke the game open in the seventh.

Series wins are nice, being within four games of .500 makes things smell a bit better than they used to, but the important takeaway here is the method. A locked-in Dayan Viciedo is a useful tool, and maybe…maybe Dunn is on to something here.

Team Record: 17-21

Box Score

Follow James Fegan on Twitter @JRFegan