But while the White Sox have been looking in every corner for help of some kind–they have already won a game by relying on home runs from Tyler Greene, Hector Gimenez and Connor Gillaspie–eeking out a series victory in Texas on the strength of offense from Tyler Flowers and Hector Santiago making an emergency start in place of Jake Peavy is still an awful curious way to get to a 3-1 win against a first place team.

How the hell did we get here?

We got here by Jake Peavy getting scratched in the early afternoon for back spasms, Hector Santiago getting pushed up a day despite having thrown his bullpen session on Tuesday. The circumstances kept Santiago from being a much more than an angry, rosen-bag throwing walk machine by the time he had topped 90 pitches with one out in the sixth, but his presence was a scintillating one while it lingered.

Where Santiago might have thrown half-and-half good and bad screwballs Saturday night, the ratio easily switched to four-to-one Thursday night. Pvt. Santiago struck out six over 5.1 innings with only an Adrian Beltre solo home run on his tab, and he was in line for the win because the singular White Sox offensive burst of the night came in the top of the sixth.

The immediate disappointment of the Sox inability to figure out the curveball of Rangers starter Justin Grimm for most of the night and the longer, deeply marinated disappointment of Tyler Flowers’ offense were simultaneously blasted into the stratosphere as the White Sox backstop punctuated an entirely two-out rally by golfing a hanger just inside the left field foul pole. The dinger supplied the Sox their only runs and achieved the ultimate sabermetric ideal–the three-run homer.

As much as Hector looked to be pitching at a level capable of making such a margin hold up easily, the core of the bullpen–Thornton, Crain and Reed–had all worked the previous night and showed some wear. Matt Lindstrom happened to be fresh, but had also allowed runs in three of his last four appearances. Their entry into affairs suddenly took the game to a pace that reptiles move at in this kind of weather.

• Sixth inning – Lindstrom steps in with runners on first and second, walks the bases loaded before getting Adrian Beltre to ground into a shaky-looking double play combination of Conor Gillaspie and Jeff Keppinger.
• Seventh inning – Lindstrom, still in, walks the leadoff man. Matt Thornton, ever the soothing breeze on a summer day, comes in and records three straight out with well-located fastballs (what else?)
• Eighth inning – Adrian Beltre comes up in another game-deciding situation with two runners on, and whiffs on a huge Crain curve.
• Ninth inning – Addison Reed walks the leadoff guy to give us the drama of A.J. Pierzynski walking up as the tying run, before whiffing him on back-to-back changeups. After another walk, Reed finds another mile on his fastball and whiffs the next two batters as if he were some sort of dominant closer realizing his potential.

The White Sox outhit the Rangers 8-3, blew more than a few scoring opportunities and had to rely on white-knuckle relief just like every other bad offense win they’ve endured. But it’s a series win, after a nearly month without. It’s a legit notch on their belt against a quality opponent, in a season where they’ve struggled with the dregs of the league.

Probably the high-point of the season, endless wave of injuries aside.

Team Record: 12-15

Box Score

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4/3

4/17

Instead of a closed and coiled into a crouch that may look uncomfortable simply because he is so very large, Tyler is open, with his front leg back and extended, his hands lower and farther out. There’s a temptation to delve into it more, but Flowers’ last new batting stance made it through barely two weeks of regular season play. Looks like Tyler is back to finishing with his hip dip, and the hard contact from last night (2-4, HR, 2 R, 3 RBI, K) is sure to give him reason to stick to it, but it’s probably best to wait and see what the results of his tinkering are, especially given how different the setup is.

“I just felt a little more smooth, I guess,” Flowers said about the stance. “Like I have a little more freedom, a little more, kind of, swagger, looseness feeling on all my swings today. I felt very good.”

Robin Ventura noted the relative transience of Flowers’ stance as he scrambles to survive:

“I think it’s more trying to find that comfort in being able to survive and do the things you need to do,” Ventura said.

“As hitters, you are always making adjustments and doing things. What was good one week might not feel the same a week later. So you just keep making adjustments.”

Consistency in the work and preparation Tyler makes everyday would obviously be preferable, but it’s not as though there’s an acceptable status quo for him to work from. More bumps in the road should be anticipated.

Jose Quintana throwing gas

Part of the absurdity of Jose Quintana finding success with little more than fastball command last year is that his fastball wasn’t anything special, often topping out at 90 with frequent marks of 89.

This year, it’s up a notch. Quintana was already averaging over a mile faster on the season before Wednesday night, which saw the Rogers Centre guns read his heat consistently at 92 mph and touch 94 mph on occasion (or 94.6, according to Brooks Baseball). This could easily be a hot (or accelerated) gun, especially early in the season before anomalies like this can be accounted and calibrated for.

It’s attractive to think that the 23 year-old Quintana could simply move from average velocity to Hector Santiago-territory with a few months of time. Especially since Jose was throwing his heater by people Wednesday, having his breaking stuff playing all the way up during a 7-0 romp over the Jays and has a swing-and-miss rate is up two percent (big for this stat) from last year.

For these purposes, we want to believe a physical change, because it adds a degree of permanence to the positives of the last two starts. A single extra mile on the fastball is more plausible–mostly because it’s early in the season, and Quintana was well over his career-highs in workload during a lot of his work last season.

The most important part is that Quintana’s curveball and slider flashed some ability to miss bats this week. Whether it was due to improved consistency with each or simply good sequencing in between Quintana’s heaters, the one dimensional pitcher that the Mariners thrashed one inning during the first week does not appear to have made the road trip.

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However, while we’re here just watching games and watching Tyler Flowers, there’s no harm in discussing what we’ve seen, provided we remain at the level of noting our observations and holding off on inferences. I will say, it’s probably unlikely he finishes the season hitting .571/.700/1.429.

First of all, the White Sox coaching staff has hinted at what everyone should be looking for in regards to Tyler.

“From the hitting sessions supervised by Manto, assistant hitting coach Harold Baines and even manager Robin Ventura, at times, Manto spoke of the adjustments made by Flowers all offseason to keep his back side from collapsing. Flowers had been sending Manto video of his workouts from the past few months, and Manto would make suggestions and critiques.”

Back in August of 2011, when Flowers was getting his first substantial amount of playing time, Colin from South Side Sox put this “collapsing back side” into plain terms.

“There was good reason the Sox spent last season trying to change up his swing.  ”Pretty” is not the preferred nomenclature.  He gets good bat speed, but it’s the result of a hitch, sticking his ass out and throwing his arms at the ball.  It’s almost Uribean.”

Here’s the hitch in its prime moment. This is an opposite field double Flowers hit off Ubaldo Jimenez on Aug. 17, 2011

You can still pick out moments of Flowers hunched over now if you want. Like his home run off Ervin Santana just this past Wednesday.

That final part of the load looks to be here to stay. The changes that have been made look to be attempting to reduce the trip to get there. First of all, he starts things off bending his enormous frame into a crouch.

As recently as Aug. 11 of last year, he was darn near upright at the same point in the pitcher’s delivery.

To tack on, or as a result–I won’t pretend to know–the leg kick is quieter and quicker. Here’s Tyler dangling his hoof later in the day on Aug. 11, 2012.

On Opening Day, Flowers used a smaller stride forward that cuts off just a tad lower.

Every swing looks better when it finishes with a 400-foot bomb clearing the wall, but when so much of pre-season optimism is based on feel and environment, it’s notable that another Manto offseason project is coming out looking demonstratively different mechanically.

Flowers is an enormous man with a big load-up process, so it will be worth checking up on his mechanics and crouch throughout the year, since Dayan Viciedo has certainly demonstrated that not everything sticks upon first implementation.

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