Chicago White Sox: Dallas Keuchel bounced back well

The Chicago White Sox have a lot invested in Dallas Keuchel. He is going to be their number two starter this year so they need him to be awesome. We know about what Lucas Giolito means to this team but you can even argue that Dallas Keuchel was a little bit better in 2020. Nobody expects him to be better than Giolito in the long term but they do need him to be right there with Lance Lynn as the second-best on the team.

The Chicago White Sox needs a huge season from Dallas Keuchel in 2021.

It was a little worrisome to watch him struggle during his first start of the spring last week. It was clear that the White Sox wanted to see him come out and pitch well in his second start. He did just that against the Chicago Cubs on Tuesday afternoon. He pitched four full innings and absolutely owned the situation. It was a really reassuring performance as the regular season approaches.

In those four innings, he had one hit, no walks, and three strikeouts. No runs were yielded in the effort as a result which was really nice to see. The Cubs had their full lineup that looked pretty much identical to the one that they are going to trot out there on Opening Day so it isn’t like Keuchel did this against Minor League prospects either.

He shut down the Cubs’ potent offense as well as he possibly could have. Jake Arrieta was also on the opposite mound so it wasn’t like the White Sox had it easy either. It was as close to a realistic simulation as you can have during spring training. If anything, the White Sox lineup wasn’t quite what you would see during a random regular-season game.

If Dallas Keuchel can continue this level of play into the regular-season, the White Sox are going to win a lot of baseball games. He was one of the only ones that hadn’t gotten going yet and now he is. This is a great player that the White Sox need really badly.