Chicago White Sox: The battle for second place begins

The Chicago White Sox are not going to be the American League Central Division champions after having a disaster of a season in 2022. They were a flawed roster that was poorly managed all season long and now they will go nowhere.

An interesting wrinkle is that it isn’t the Minnesota Twins that are the division champions either. They didn’t play well down the stretch either. Instead, the Cleveland Guardians have been one of the hottest teams in September and have swooped in to take the crown.

Now, both the White Sox and Twins have nothing to show for this season. Each team has some big things to figure out during the offseason which will be interesting to see. For now, however, they have a few games left against one another.

This is going to be a battle for second place as they have nine games left and they play each other in six of them (there is a series with the San Diego Padres left in between the two Twins series). The Twins trail the White Sox by 2.0 games for second place so these six games will decide it.

The Chicago White Sox and Minnesota Twins have six games against each other.

It isn’t really all that fun because second place means nothing for either of these two teams. The Minnesota Twins’ tragic number for the Wild Card is one and the White Sox’s is 3. Both of those should reach 0 by the end of the week and they will be eliminated from postseason contention.

The most important thing for the White Sox is to finish strong so they can know what to expect for the offseason. There is a lot already figured out but it would be nice to see certain players that have had good years keep it going to the end.

On Tuesday night, these two teams will get it going. Lance Lynn is going to get the start for the White Sox and he is going to face Bailey Ober of the Twins. Lynn was not very good in his last start vs the Guardians but the whole team was checked out in that game.

Lynn had a tough start to the year coming back from injury but he has been mostly great in the second half. Finishing strong and being ready for the offseason along with 2023 is very important for Lance.

There are some hitters to keep an eye on here too. We don’t know the future of Jose Abreu, Andrew Vaughn, and Elvis Andrus amongst others for different reasons so enjoy watching them in a White Sox uniform. It would also be fun to see Eloy Jimenez finish as hot as he’s been lately.

Again, these games are getting close to meaning nothing but the White Sox are going to try and be good again in 2023 so there are things to watch for over the next nine games.