The home stretch
With a large division lead, GM Rick Hahn likes where Sox stand entering September
The Chicago White Sox are in a position any team would dream of with September nearing.
They entered Saturday’s City Series game against the Cubs with a double-digit lead in their division.
General manager Rick Hahn said the focus for the stretch run is to complete a task the team pinpointed well before the first pitch of the season.
“We haven’t accomplished our first goal that we set out in spring training, and that is to win the division,” Hahn said Friday. “That is not wrapped up yet, so we want to continue to play hard, remain focused over the course of the next several weeks until we at least accomplish that goal.
“Obviously getting guys adequate rest, we are coming off a difficult stretch. This will make 16 (games) in a row once we complete this weekend (series against the Cubs). And then we get into a period of time where we have some off days and obviously rosters expand on Wednesday. It will allow (manager) Tony (La Russa) and the staff to get guys appropriate rest and lined up for October once we take care of job one, and that is winning the division.”
The Sox are as close to full strength as they have been all season with outfielders Eloy Jiménez and Luis Robert and catcher Yasmani Grandal recently returning from injuries. Grandal hit two three-run home runs and had eight RBIs — matching a team record — in his first game back from the injured list in Friday’s 17-13 victory against the Cubs at Guaranteed Rate Field.
“You add Yaz back into it — and what he did (Friday) night was absolutely incredible — it just stretches everything out,” Sox pitcher Dallas Keuchel said Saturday. “There’s really no weakness, no hole in the lineup.”
The organization’s depth has been tested throughout the season. The team has received contributions from a variety of sources.
“We take as an organization a tremendous amount of pride in the fact that we’ve had eight of our first-rounders contribute at various points over the course of the season,” Hahn said. “That doesn’t include Gavin Sheets coming up and doing what he did, Yermín Mercedes doing what he did. That’s a real feather in the cap of the amateur scouting department as well as player development. Being able to add Brian Goodwin, Billy Hamilton and Jake Lamb after the start of spring training and having them play important roles is a nice testament to our pro scouts and the analysts down in the front office.
“If you told me this was going to be the path, I would have thought it was extremely daunting. But as I look back in retrospect, I couldn’t possibly be more proud of how the organization as a whole responded to the challenge.”
The Sox completed one of their most challenging strings of games leading up to the City Series, going 7-7 against the New York Yankees (1-2), Oakland Athletics (3-1), Tampa Bay Rays (1-2) and Toronto Blue Jays (2-2).
All four, like the Sox, are playoff contenders.
“It’s a tough stretch — we knew this going in when we looked at the schedule,” Hahn said. “Not only was it going to be against high-caliber opponents. It was going to be difficult places to play, like Tampa and Toronto. We were still going to be in the process of getting guys healthy and we had to go through a portion of it without Tim Anderson, an essential part to our offense. It was a challenge.
“Going 7-7 is perfectly understandable and a fine result. You see throughout baseball, the dog days of August are called that for a reason. It’s tough to get through this time after the trade deadline and before the stretch run. Playing 16 in a row in difficult environments is a real challenge. Tony and the staff and the players, to the man, all responded to it well. With that said, I’m happy to see it in the rearview mirror.”
That stretch started with the thrilling 9-8 victory against the Yankees in the Field of Dreams game in Dyersville, Iowa. Hahn said La Russa talked to the team when the series resumed two days later at Guaranteed Rate Field, saying “how this was an important, almost dry run for the postseason in terms of focus.”
“The reason I used that is because as you get closer to the end and you’ve got a shot, you’ve got to be more specific about your preparation,” La Russa said Friday. “Teams have more information, they’ve got four months-plus of looks at you, at your pitching, your hitting and vice versa, so the preparation changes.
“It’s an opportunity to be more specific about how you approach scoring runs or getting outs, and the fact that you’re playing quality opponents raises the stakes and it’s going to be competitive.”
Hahn said that approach will pay off the rest of the way.
“When Tony originally referenced wanting to start going into somewhat of a postseason process, in terms of how we prepare for opponents, I was interested to see exactly how that was going to change,” Hahn said. “Because, quite frankly, over the previous several months, it had been a pretty darn good process as well.
“But he was right, and the team responded and the amount of work that went into preparing for each opponent did ramp up some. And I think that is going to serve us well here over the coming months.”