The Toronto Blue Jays successfully finished swept the Chicago White Sox out of town after winning Wednesday afternoon's game. Yusei Kikuchi looked like his old self, going 5.2 innings of shutout ball while striking out batters. His ERA on the season is down to 3.00 now and he has branched off of his strong Spring Training showing nicely.
Throughout this early-season series, the White Sox did very little to pose much of a threat to the Blue Jays. Each of the non-Manoah and Gausman starters in the Jays' rotation were tasked with discarding of this Sox team and they did so in excellent fashion. Even low-caliber lineups like the White Sox have done well in the past against Chris Bassitt, José Berríos and Kikuchi, so this sweep is a huge one.
After Wednesday's loss, White Sox backup catcher Seby Zavala got with the media and blamed a very strange and very specific aspect of the Blue Jays' game on why his club just got swept without the Jays breaking a sweat.
""Those f****rs, they just fouled off a lot of s**t, it puts us in a hole and maybe makes us feel like we don't how to come out or something, I don't know. They beat us. We're in a funk. We've got to come together as a team to figure out how to get out of it.""
Yes, you read that right. The amount of pitches the Blue Jays fouled off were the reason why the White Sox bats were non-existent in this series. Now I have officially heard it all.
Zavala sure does have a point, his team is struggling. After Wednesday's loss, the club is now 7-18 which lands them in fourth place in the AL Central, just 0.5 games above the Kansas City Royals. Four players in their lineup during today's game are hitting under the Mendoza Line, including star-level players Andrew Vaughn and Eloy Jiménez.
Foul balls aside, the White Sox looked like a minor league team in this series. The club was outscored 20-2 in a three-game set and got dominated by a few Blue Jays starters who had been scuffling themselves. Oh well, we'll take what we can get. If Bassitt and Berríos were able to bust out of their own respective funks because the foul ball-heavy Blue Jays offense handed it to the White Sox, so be it.
On the Blue Jays side of things, the club is absolutely rolling right now. The dismantling of the White Sox over the past two days gives the Jays a four-game win streak and 15 wins in their last 21 games. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (.333 average), Bo Bichette (.340), Matt Chapman (.364) and Whit Merrifield (.313, 11-game hit streak) have been on fire as of late. Pair this with the red-hot starting pitching and you have yourself a dangerous ballclub.
As we all know, the season is a very long one, and the month of April is always too early for the panic button to be pressed or the champagne to be brought out. However, while a team can't win their divisions in April, they can certainly do enough to lose it. While the White Sox are on their way to a rough year, the Blue Jays have been doing exactly what they needed to to get this year started off on the right foot.