White Sox Offensive Struggles Deals 'Huge Blow' In Deflating Loss

On Wednesday night Touki Toussaint did something he had never done before in a White Sox uniform. Give up more than two runs in an outing. But that was the least of the White Sox problems as the offense sputtered. 

Toussaint vs. Verlander never looked like a fair matchup on paper. It played out the way you would expect. The White Sox were limited to just one run, struck out seven times, and didn’t get a hit until Andrew Benintendi singled in the fourth inning. With the loss the White Sox chance of winning the series is gone as well as any hope of keeping the roster intact.   

Tuesday’s game against the Mets felt like a must-win game. After taking two of three from the Atlanta Braves the White Sox were desperate to prove that they had enough momentum going to ward off a trade deadline firesale and make a run at the division title. 

After a valiant comeback attempt, the White Sox fell one run short. You could tell any confidence the White Sox had was deflated on Wednesday night. 

“It’s a huge blow -- doesn’t matter who you just finished beating,” said manager Pedro Grifol. “Yesterday’s game, we had an opportunity to win. And today, we had that one bad inning and just couldn’t get anything going offensively.”

As it has been for most of the season Luis Robert Jr was the White Sox only bright spot on Wednesday. Robert provided the only offense for the White Sox with a solo home run in the seventh inning. It was his 28th of the season which places him third in the MLB on the home run leaderboard. 

However, the home run gave Robert just his 57th RBI of the season. The poor home run-to-RBI ratio is indicative of the rest of the offense's struggles. 

This season the White Sox are averaging a measly 4.23 runs per game which ranks 22nd in baseball. Meanwhile, they are also only averaging 13.43 bases per game which ranks 21st. 

Not only are the White Sox not scoring runs, they aren’t even getting on base anymore. The big criticism of the Frank Menechino era was too many singles and not enough home runs. Since his firing the offense has gotten worse. 

The team’s .238 batting average and .296 OBP rank 20th and 29th in the MLB. Meanwhile, they are still middle of the pack in home runs (15th) which is a slight uptick from last year but still not enough to improve the run total. Last season the White Sox ranked fifth in average and 18th in OBP.

Their struggles were on full display Wednesday night. The offense reverted back to their old ways after back-to-back games of scoring eight-plus runs, leaving Toussaint little margin for error. Verlander was able to retire 16 of the 28 batters he faced in three pitches or less. 

“Those are things that we have to analyze and see what went on, see how many balls were out of the strike zone, how many were in the strike zone,” Grifol said. “If we were swinging at balls in the strike zone, good. And if we’re not, then we’ve got to get back to doing what we’ve been doing the last three or four days.”