Category: Sports News

Skenes v. Jobe? Holy mackerel, what a matchup!

Well, indeed, on paper it looked to be a game in which the starters would go deep and we’d all be treated to a classic pitching battle. Instead, neither starter stuck around particularly long, the bullpens took over, and in the bottom of the ninth the Tigers gave the game away in a most dramatic fashion, losing 4-3 and dropping the series.

As mentioned, Jackson Jobe got the start for the Tigers. His first outing this year was fantastic: five innings with one hit. His first outing, not so much: he didn’t make it out of the fourth and he coughed-up six runs. Now, remember, recovery from Tommy John surgery means that your control will be a little wonky for a while, so I feel like any great outings the Tigers get out of Jobe this year are a bonus.

Facing the Tigers today was some scrub kid, Paul Skenes. He’s having a lousy year, by his standards: an ERA of almost 4, a WHIP above 1.1, and he’s walking almost 7% of all the hitters he’s faced. What a hoser! All jokes aside, he’s one of the premier pitchers in the sport — but since the middle of May he has struggled to go deep into games, often topping-out at five or six innings, while he previous triple digit velocity is rarely in evidence.

Skenes walked the first two batters to start the game, and a ground ball to first didn’t result in a double play, leaving runners at the corners. Alas, Dillon Dingler struck out and Brett Callahan popped up to the shortstop and that was that.

Pittsburgh got on the board in the bottom of the first: with one out Brandon Lowe walked, and an infield single pushed him up to second. An Oneil Cruz single cashed-in Lowe and it was a 1-0 game at that point.

Hao-Yu Lee (see notes below) led off the third with a single poked down the right-field line, and he aggressively and smartly took third on a Colt Keith single to left. After Gleyber Torres struck out, Kevin McGonigle lofted a fly ball to left field which was deep enough to score Lee and even the score. Dingler followed with a sizzling line-drive to left at 106 mph… and Brian Reynolds made a nice catch on it. Guy can’t catch a break these days.

The Tigers retook the lead in the fifth: Max Clark led off with a double, and Lee followed with a walk. After Keith struck out, Torres lofted a little fly ball to centre that dropped in, scoring Clark and moving Lee up to third. That was the end of Skenes’ day — as has been his custom in the past couple of months — and Old Friend™ Gregory Soto was brought in for a lefty-lefty matchup. On the first pitch McGonigle split the right-centrefield gap for a double; Lee scored, but Torres was cut down at the plate on a great relay for the second out.

Alas, Dingler then flew out to centre to end the inning.

Meanwhile, Jobe was having a decent start, if a little shaky with his control: through five innings he’d walked three batters and hit another. (Plunking, then later walking, the ninth-place hitter in a lineup isn’t exactly what you want to do, but sometimes it happens.) As mentioned above, control takes a while to reacquire after Tommy John surgery, but he made adjustments along the way, including going to his sinker more.

He ended his day after striking out Esmerlyn Valdez on a 99-mph four-seam fastball to end a nine-pitch battle leading off the bottom of the sixth, and his final line was 5 1/3 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 3 BB, 3 K, 53 strikes out of 86 pitches. Tyler Holton was brought in to face Cruz and struck him out on three pitches; he gave up an infield single, but then struck out pinch-hitter Nick “No Relation to Thom” Yorke to end the inning.

Jacob Waugespack, who’s been having a fairly good go of it lately, hung a cutter to pinch-hitter Rafael Flores Jr. with one out and he did not miss, clubbing a long home run to left field to narrow the gap to 3-2. After a lineout to centre, Drew Sommers came in to face Lowe and he struck out on a slider after a couple of pretty wild outside pitches.

Kyle Finnegan took over to start the eighth inning, and it’s been a rough ride for him lately: coming into today’s game his last eleven appearances, spanning 8 2/3 innings, he’d given up nine runs and allowed four home runs. Things started off decently well, with a lineout to left and a strikeout, but then Cruz and Nick Gonzales walked. I gulped in anticipation of what might come next, but then Yorke flew out harmlessly to left field. Had it all along, folks! Had it all along.

The Tigers looked to add some insurance in the top of the ninth off triple-digit lefty closer Mason Montgomery: Zach McKinstry led off with a single, and Clark pushed him up to second with a single of his own, taking 99 mph the opposite way in a nice piece of hitting. With two outs the Pirates’ catcher tried to back-pick to first to nab Clark but the throw went into right field, pushing the runners up a base. Alas, pinch-hitter Eduardo Valencia grounded out for the third out and it was on to the bottom of the ninth, and it did not go well.

Kenley Jansen, who had not given up a home run since the end of June, served one up to Flores, who hit it a long way with one out to tie the score at 3-3, Flores’ second home run of the game. Then, with two out, of course, Lowe hit his 27th of the year off the right-field foul pole for the 4-3 win.

Le sigh.

You know, I’m starting to think that this bullpen isn’t very good.

Observances and Notes

• On Monday night, Hao-Yu Lee broke Yu Chang’s record for hits in a season by a Taiwanese-born player. Congrats!
• Foolish Bailey did a great piece on the Tigers’ troubles this year when it comes to bullpen usage by AJ Hinch. All those Hinch-Haters out there, here’s some more fuel for your ever-burning fires — like you needed it!
• The orbit of a star close to the supermassive black hole in the centre of the Milky Way might show how that black hole is spinning. Neat!
• On this day in 1989, the Pan-European Picnic was held on the Austria-Hungary border, as a peace demonstration. During the proceedings, if people crossed from Hungary (then still Communist and under Soviet influence) into Austria, border guards were told to let them freely pass. It was partially a test to see what the Soviets’ response would be to a more open border, and since Moscow didn’t jump all over it, that emboldened leaders across all the Warsaw Pact nations to open things up even more — and the fall of the Berlin Wall a few months later was clearly the climax of those events.

Mets prospect Ryan Clifford has been added to the development list as he deals with a rough stretch at the plate at Triple-A Syracuse.

In his last 18 games, the first baseman/outfielder has just five hits in 67 at-bats (.075) with 35 strikeouts to nine walks and a .299 OPS. Since coming back from a few days on the IL at the start of the month, Clifford is 0-for-22 with 14 strikeouts and two walks, including striking out all five times in his last game on Sunday.

The development list was introduced in 2021 to help clubs monitor their prospects' usage and development, and allow the player the opportunity to stay with the minor league club while not being on the squad's roster. 

This year, he has 31 extra-base hits (16 home runs) with 51 RBI and a .175/.267/.344 slash line for a .611 OPS in 431 plate appearances over 104 games. The biggest issue for the 22-year-old is strikeouts. He's gone down on strikes 175 times, representing 40.6 percent of his times up.

He struck out 148 times in 139 games during the 2025 campaign across 105 games at Double-A Binghamton and 34 at Triple-A, where he only struck out 35 times with 22 walks. At Binghamton, he smacked 24 home runs with 75 RBI while batting .243 with a .848 OPS, which earned him that promotion last August.

Clifford is just a few weeks removed from playing in the MLB Futures Game around the MLB All-Star break. At the time, he said he was looking to work on his consistency at the plate as he had plenty of pop – 16 long balls and 47 batted in 86 games – but was batting .196 with a .678 OPS and 129 strikeouts.

“I think the first half was kind of up and down, so I’m looking to, after the break, just maintain some consistency and stay out on the field and be healthy,” Clifford said at the Futures Game. “Look to cut down on strikeouts and keep the power up.”

Clifford was ranked No. 14 in SNY's midseason ranking of the Mets' Top 30 prospects. 

You can watch Syracuse, who will have No. 2 prospect left-hander Jonathan Santucci on the hill, take on the Worcester Red Sox Wednesday at 6:35 p.m. on SNY. 

Not been a good couple of days for the D-backs. While I’m sure MarteGate (2026 edition) hasn’t helped, the pitching staff allowing twenty runs in two games probably is the main issue. Still, a win today would mean a 3-3 road trip. And, I remind you, the majority of you (57%, to be exact) said that would be an acceptable result for these games in Atlanta and Boston. With Brandon Pfaadt on the mound for the Diamondbacks, got to feel hopeful about us allowing fewer runs than on Monday and Tuesday. Be nice to get the W, fly back to Arizona, and enjoy the off-day tomorrow.

Also want to tidy up something from a few days ago. You may remember, in the opener against the Braves, the D-backs went 0-for-14 with runners in scoring position – but still won the game, 2-0. There was some wondering as to where about that performance stood in the pantheon of Diamondbacks victories, but there was no easy way to look it up. However, we have samath, the master of “no easy ways”, who duly scraped franchise history to find out. Over to you, samath:

The 0-for-14 in a regulation win is indeed a Diamondbacks record. Only one game comes close: On May 9th, 2013 against the Phillies, they went 0-for-12 with RISP in a 2-1 win. They’ve gone 0-for-9 six times, most recently in a 3-1 win over the Padres on July 17, 2022. MLB-wide, it’s also the highest for 2026. Second place is the Guardians going 0-for-12 in a 4-2 win over the Brewers on June 18. The last game to beat that opener in Atlanta was the Mariners’ 2-0 victory over the Astros on August 18, 2023, within which they went 0-for-17 with RISP.

Here are the top five MLB failures with RISP in team victories which samath found, since the D-backs entered the league in 1998.

1. 2023-08-18 – Seattle Mariners over Houston Astros: 2-0, 0-for-17
2. 2006-09-15 – Oakland Athletics over Chicago White Sox, 4-2, 0-for-16
3. 1999-05-29 – Los Angeles Dodgers over Atlanta Braves, 2-1, 0-for-15
4. 2026-08-14 – Arizona Diamondbacks over Atlanta Braves, 2-0, 0-for-14
5. 2017-04-22 – St. Louis Cardinals over Milwaukee Brewers, 4-1, 0-for-14

TV: NESN

First Pitch: 4:10 p.m. ET

Payton Tolle is the perfect man for Boston to send to the mound as the Red Sox play for a sweep of the Diamondbacks. Coming off of three consecutive series losses, the lefty takes the mound as the hot hand of the rotation, most recently tossing a gem with eight scoreless innings in Toronto.  

Here’s who the Red Sox will send to the plate behind him Wednesday afternoon at Fenway Park. 

Tolle bump day! pic.twitter.com/Xe2mVtBJGx

— Red Sox (@RedSox) August 19, 2026

The Diamondbacks counter with Brandon Pfaadt, who’s fared well this season with a 3.12 ERA in 22 total appearances. 

Series finale. pic.twitter.com/pFlQESmOxm

— Arizona Diamondbacks (@Dbacks) August 19, 2026

It has been a brutal month of August for the Washington Nationals on multiple fronts. They lost key players to trades, James Wood got hurt and the losses have been piling up. However, Dylan Crews’ miserable play of late is another factor in the Nats struggles. When the team needed him most, Crews has been woefully ineffective.

After losing James Wood, Luis Garcia Jr. and Curtis Mead, the Nats needed guys to step up in order to pick up the slack. Abimelec Ortiz has done his part, bursting onto the scene. Brady House has not been perfect, but his .258 average and .704 OPS is acceptable. 

However, Crews has not held up his end of the bargain. The Nats were clearly relying on him to do that and you can see that in where they put him in the lineup. Against lefties, Crews has been leading off and even against righties, he often hits third. Despite that faith, Crews is just 8 for 57 in August.

Dylan Crews is 8 for 57 in August

— federalbaseball (@federalbaseball) August 19, 2026

It is yet another disappointing chapter in a wildly frustrating Nationals career for the former second overall pick. One thing that makes it even worse is the fact that Crews was coming off one of the best months of his career. In July he posted an .801 OPS and walked 14 times. It sure seems like that plate discipline was a mirage because outside of August he has just 7 walks all season.

The biggest problem for Dylan Crews this season is the combination of chasing and whiffing. In 2026, Crews has a 32.8% chase rate and 30.6% whiff rate. Both of those numbers are well below average. It leads to him having to fight an uphill battle.

Coming into the season, one of the biggest issues Crews had was his ground ball heavy profile. This season, he has actually gotten a lot better at elevating the ball, cutting his GB% from 50.2% to 38.5%. Unfortunately, a lot of these flyballs are to straightaway centerfield, making it harder to clear the fences. With all the athletic center fielders in the game, getting hits up the middle is now harder than ever.

He still has some issues with his batted ball profile, but I think the biggest problem is his swing decisions. Crews just throws away too many at bats, especially in big moments where he knows he has to do something. Against the Mets there was an at bat where he struck out on 7 pitches and not a single one of them was in the strike zone.

Dylan Crews did not get a single pitch in the strike zone pic.twitter.com/pMcw5Xvzrl

— federalbaseball (@federalbaseball) August 15, 2026

That at bat sums up the Dylan Crews experience for me. He has the talent to be a good player, but everything seems to be moving too fast for him at the plate. You can see that with how often he falls behind 0-2. Whenever you watch Crews, you see a hitter on the defensive.

With this season’s playoff hopes being gone, this should serve as an audition period for Crews. Unless he heats up significantly down the stretch, his spot on the team should not be secure. Right now, he is the fourth best outfielder on this team behind James Wood, Jacob Young and Daylen Lile. 

At the moment, he is closer to the likes of Andrew Pinckney and Sam Petersen than being the star fans thought they were getting. I still think there is a talented player in Crews, and he is a guy who could be a late bloomer. He has the exit velocities, athleticism and defense to be a good player. However, the bat leaves so much to be desired.

My pick for MLB's next post-hype breakout:

Dylan Crews (WSH)

.323 xwOBA
90.5 MPH Avg EV
+ Bat Speed
Launch angle up 3.5°

Below is Dylan Crews' 2026 season compared to Jordan Walker's 2025 campaign before his breakout.

Buy Dylan Crews stock while you can. pic.twitter.com/uRGRR4VzDP

— Andrew DeCeglie (@Andrew_FBB) July 24, 2026

Is it possible that Crews becomes the next Jordan Walker type breakout star? I suppose, but it is certainly not something I would bet on. It is more likely that he is an athletic fourth outfielder who plays against left handed pitching. That can be a useful piece to a roster, but a massive disappointment given his pedigree.

Things can change quickly, but right now it just feels like things are over for Crews in DC. If you can get something worthwhile or even package him with other pieces to get a pitcher, it is something I would absolutely do. I have some hope for Dylan Crews, but I no longer have any real belief in him.

Following the 2024 season, the Astros were unwilling to meet Alex Bregman’s price tag. Instead, they settled for a more modest option, signing Christian Walker to a three-year, $60 million contract.

Bregman has slashed .264/.353/.433 while accumulating 7.5 bWAR since leaving Houston, while Walker has slashed .235/.302/.430 with 2.3 bWAR in two seasons with the Astros.

Last winter, the Astros again decided not to pay the market price for high-end starters like Dylan Cease or Framber Valdez. Instead, they gambled on Tatsuya Imai, signing him to a three-year, $54 million contract with two player options.

Cease has authored a Cy Young-caliber season in Toronto with a 2.42 ERA in 23 starts, while Valdez, despite posting just a 99 ERA+, has made every start in the Detroit Tigers’ rotation and completed at least six innings in 14 of 25 starts. Imai, meanwhile, has been banished to the back of the Astros’ bullpen after posting a 5.83 ERA in 15 starts. He failed to complete the first inning in three starts and the third inning in two others.

The Astros have had a clear philosophy in the 15 years Jim Crane has owned the team: They have not given a free agent contract or extension longer than five seasons.

It is a philosophy rooted in prudence. The team doesn’t want to be stuck paying high-end salaries to players in their late 30s. Rarely do those deals age well, but avoiding them altogether has kept the Astros from adding a class of player that can significantly raise a team’s ceiling.

The Astros have spent money in free agency despite this edict, but they’ve handed out shorter-term, lucrative contracts to players a tier or two below who, for the most part, have badly underperformed. 

The team has given out a free agent contract of at least $50 million in each of the past four offseasons. Walker and Imai have been disappointing thus far. Jose Abreu’s three-year, $58.5 million contract was an abject disaster.

After signing a five-year, $95 million contract in 2024, Josh Hader has pitched like one of the sport’s best relievers over the last two seasons after a disappointing first year with the Astros. However, injuries ended his 2025 season early, and he missed the first two months of 2026.

Still, as good as he is, Hader doesn’t have the impact a high-level starting pitcher or everyday player can have, but the Astros refuse to buy into that market. 

The Astros didn’t need to go out and buy All-Stars when they were drafting and developing their own, but that well has dried up in recent years, and no one in the upper levels of their minor league system appears to be headed on a trajectory to have that sort of impact. 

The Astros could still win the American League West this season, but it’s hard to imagine this group advancing far past that. Crane will likely be in the market for a new general manager whenever this campaign ends, but in order for the Astros to get back to the World Series, his philosophy must change.

Now, with a few pleasant baseball weeks between his Mets and the hardest days of this disappointing season, Steve Cohen is finally willing to name the problem.

"I can argue we might have taken too much risk as far as when you think about all the changes that we made," Cohen said in the Mets dugout Wednesday morning in his first press scrum since the team fired its manager and sold assets at the deadline. "Whenever there are significant changes, sometimes it takes a while to integrate. Those are the things I’m looking at to understand exactly what we can do better."

Until Wednesday, Cohen had been conspicuously careful when discussing his team’s struggles. For one, he only spoke about those struggles on the record one time since firing manager Carlos Mendoza – and he did so on a podcast with The New York Post reporters he knows well. When he did address them, he offered support for his president of baseball operations David Stearns, rather than any specific diagnosis of what Stearns might have gotten wrong.

But Wednesday morning, with his major league team playing better, his minor league system rejuvenated somewhat by a trade deadline sell-off, and his commitment to Stearns made explicit, Cohen was willing to share the findings of his private autopsy.

"I just think when you add new players, when you add a coaching staff, maybe adding players with an injury history – when you add risk upon risk upon risk…it doesn’t mean it had to turn out bad," Cohen said. "It just means you have dispersion of results and maybe the possibility of an undesirable result is more of a possibility because of the risk you’ve taken. I equate it to running a portfolio: the more risk you take in running a portfolio, yeah, you can have major upside. But also, your downside can be bigger. So you can have bigger variance in results, and I think that’s what happened here."

The risks Stearns and the Mets took in 2026 have been well-documented. One of them – signing oft-injured Jorge Polanco to a two-year deal to play first base when he had barely ever played there before – loomed particularly large as Cohen spoke Wednesday morning: a few moments earlier, manager Andy Green announced that Polanco would undergo season-ending surgery on the left ankle that has limited him all season. In a season full of risks that yielded suboptimal outcomes, Polanco’s situation yielded a true worst case.

Other risks already look less damning than they did a few months ago. Building an offseason around Bo Bichette, who had never played in New York before, seemed like a risk that didn’t pay off – until he adjusted. For more than a month now, he has looked like the player the Mets thought they were getting.

Cohen also said he did not think changing the whole coaching staff was a miscalculation in itself – and indeed, the Mets' young pitchers and hitters certainly seem to have been able to make adjustments, even if veteran starters like David Peterson and Freddy Peralta struggled to adjust to new tutelage.

"I look at it as in the whole. I look at it as individual decisions that make perfect sense," Cohen said when asked about all the coaching changes. "But when you add it all up, you get into a different realm of did we take too much risk? It’s kind of looking at it from a top-down perspective."

From a top-down perspective, Cohen said, he is more optimistic now than when he expressed concern about 2027 to the New York Post in July. He pointed to the impact Francisco Lindor has had on the team’s energy and success since returning from the injured list. He lamented that Juan Soto and Lindor have not been healthy at the same time, since that combination might have been able to lift this team out of its slump sooner. And he did not speak like a man who believes widespread change is necessary.

In fact, other than affirming that the Mets are taking Green at his word about returning to the front office and are therefore planning to conduct a managerial search this winter, Cohen did not seem desperate for more drastic measures – one of many early indications from Mets decision-makers that this winter might not bring as much roster turnover as one might expect after such an uninspiring season.

Cohen, for example, offered another hint: he is becoming increasingly skeptical of free agency to fill roster holes.

"What are the areas to make the team better? Farm system. Trades. Staff. And free agency. Free agency is a negative expected value," Cohen said. "…If you have to fill in holes, you have to fill in holes, too. So you have to be tactical. But every time you dip into free agency, you just know that’s a tough place to be."

Free agency is a particularly difficult place to be this winter, when a looming lockout and weak free agent class (outside of Tarik Skubal) means the Mets likely weren’t going to find many answers there anyway. The Mets need a starter or two, and perhaps the market has enough of those that free agency can yield them. For what it’s worth, on Aug. 19, people familiar with the Mets' thinking say it's too early to characterize their interest in Skubal, though they would not rule out a situation in which Cohen pushes Stearns to leave his comfort zone and pursue a long-term deal for the right kind of starting pitcher.

But when it comes to the Mets’ lineup, the answers cannot come until they decide what their questions are – and those are yet to be determined. For one, they do not know whether Bichette will opt out of his deal. They also do not know what they can count on from Polanco, other than that he is under contract for $21 million and will therefore be part of their plans in some form.

They could choose to pursue a slugging first baseman, and a person familiar with their efforts confirmed reports that they have scouted Japanese star Teruaki Sato this year. Almost every contender has. And if bringing players to New York for the first time constitutes a risk, bringing a player across the world for the first time certainly seems like an even bigger one.

But they could also choose to work with what they have, particularly if Bichette returns. In that scenario, their two least productive offensive positions would be second base and first base. Marcus Semien is under contract for two more years and a combined $46 million, so the path of least resistance would be to let him start the season at second base until one of the many infield prospects in the higher levels of the Mets system (Mitch Voit, Jefferson Rojas, Emilien Pitre, etc.) is ready to take a shot there.

At first base, Jared Young continues to prove he is a capable platoon bat against right-handed pitching, meaning he could pair with Polanco in a modified platoon or rotation to keep Polanco healthy. If Young holds steady and improves and Polanco does anything compared to his career numbers, one could envision that being a serviceable combination.

Still, the word "if" features prominently in almost all those scenarios. If these Mets had played better early this season, they would be fighting for a playoff spot right now. If so many risks hadn’t yielded so many worse-than-expected outcomes, Cohen would not be giving this autopsy at all. The question he and Stearns and the Mets front office must answer between now and the start of the offseason is this: Is the bigger risk to their trajectory doing too much to a roster that struggled with wholesale change once already, or is the biggest risk not doing enough?

For the second consecutive week, the Dodgers have a chance to sweep a last-place team on a Wednesday evening. They were successful at home last week in beating the Kansas City Royals, and try for the same on Wednesday night against the Colorado Rockies at Coors Field.

The Rockies have the worst record (50-76) and run differential (-120) in the National League. Only the Athletics are worse in the American League, but for Colorado it’s all relative. They won 43 games all season last year, and are already seven victories clear of that with five and a half weeks left in the season. They are a franchise in transition and improving, but they have a long path to travel before contention.

The Dodgers have already won this series, with Wednesday the last time they will play the Rockies in 2026. The Dodgers are 9-3 against the Rockies this year and are 50-15 (.769) in their last 65 games against the Rockies, dating back to 2022.

That’s the last time the Dodgers lost a series to Colorado, dropping two out of three games at Coors Field that year from both April 8-10 and June 27-29. Since then the Dodgers have swept the Rockies eight times, six at home and two in Denver:

• July 4-6, 2022 (Los Angeles)
• April 3-4, 2023 (Los Angeles, 2 games)
• August 10-13, 2023 (Los Angeles, 4 games)
• September 27-29, 2024 (Denver)
• April 14-16, 2025 (Los Angeles)
• June 24-26, 2025 (Denver)
• September 8-10, 2025 (Los Angeles)
• May 25-27, 2026 (Los Angeles)

After going through an offensive malaisefor a month and a half, the Dodgers have conveniently scored seven and 11 runs in their first two games in this series at Coors Field.

The last time the Dodgers scored at least seven runs in three straight games of the same series against the Rockies — jackpot, if you will — was all the way back in April 5-7, 2019, which was a Dodgers sweep. The last time the Dodgers scored seven runs three games in a row this year was June 9-11 in Pittsburgh, when they scored 12, eight, and eight runs in a series win over the Pirates.

Wednesday game info

• Teams: Dodgers at Rockies
• Ballpark: Coors Field, Denver
• Start time: 5:40 p.m.
• TV: SportsNet LA
• Radio: AM 570 (English), KTNQ 1020 AM (Spanish)

After two straight gut-punch walk-off losses at Wrigley Field, the White Sox will try to salvage the finale of the Crosstown series this afternoon before heading back to the South Side. Despite the back-to-back heartbreakers, the Sox still hold a four-game lead over the Twins in the AL Central, but there isn’t much time to dwell on what went wrong on the North Side. Atlanta comes to town tomorrow for a makeup game, followed by a big weekend series against the Mets, so stealing one from the Cubs today would be a nice way to build some momentum before another important stretch.

The bigger concern right now might be finding enough healthy, rested arms to get through it. The pitching staff is running on fumes after the Sox emptied the tank during last weekend’s sweep of the Tigers, and the effects have been pretty obvious over the first two games at Wrigley. Noah Schultz is back in Charlotte, Davis Martin is on the IL, and Shane Smith remains on the 40-man roster but hasn’t exactly made a compelling case to return, going 0-2 with a 10.80 ERA and 2.52 WHIP over 8 1/3 innings in his last seven appearances with the Knights. Drew Thorpe is another intriguing possibility after three encouraging rehab outings between Birmingham and Charlotte following Tommy John surgery, but he isn’t currently on the 40-man roster. Ultimately, we can only guess where the reinforcements will come from, but something has to give.

For today, Sean Newcomb gets the ball as the opener, with José Urquidy expected to handle the bulk of the innings. Urquidy’s White Sox debut on Aug. 14 against Detroit didn’t exactly inspire confidence, as the righthander surrendered three runs on five hits over 3 2/3 innings. If the Sox have any hope of giving their bullpen a chance to recover, they desperately need length from him today. His Statcast profile offers a pretty clear roadmap for how he needs to attack the Cubs: Urquidy has struggled with walks and doesn’t generate many strikeouts, so getting ahead and forcing Chicago to put the ball in play will be critical. He also hasn’t qualified in several of Baseball Savant’s run-value categories, but his four-seamer, sweeper, changeup and curveball give him enough variety to keep hitters from sitting on one pitch. Against an aggressive Cubs lineup, pounding the zone and avoiding free passes might be more important than trying to miss bats.

The Cubs counter with Clay Holmes, who has made two starts since coming over from the Mets. His most recent outing came Aug. 14 against the Cardinals, when he earned the win and quality start with 6 1/3 scoreless innings, allowing just one hit and one walk while striking out three. Holmes’ Baseball Savant numbers show exactly what makes him difficult: His overall pitching run value sits in the 82nd percentile, with his breaking stuff in the 83rd, while his sinker ranks in the 91st percentile. He also sits in the 98th percentile in ground-ball rate and the 95th percentile in launch-angle sweet-spot percentage. In other words, the Sox probably aren’t going to beat him by pounding the ball into the dirt. Holmes doesn’t generate a ton of whiffs or strikeouts, though, and his hard-hit rate is only in the 12th percentile. The best approach is to make him work, resist chasing his pitches off the plate and look for something they can elevate rather than helping him pile up quick ground-ball outs. With Holmes ranking in the 80th percentile in chase rate, discipline outside the zone will be especially important.

Venable is going with almost the exact same lineup as yesterday, with Sam Antonacci getting the leadoff assignment and Chase Meidroth batting seventh. Munetaka Murakami, Miguel Vargas and Andrew Benintendi follow Antonacci, while Braden Montgomery bats fifth and Colson Montgomery sixth. The only difference from last night is that Jake Rogers slots in at backstop. Against a ground-ball machine like Holmes, getting traffic at the top and finding a way to elevate the baseball will be key. Mune hit his 29th home run last night and has a 32-game on-base streak, so hopefully the rookie can keep that going today.

On the other side, Pete Crow-Armstrong — who has already terrorized the Sox throughout this series — gets a day off his feet at DH but remains atop the Cubs’ order, followed by Seiya Suzuki, Alex Bregman and Michael Busch. So, you know, Urquidy can ease into things.

First pitch is at 1:20 p.m. CDT. The game will be televised on CHSN and can be heard on ESPN Chicago 1000. Hopefully, today’s ending is a little less painful.