Residents in the Chicago area weren’t the only ones who suffered a power outage on Monday. The White Sox offense, which has been sputtering as of late, continued their lackluster performance against a new opponent – the inferior, yet somehow second-place, Detroit Tigers.
A forgettable 5-1 defeat has now dropped the South Siders to a game under .500 and is the fifth loss suffered over the last six games. It’s evident the frustration level from fans is quickly rising and those same emotions were present in Monday night’s postgame press conference.
“We came out flat and I felt like we stayed flat the whole game,” starting pitcher Dallas Keuchel said. “We’ve got some guys coming out and taking professional at-bats, being professional on the mound and doing what it takes to win and we’ve got some guys going through the motions. So we need to clean a lot of things up. If we want to be in this thing at the end of the season, we need to start that now.”
“It just seemed like we were taking the night off,” Keuchel elaborated further. “We can’t afford that with a young core that we have here. We got to show up everyday and even if there’s no fans, we got to make sure that we’re ready to go. And even if we’re not ready to go, we got to fake it until we make it. It seemed like today was one of the first games I’ve seen very subpar play from everybody.”
Regardless of your personal feelings about the current state of this White Sox team, you have to love this quote and candidness from Keuchel. His leadership is a key reason why he was brought in as a free agent this past offseason, and his ability to not only hold guys accountable but provide guidance throughout this stretch will be crucial.
In addition to the veteran southpaw, infielder Danny Mendick also spoke with the media. He was asked about whether or not now was the time to panic, and responded by expressing his faith in the team moving forward.
“I’ll tell you what, I feel really confident. If you look at the lineup and you look at this team on paper, we’re too good to even panic right now. Like we’ve shown in that six-game win streak, anything can happen. That’s the best part about the Chicago White Sox and the way that we play the game.”
“We want to get hot at the right time, not saying that right now is a bad time. We want to win games, but you want to get hot when it comes to playoff time, when it comes to World Series time, and stuff like that. Because that, in the end, is what you want to win. I’m confident that we’re going to get hot at the right time.”
For more on tonight’s game, you can view our recap here.
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Featured Photo: White Sox/Zoom
