White Sox Fans Are Forever Indebted To The Minnesota Twins For Signing JA Happ Last Winter
Last night, Nick Madrigal hit his first of about 800 career home runs:
This is on the heels of Andrew Vaughn also going yard for the first time in his career:
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The common denominator here is that both bombs were hit off JA Happ, and more specifically, a left handed pitcher. You see, I've been trying to tell EVERYONE who follows Barstool for both this year and the 60 game season in 2020 that the White Sox murder left handed pitching in cold blood. CRUCIFY it. Here's what they've done against LHP over the course of the last 100 games (this year and last year):
2020:
and 2021:
They cave left handed pitchers' faces in. Simple as that. That's why I was ELATED when I saw this tweet come across my timeline last winter:
Now, the Twins were supposed to be the White Sox biggest competition in the AL Central this year. Cleveland too, to a lesser extent, even though they dealt Lindor. Regardless, though he's still got juice in the tank and could/would eat up quality innings against every team in baseball NOT named the White Sox, I knew that the White Sox would see Happ a handful of times this year and that those games would be all but guaranteed victories.
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So, Minnesota, I want to say thank you. Thank you from myself, the White Sox and White Sox fans all over the globe. Thank you for thinking it was a good idea to sign JA Happ and give the Sox a 3-4 (and hopefully more) game handicap on the season. It was incredibly nice of you, even though I don't think we actually needed it. KEEP BURYING THEM. They're not gonna go away quietly and even though the Sox have a seemingly insurmountable lead built up on them, I don't trust that they're not gonna go on a tear eventually. Their lineup is too good not to.
Nevertheless, feed me ALL the left handed pitching.
On another note, Yoan Moncada is quietly getting on base at a .400 clip right now:
It's kinda crazy. He's gotten some shit from White Sox twitter here and there so far thus summer… and I KINDA get some of it, though 95% of it is unwarranted. Dude's a good player at worst and I think his start to 2021 is his "at worst". He's just not doing a TON of damage right now in the power department. I don't have stats to support this, but there has been a good amount of pitches that I've seen where he's attacked a mistake pitch/hanger and fouled it off. The fact that he's sporting a 136 wRC+ in spite of not doing a whole lot of damage in the power/slugging category is crazy. The last few nights looked like a step in the right direction as he has crucified a few baseballs. If he barrels baseballs like he has in the last few games, he's going to have a HOT finish to May. Like, I'm talking 5+ bombs and a .650+ slugging type end of the month. He's not close to being the Yo of 2019… he's close to being the best version of himself which is an MVP type level of offensive production. I'm talking better than 2019. Pair that with his gold glove caliber defense, and that's the exact sort of headliner you want in a Chris Sale trade, sooooo…. stop bitching about him
This team is awesome. Just need to weather the injury storm by riding the hot bats of the top of the order until a trade is made and/or Lu and Eloy come back in August. Let's keep this train a movin':