One team is baseball's best redemption story. The other is still trying to figure out who it is with the deadline bearing down. Friday night in Chicago should settle nothing and clarify plenty.
Bush’s Picks
HOUCWS
HOUCWS
OverUnder
Best BetWhite Sox
Chicago's the team playing like it knows who it is right now — first place, deep lineup, a rotation anchored by an ace-level Davis Martin. Houston's still scuffling to stay above .500 and just crawled out of a four-game hole with a slugfest, which reads more like a team surviving than one rolling. The price probably reflects the form gap, but this is still the safer moneyline of the week.
Astros
+Alvarez and Peña carried Monday's win
+Still just 4 games back in AL West
+Front office committed to buying at deadline
−48-54, lost 6 of last 7 before Monday
−Worst outfield OPS in baseball
−Correa done for year, Walker day-to-day
White Sox
+First place in AL Central, 53-46
+Davis Martin at 9-2, 2.41 ERA
+Three hitters on 38-homer pace
−Teel out on crutches with ankle injury
−Montgomery banged up, status uncertain
−Just got swept by a red-hot Boston club
Neither club has locked in a starter for this one yet, which fits the vibe of both rotations right now — Houston's been picking through the wreckage of Hayden Wesneski, Brandon Walter and Mike Burrows all season, while the White Sox are riding a group led by Davis Martin that's quietly become one of the better stories in the league. Whoever gets the ball, this is a first-place club against a team still trying to prove it belongs in October.
The lineups are where this series gets interesting no matter who's pitching. Houston is still without Carlos Correa for the year and now Christian Walker is day-to-day after getting pressed into pinch-hit duty on a bad hip — that's two thirds of the left side of the infield compromised. Chicago's dealing with its own attrition after losing Kyle Teel to a serious ankle injury and watching Colson Montgomery limp out of Monday's game, but the Sox have had enough juice in the lineup to cover for it.
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HOU Astros
CWS White Sox
Houston enters as a buyer, at least according to GM Dana Brown, but the roster still has the look of a team searching for answers — Houston owns one of the worst OPS marks from its outfield spot in all of baseball, and that hole doesn't close before Friday. Chicago, meanwhile, gets to plug those absences with the kind of lineup depth that a 100-loss rebuild wasn't supposed to produce this fast.
Houston Astros
Jul 22?vs Marlins—
Jul 21?vs Marlins—
Chicago White Sox
Jul 22?@ Rangers—
Jul 21?@ Rangers—
Recent form.
It's hard to overstate how strange this season has been for the White Sox. This is a franchise that lost 101, then 121, then 102 games across three straight years, and it's currently sitting in first place in the AL Central with a lineup — Murakami, Montgomery, Miguel Vargas — that's got three hitters on pace for 38-plus home runs. Houston, by contrast, is the team that's supposed to be here. Instead the Astros are 48-54, four games back in the AL West, and they needed a Jeremy Peña grand slam and a two-homer night from Yordan Alvarez just to snap a four-game skid on Monday.
Houston Astros
(0)
Fully healthy — no injuries on ESPN's report
Chicago White Sox
(0)
Fully healthy — no injuries on ESPN's report
Injury report — info via ESPN.
Alvarez still makes Houston dangerous on any given night, and the Astros clearly believe they're close enough to buy rather than sell before August 3. But belief and results have been two different things for this club most of the summer, and they're walking into a ballpark where the home team hasn't needed much fixing at all.
