Takeaways From White Sox Series Win Over Marlins

CHICAGO – The White Sox secured their third series win of the season with a 4-2 victory over the Miami Marlins Sunday at Rate Field.

Tim Elko made his MLB debut during Saturday's 3-1 loss, but he broke the tie with a three-run home run – his first major league hit – in the sixth inning of Sunday's win. Another highlight of the series was Shane Smith's outing on Saturday, shutting out Marlins over six innings, though the bullpen squandered a one-run lead. The White Sox won Friday's game 6-2, thanks to a three-run seventh inning.

Will Venable's club has a day off on Monday before beginning a three-game series in Cincinnati on Tuesday at 6:40 pm. ET. But before looking too far ahead, here are three takeaways from the Marlins series.

1. Vaughn starting to produce

Andrew Vaughn got off to an abysmal start to the season, batting just .135 through his first 19 games. The White Sox remained hopeful he'd start producing at a higher level as some metrics suggested he was getting unlucky. On April 29, Vaughn ranked between the 75th and 89th percentile among all MLB hitters in expected slugging percentage (.485), average exit velocity (91.6), barrel percentage (16.3), hard-hit percentage (51.2) and squared-up percentage (31.2). He was hitting the ball hard but right to defenders.

Vaughn may be starting to turn a corner, though. Over the weekend against the Marlins, Vaughn went 3-for-12 with two home runs, three RBI, zero walks and four strikeouts. His season-long numbers still don't look pretty, but a slash line of .191/.225/.329/.554 is the best it's been all season.

Venable is starting to see some positives.

"Yeah, for sure. And for a while. He has put good swings on it," Venable said after Saturday's game. "For him and for all our guys, it's about not chasing. Leading up to that homer, he took three close pitches, one of them was a strike. That's the result you want in the process, where he's able to control the zone and not miss good pitches to hit."

2. Bullpen remains a work in progress

The White Sox 12-29 record hasn't produced many high-leverage opportunities. In fact, the team has just two saves all season – Brandon Eisert on April 24 against the Twins and Cam Booser on Sunday against the Marlins. The White Sox entered the year with a bullpen mostly consisting of inexperienced pitchers at the major league level, or those who hadn't previously been closers. They hoped Mike Clevinger could fill that role, but that quickly didn't work out.

So when the White Sox got to a situation like Saturday's – a 1-0 lead entering the seventh inning – Venable simply doesn't have a group relievers who've established themselves at late-inning stalwarts to call upon.

“We were talking about it before the game and we're lining up some pockets and trying to put these guys in the best situations possible,” Venable said Saturday. “It's about the matchups, but it's also about how guys are throwing. So we're just piecing it together day by day."

After six scoreless innings from rookie starter Shane Smith, Venable called on right-hander Steven Wilson, who had given up just one earned run in 10 innings this season. But after striking out the first batter, Wilson gave up a game-tying solo home run to Kyle Stowers.

Jordan Leasure replaced Wilson to begin the eighth and gave up a leadoff single to Dane Myers, who stole second base. Leasure struck out two batters before being replaced by Brandon Eisert, who walked his first batter. In the next at-bat, Eisert gave up a two-RBI triple to Eric Wagaman, which gave the Marlins a 3-1 lead after trailing most of the night. Wilson, Leasure and Eisert were each credited with one earned run.

On Friday, the White Sox used Leasure, Caleb Freeman, Cam Booser, Wilson and Eisert to cover the final four innings, and the Marlins scored just one run off Freeman. He was optioned to Triple-A Charlotte on Sunday and replaced by Yoendrys Gómez.

In Sunday's win, Vasil provided good length out of the bullpen, allowing one run across three innings. Tyler Gilbert and Booser closed things out with a pair of scoreless innings.

"That was huge," Venable said. "We were down some guys, so for these guys to step up was awesome. In that spot, Cam is the guy that we trust against both lefties and righties and certainly the presence at the end of the game was huge."

White Sox bench coach Walker McKinven shared more insight into the bullpen decisions ahead of Sunday's game.

"There's no way to predict exactly how it's going to land. But we do talk about it, where we like certain pitchers in certain situations, try to space out their usage so we're not grinding any of these guys down and having them for the full 162," McKinven said. "It's important that we just game plan this stuff and talk about it as a unit to try to get it right. Because yeah, we don't have a standstill seventh, eighth and ninth inning guy and we want to get them in the right spots to maximize each of these guys. Don't always get it right but we do feel really good about the process to try and get it right."

3. White Sox power increases with Elko

The White Sox rank 28th in MLB with just 29 home runs. But after calling up Tim Elko ahead of Saturday's game, they could see a boost in that department. Elko led all minor league hitters with 10 home runs in 31 Triple-A games, and his first MLB home run was a big reason the White Sox won Sunday's game.

"Hitting the ball out of the ballpark changes the score quickly," Venable said. "So, as much as these guys have been grinding at-bats and doing a good job of getting on base, to have that threat there to go deep is going to be huge for our offense."

White Sox catcher Matt Thaiss noticed Elko's power in spring training and thinks the first baseman will provide some pop for the lineup.

"His first hit went way further than my hit," Thaiss said. "It's really awesome. I'm happy for Tim. He's had a big smile on his face ever since he got here. It's always exciting to see and it's a big reason why we won the game today. I'm really happy for him, happy for us, and that was awesome."

1. Vaughn starting to produce

2. Bullpen remains a work in progress

3. White Sox power increases with Elko

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