Cleveland Guardians at Chicago White Sox

First pitch at Rate Field is 6:40 PM CT, and it's a study in contrasts on the mound. Parker Messick (8-6, 2.57 ERA) has been one of the best arms in the league all summer for Cleveland, while Noah Schultz (3-8, 5.82 ERA) is a rookie whose grip on a rotation spot has been anything but secure.

Chicago's bigger issue right now isn't Schultz, it's everything behind him. Joey Bart is day-to-day and out of the lineup, and the White Sox already have a stack of arms — Drew Thorpe, Jordan Leasure, Prelander Berroa, Ky Bush, Mike Vasil — buried on the 60-day IL. Cleveland's list is thinner, with reliever Shawn Armstrong the lone notable name on the shelf after a calf issue landed him on the 60-day IL.

None of that changes the standings math. Chicago still sits atop the AL Central despite the week it just had, while Cleveland is fighting to hang onto a wild-card spot. Both clubs know exactly what's at stake even while they're both playing their worst baseball of the month.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	R	H	E
CLE	2	0	0	0	5	1	0	0	0	8	10	0
CWS	0	1	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	2	8	0

Both teams walk in fresh off getting swept. The Mets rolled through Cleveland, capping it with a 13-6 blowout that turned into a laugher once the Guardians' bullpen couldn't get outs in the eighth. The White Sox had it worse, if anything — Boston beat them three straight, including a 13-inning gut-punch where Chicago blew five separate leads before finally losing 12-11. That loss pushed the Red Sox to 31-5 since late June, which tells you how buzzsaw hot the team that just ran through the South Siders has been.

Messick's line since the break has been almost absurd — four earned runs total across his last four starts — and he's simply been getting jobbed on run support along the way. Schultz, meanwhile, is a talented arm still finding his big-league legs, and this is exactly the kind of start where Chicago needs him to give the pen a break rather than add to the workload.

Two teams playing tired, banged-up baseball in a game that still matters plenty for the standings — that's a recipe for something messy at Rate Field.

Sources