What will Tuesday’s trade deadline bring for the White Sox and Cubs? – The Denver Post

The Cubs return to Wrigley Field riding high.

Although a 3-0 loss Sunday at Busch Stadium snapped an eight-game winning streak, the Cubs put themselves in a position to buy ahead of Tuesday’s 5 p.m. CT trade deadline.

The White Sox have been in selling mode.

Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo López are Los Angeles Angels. Lance Lynn and Joe Kelly are Los Angeles Dodgers. Kendall Graveman is with the Houston Astros.

How will the roster look after Tuesday’s trade deadline?

Every Monday throughout the season, Tribune baseball writers will provide an update on what happened — and what’s ahead for the Cubs and Sox.

Nick Madrigal producing plus-defense at third base

It didn’t take long into his first game off the injured list Saturday to show why Madrigal statistically rates as one of the better defensive third basemen in the majors this year.

Madrigal made two great plays in Saturday’s win against the Cardinals. One required a diving stop into foul territory before popping up to deliver an on-target one-hop throw to get the runner at first. In the other, he got to a ball glove-side toward the hole that manager David Ross thought was an even tougher play.

“For him to solidify that left side and the defense he’s played, it’s definitely above what anybody expected,” Ross said Sunday.

It’s a testament to Madrigal’s commitment to his position change, starting with the work he put in the offseason which included time with bench coach Andy Green in Arizona before spring training.

“You see how much more comfortable he’s gotten throughout the season,” Ross said. “… Part of our identity is good team defense and we pitching and defense, those things go hand-in-hand. The more we can solidify those types of guys around the field, the better off we’re going to be.”

Advanced metrics have backed up the eye test on Madrigal’s defensive work. His 8 Outs Above Average (OAA) are tied for eighth-best among the 39 qualified third baseman in the big leagues this season while his success rate is the highest. Conversely, Patrick Wisdom’s minus-6 OAA is tied for second-worst at the position.

With the focus on the future, what’s next for Sox pitcher Garrett Crochet?

As the recent trades have indicated, the Sox are looking ahead.

They have some openings in their rotation. And pitcher Garrett Crochet would like to be considered for a starting role in the future.

“That will be a conversation I need to have with (general manager) Rick (Hahn) and (manager) Pedro (Grifol) as well,” Crochet said Saturday. “I was hoping to get a little bit of an innings base under my belt this year. So then I could do that a little bit easier.

“At the end of the day, I feel like that sort of routine is a better routine for me based on the bumps and bruises that have been happening to me. I feel like I have the stuff to fulfill that role. I just want the opportunity to do it.”

The team’s first-round pick in 2020, Crochet has made 69 relief appearances in three seasons. He missed 2022 after undergoing Tommy John surgery.

Crochet has appeared in 10 games in 2023. He is currently on the injured list with left shoulder inflammation.

There was a pause in his recent rehab assignment because of what Crochet said was a “little muscle strain in my shoulder.”

“I’m just going to take a few weeks off throwing,” he said. “I just want to take this comeback slow and don’t want to rush anything. I still plan to pitch at some point at the end of the year.”

Pitching coach Ethan Katz said Crochet has the stuff, but the first goal is to make sure he’s healthy.

“He has a very nice pitch mix,” Katz said Sunday. “There’s some things that we want to be more efficient with the pitches. If that’s the route we’re looking to go, he’s going to have to be a little more efficient.

“But the stuff is there. The ability to get guys out in the big leagues is there. But there’s still some stuff we need to do to make sure he’s able to go out there and go five, six, seven innings, whatever the case may be starting and help develop him that way.”

Week ahead: Cubs

The last year has brought “a lot of growing pains” for right-hander Hayden Wesneski as he approaches the one-year mark of coming into the organization.

“It’s been a long year, I will say — I forgot it’d been a year,” Wesneski said Sunday of his trade to the Cubs. “Man, I’ve learned a lot being in the big leagues, just learning from older guys.”

Wesneski was recalled to start Friday in a piggyback role with Drew Smyly. He made the most of three starts at Triple-A Iowa where he specifically focused on tinkering with his sinker and throwing it to his glove side. He specifically looked at better utilizing his pitch versus lefties by throwing a sinker to their front hip or seeing what happens when he throws one away. He said he didn’t throw his changeup as much as he wanted, but felt he made progress on finding things that can help him better navigate lefties who have hit him too often this year.

“I was just trying different things that I can’t necessarily test out here and fail,” Wesneski said. “It’s OK to fail in Iowa and try, ‘OK, that didn’t work or hey that did work, it didn’t work out in my favor.’ … I had at-bats I could try it on.”

Ross said Sunday that Wesneski will be in the bullpen and his role will be defined as they move forward.

• Monday: vs. Reds, 7:05 p.m. Marquee
• Tuesday: vs. Reds, 7:05 p.m. Marquee
• Wednesday: vs. Reds, 7:05 p.m. Marquee
• Thursday: vs. Reds, 7:05 p.m. Marquee
• Friday: vs. Braves, 1:20 p.m. Marquee
• Saturday: vs. Braves, 1:20 p.m. Marquee
• Sunday: vs. Braves, 1:20 p.m. Marquee

Week ahead: White Sox

All eyes are on Tuesday’s trade deadline.

The Sox have been active already.

“I’m certainly not going to lie, the idea where we’re at this point where guys like (Lucas) Giolito and (Renaldo) López who we acquired back in ’16 when we kicked off the rebuild in earnest are logically the guys that make sense to move, given their contract status, there’s an element of real deep disappointment that we’re at this point right now, that there wasn’t more postseason victories along the way as part of their tenure with the White Sox,” Hahn said Wednesday.

“But in terms of that, frankly, we have a job to do right now. I’ll have time come Aug. 2 to have a drink and a cigar if I want to wallow in disappointment, do it then. But now is not the time. Now is the time to continue to improve the future of this organization.”

Hahn said after Friday’s moves that while it was tough to predict if there would be any more activity, the Sox would continue talking to teams, “and if there’s something that makes sense, we’ll pull the trigger.”

• Monday: off
• Tuesday: at Rangers, 7:05 p.m., NBCSCH
• Wednesday: at Rangers, 7:05 p.m., NBCSCH
• Thursday: at Rangers, 1:05 p.m., NBCSCH
• Friday: at Guardians, 6:10 p.m., NBCSCH
• Saturday: at Guardians, 6:10 p.m., NBCSCH
• Sunday: at Guardians, 11:05 a.m., Peacock

What we’re reading this morning

This week in Chicago baseball

Aug. 2, 1990: Frank Thomas makes his White Sox — and MLB — debut

“I was shocked,” said Thomas, the Sox’s No. 1 pick in 1989 of the call-up from Double-A Birmingham. “They said, ‘Clean out your locker. You’re going to Milwaukee.’“

He started the first game of a doubleheader against the Brewers in County Stadium — and drove in the winning run with an 85-foot grounder in the ninth.

His debut game in a game in which the Sox started their last three No. 1 draft picks: Thomas, pitcher Alex Fernandez and third baseman Robin Ventura.

Aug. 2, 1906: The “Hitless Wonder” White Sox began their AL record 19-game winning streak with a 3-0 win over Boston.

The record would be tied by the 1947 New York Yankees.

Aug. 3, 1921: 8 members of the Black Sox are banned for life

The front page headline of the Aug. 3, 1921, Chicago Daily Tribune blared: “Jury Frees Baseball Men.”

Eight White Sox players charged with throwing the 1919 World Series were acquitted by a 12-man jury on Aug. 2 that deliberated just 2 hours, 47 minutes.

Several hundred people who jammed into the Cook County courthouse shouted: “Hooray for the clean Sox!” as they flung their hats in the air and whistled.

White Sox pitcher Ed Cicotte leaped to his feet and pounded teammate “Shoeless” Joe Jackson on the back, according to the Tribune article. Cicotte then headed over to the jury box and shook the hand of the jury foreman. “Thanks, I knew you’d do it,” Cicotte said.

But the acquittal served only as a reprieve from legal ramifications for the players associated with the “Black Sox Scandal.”

A day after their acquittal, Kenesaw Mountain Landis — a Chicago federal judge who was newly installed as MLB’s first commissioner — ruled the players allegedly involved would be banned for life from organized baseball.

“Regardless of the verdict of juries, no player that throws a ball game, no player that undertakes or promises to throw a ball game, no player that sits in a conference with a bunch of crooked players and gamblers where the ways and means of throwing games are planned and discussed and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever play professional baseball,” Landis said.

Aug. 3, 1959: The second game of All-Star play this year was won by the AL 5-3 at Los Angeles’ Memorial Stadium

Nellie Fox of the White Sox singled in the deciding run in the seventh inning.

Aug. 3, 2006: Matt Murton tied a major-league record with four doubles and drove in five runs for the Cubs

Murton became the fourth Cub to hit four doubles in a game and the first since Billy Williams did it against the Phillies on April 9, 1969, at Wrigley Field. The major-league record has been accomplished numerous times, but Murton is appreciative that his name will be in the record book.

“It’s a great honor,” Murton said. “But you have to remember, as good a game as you can have, you have to forget those the way you forget the bad ones”

The doubles helped the Cubs salvage a split of a doubleheader with the Diamondbacks 7-3.

Aug. 4, 1993: White Sox’s Robin Ventura charges the mound and fights Nolan Ryan

The Sox and Rangers took time out from a perfectly mundane game to square off in one of the nastiest and dirtiest brawls.

Ryan started the free-for-all by drilling Ventura on the right elbow with a fastball in the third inning. Ventura took a couple of steps toward first base, then thought better of it. Instead, he took a sharp left turn, threw his helmet to the ground and charged Ryan.

Ryan locked Ventura in the kind of armlock usually reserved for branding steers and started flailing away with punches. Five roundhouse shots in a row landed on top of Ventura’s head.

“He gave me a couple of noogies on my head and that’s about all,” said Ventura.

Ryan was still swinging when both benches descended upon him.

Rangers coach Mickey Hatcher left the field with blood streaming down his face. Usually mild-mannered Sox manager Gene Lamont had a trick knee go out on him when someone clipped him from the side.

To add insult to injury, Lamont was ejected from the game. So was Ventura.

“Robin thought he was throwing at him and he did exactly what he should do,” said Lamont. “It’s strange that that was the only pitch that got away from him all night.”

Quotable

“Man, we’re playing really good baseball. Just a great series for us, still even there (Sunday) we’re in the game, we’ve got a chance. That’s what we’ve got to keep doing to be in every game. Play the fundamental baseball like we’ve been doing and keep this momentum rolling back home.” — Kyle Hendricks after the Cubs took three of four games in St. Louis

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