The One Hitter…..

This is a new column called The One Hitter, where we bring to you a quick thought or note or something………remember to exhale.

Dylan Covey‘s performance last night, as lackluster as it was, was an important one.  His line 6.2 IP 9 H 6 R 6 ER 2 BB 2 K, doesn’t look like much, but it contains two important developments for this White Sox organization.  1) Covey had to own his start.  His previous starts which included better and worse ones than this had him getting rescued earlier in the start.  He wasn’t forced to battle through adversity like a routine groundball hitting the 3b bag and letting two runs in when he should’ve been out of the inning.  He was pulled in those starts to be protected by what has been a spectacular bullpen.  Nope, he had to stay in this time and wear it all and battle back and he did a decent job.  Especially for a Rule 5 pick that hadn’t pitched much in advanced leagues.  2) Ricky Renteria handled this perfectly.  Given the conditions, in the midst of a 10 game road trip, with 7 straight days of games trailing by 3 runs late, without one of your best hitters instead of burning up the pen early in this game to “keep it close” he realized how low the probabilities were of winning and figured out that saving his bullpen for future games as well as extending Dylan Covey are important for this ballclub.  Consider me impressed that Ricky has the candle power to think like this in the moment and execute perfectly.  In the early going, I am very impressed with Ricky, even in a loss like last night.– BeefLoaf