Game Thread: Mets (58-70) at White Sox (66-61)

Heading into this season most people would’ve assumed the New York Mets would be fighting for their division title while the White Sox would be floundering, with another losing record. Fortunately for us, money can’t buy wins on its own, unless you’re Mark Walter and you love taking out loans.

The Mets have been better as of late, winning 11 of their last 15 games, but they’re still the Mets. Sweeps over the Cleveland Guardians and Washington Nationals aren’t as impressive as they would’ve been earlier in the season and outside of those six games, they’re just 5-6 the rest of August.

Since sweeping the Detroit Tigers last weekend, the vibes for the White Sox have started to sink a bit. The South Siders limped to just one win out of three against the Chicago Cubs before getting no-hit for most of yesterday’s loss to the Atlanta Braves. With a crucial road series against the Minnesota Twins coming up next weekend (who could’ve seen that coming in March?) it’s imperative the White Sox don’t trip over themselves now.

Sean Manea takes the hill for the Mets and because it’s no longer 2024, that doesn’t exactly strike fear into your heart. Manea has been solid at limiting runs recently, but the Mets are the Mets and that doesn’t really matter when they can’t score at all. None of the main analytics really love Manea this year; he leans heavily on his fastball and sweeper, throwing one of the two pitches more than 60% of the time.

As for the South Siders, they are throwing out ace Sean Burke on Friday night. While watching him get shelled in person in the second game of the year in Milwaukee put a bad taste in my mouth, he’s certainly looked like the solid arm he was supposed to be this season. It speaks volumes that he’s “struggled” by his standards in the month of August, yet his ERA is still just a little more than 4.00. He struggled in his start against Detroit this past Sunday but outside of that outing, Burke hasn’t allowed more than two earned runs since June 13 against the Los Angeles Dodgers. His ability to mix multiple pitches effectively makes him a much tougher pitcher to face than Manea.

I realize that plenty of White Sox fans are getting nervous about games the closer we get to the playoffs, but we should feel good about the boys getting the job done against a team whose name is more of a verb than a noun in pop culture.

Here is the starting lineup for the New York Mets:

Here is the starting lineup for the Chicago White Sox:

First pitch is at 6:40 p.m. CDT. The game will be televised on CHSN and can be heard on ESPN Chicago 1000. Drop your predictions and thoughts down below!