White Sox young, hungry and winning
Ozzie Guillen is no longer managing the White Sox.
“It’s the Chicago Knights right now,” Guillen said.
With Dayan Viciedo joining Tyler Flowers, Alejandro De Aza, Zach Stewart, Josh Kinney and Donny Lucy, it does seem like the entire Class AAA Charlotte Knights farm team has migrated to the South Side.
You usually see the kids come out and play when the season is hopelessly over, but the Sox are giving their future core a chance during the heat of a pennant race.
They continue to make the most of the opportunity — specifically Viciedo, Flowers and De Aza.
In Monday night’s 3-0 victory over the Minnesota Twins at U.S. Cellular Field, Viciedo batted fifth, De Aza sixth and Flowers seventh.
Veteran starter Mark Buehrle showed the way with 7⅔ shutout innings, and the youth movement took it from there.
“Somebody joked around that Team Charlotte is doing it the last couple of games,” Buehrle said after the White Sox won their fourth straight and moved 5 games behind the first-place Detroit Tigers.
“They are carrying this team. It’s nice to see some young guys. We have a lot of older guys and you call up a guy from Triple-A and they are doing their job.”
Viciedo, Flowers and De Aza were a combined 5-for-8 as they drove in all 3 runs. In Sunday’s 9-3 win at Seattle, Flowers and Viciedo were 3-for-7 with 2 home runs and 7 RBI.
Say what you want about the White Sox’ frustrating season, but at least they are still playing for something — thanks to the weak AL Central. And at least it looks like they have some players to count on in the future.
“A lot of enthusiasm and energy,” Guillen said. “Those kids are hungry. They want to show people they can play in the big leagues and stay here. When you’ve got guys like that, when you hand somebody the opportunity and they grab it and play the way they should be playing, it puts you in a position to think about what we should do.”
Playing the trio as much as possible would be a good start.
Viciedo is 4-for-6 with a home run, 4 RBI and 5 runs scored in two games with the Sox, Flowers has 6 RBI in his last two games, and De Aza is batting .355 in his last 21.
“For (Viciedo) I mean, he’s a great player,” Flowers said. “I expected that from him. I’ve been fortunate to have good at-bats up here and be overall pretty good offensively.
“Like I said since A.J. (Pierzynski) went down, I’m not too worried about hitting .300 or .250 or anything like that. I’m worried about our pitchers out there and learning as much as I can.”
Flowers is learning very well on the job, and Viciedo and De Aza also have been quick studies.
“These guys are coming up fresh and excited, and I think we all feed off of them,” Sergio Santos said after picking up his 27th save.
“They are bringing energy and different things to our game that I didn’t think we had during the season. De Aza, the first run we got (he) was stealing third and then a sac fly. It’s big. So, it’s good.”