The Chicago White Sox opened the season last year with a pair of road victories at Kansas City. The two victories didn’t fool anyone familiar with the Sox.
Reality soon set in for the Sox and by the time the team had played 36 games. The Sox record was 9-27, with 20 losses in a 27-game stretch. The club was nine games out of first place in the five-team AL Central Division and a non-factor competitively.
The Sox opened the 2018 season with a 14-7 victory in Kansas City. The 14 runs were the most runs scored by the Sox in any game all last season.
One year minus a day after opening in Kansas City in 2018, the Sox did a redux in Kansas City last week. This time the Royals won, 5-3. Two of the three games in Kansas City last week went to Kansas City after which the White Sox split two games in Cleveland before coming home to start the home portion of the schedule. The Sox were hosts to Seattle in a three-game series.
Set back a day on account of bad weather, the Sox edged the Mariners, 10-8, Friday in the club’s home opener.
The Sox needed a double-digit offense in each of the three games of the series with Seattle. The Sox came up decidedly short, 9-2 and 12-5, in Saturday and Sunday games.
In recent years, the Sox have seen a notable drop in attendance after their home opener. In 2017 it was 36,534 for the opener followed by a gate of 10,842. Last season the figure was 33,318 then 16,615 for the second home game of the season.
After 32,723 made it to Guaranteed Rate Field Friday, the following day’s attendance was 31,286, a surprisingly good crowd given the franchise’s recent history. Sadly, Sunday’s finale of the three-game series with Seattle only drew 12,509.
The White Sox AL Central Division mates are Detroit, Cleveland, Kansas City, and Minnesota. None of the five clubs in the AL Central has a domed stadium. With that in mind, many of the AL Central clubs will often square off against one another the early part of the season and encounter bad weather.