The White Sox successful just-concluded road trip has led management to believe that Chicago should not be selling assets at the trading deadline.  That’s foolish, in my opinion, because Chicago’s successful road trip was all about how bad and demoralized their opponents were; beating up on the free falling Indians and Red Sox.  Let’s not forget that Chicago went 1-5 on their post All Star Break homestand, unable to step up in class against quality opponents.  I’m expecting that trend to continue tonight.

The first place Yankees are most assuredly a ‘quality opponent’.   Even after the bullpen took a loss in Texas last night, the Yanks still scored another six runs; the sixth time in their last eight games that they’ve hung six runs or more.  With A-Rod, Mark Teixeira, Brian McCann, Chase Headley and Carlos Beltran all enjoying hot bats in the middle of the lineup, look for ChiSox rookie southpaw Carlos Rodon to struggle. 

Rodon has been consistently inconsistent.  He’s coming off an 111 pitch gem against the Indians in his last start.  But Rodon hasn’t thrown a quality start at home since mid-June and the last time he threw more than 110 pitches in any start, he got lit up for seven runs in less than four innings of work in his next outing.    It’s surely worth noting that the Yanks rank #3 in all of baseball with 18 wins against opposing lefties, including six straight; not a team that I hesitate to support against southpaws.

The White Sox average an MLB worst 3.2 runs per game at home, unable to generate much offense.   That’s bad news against Nathan Eovaldi.  The Yanks are 6-1 in Eovaldi’s last seven starts, and he’s held all seven of those foes to three runs or less without allowing a single home run, finding a consistency inducing ground ball outs that simply wasn’t there earlier in the season.   Cheap price to lay to support the superior team.  Take the Yankees.