[jksander]

June 12, 2026: This afternoon Noah Schultz (3-3, 2.21 ERA, 77.1 IP, 96 K’s, 0.74 WHIP) pitched against the Angels’ Caden Dana (3-3, 1 SV, 3.73 ERA, 31.1 IP, 31 K’s, 1.47 WHIP). Brandon Valenzuela hit a solo homer in the bottom of the third to put us into the lead, and Schultz was leery of turning the ball over in the seventh as he still had just a one run lead, so he stayed out and struck out three in a row to get us into the stretch. He reluctantly handed the ball to Ryan Helsley in the eighth, however, and in the top of the ninth Ben Joyce took over still up just by the one run. He struck out their top three hitters, all swinging, as we held tough to win 1-0! We’ve been in a lot of tight contests lately, but this one was just brutal ... we outhit them 3-2, outwalking them 2-1, so only EIGHT players for either team made it on base all night! Schultz improved to 4-3 with a seven inning two hitter, striking out nine, and Valenzuela’s homer in the third wound up being the only offense either team put up. We’ve had enough of those kind of haunting battles that have ended in a loss, so it was refreshing to see the entire team come toghether to claw out a home victory.
 
June 13, 2026: Dylan Cease (3-4, 3.25 ERA, 74.2 IP, 81 K’s, 1.12 WHIP) pitched against Aaron Civale (2-1, 1 SV, 4.69 ERA, 40.1 IP, 40 K’s, 1.29 WHIP) in game two against the Angels, and we took the lead in the bottom of the second with a homer by Tauchman and an RBI single via Gary Sanchez. The Angels got a run back with a homer from Trout in the top of the fourth, and Mickey Moniak hit one immediately after to tie it up, eliminating a rare lead for Cease, who looked on in disgust. He got us through the fifth on 86 pitches, and in the bottom of the inning Yordys Valdes was hit by a pitch and had to leave the game ... Brooks Lee came in as a pinch runner and to take over at second base, with Ha-seong Kim moving over to short. We weren’t able to move Lee from first, and in the top of the sixth with the score still tied at 2-2 Ryan Weber took over on the mound. In the bottom of the inning Joshua Mears hit a solo homer to get us back into the lead, and Vargas hit an RBI double to add on. We kept the string of hits coming, with Sanchez batting in a third run with a single while Lee finished the rally with an RBI double that put us ahead 6-2 heading into the top of the seventh. Ceddanne Rafaela hit a flyball single into right that drove in another in the bottom of the seventh, and Weber got two outs in the top of the eighth before Taylor Ward got them a run back with a solo homer. Eduard Bazardo took over a couple minutes later with Trout on first and two outs, getting us into the bottom of the inning still leading by four runs, and after we added on two more runs ourselves in the bottom of the inning he stayed out to finish things in the ninth, a pair of strikeouts against Scott Kingery and Juan Flores finishing things as we won easily 9-3! Ryan Weber got the win, improving to 1-1 with a 4.97 ERA thanks to 2.2 innings with thre hits, two strikeouts and an earned run, and we outhit the Angels 14-6. Tauchman led the way offensively with three hits, two runs and an RBI, while Mears, Rafaela, Vargas and Sanchez each hit twice to make the middle of our lineup exceptionally brutal tonight.

Valdes’ injury is a bruised thigh, making him day to day for at least the next five days, with a moderate impact on his running. So we’ll take it on a game by game basis whether to use him in the lineup.

June 14, 2026: Zac Gallen (8-1, 3.11 ERA, 81.0 IP, 69 K’s, 1.07 WHIP) got the start today, and he’s gone 4-0 since the trade that got him here from Cincinnati. Today he faced the Angels’ Andre Pallante (2-4, 3.57 ERA, 68.0 IP, 65 K’s, 1.41 WHIP), and we broke through in the bottom of the third with a solo homer by Andre Lipcius to put us ahead 1-0 heading into the fourth inning. They tied it up in the top of the sixth with a two-out RBI double from Tyler Ward, but Gallen got us into the stretch still knotted up 1-1, and Lipcius hit an RBI single in the bottom of the seventh to put us back up by a run! Ryan Helsley took the ball in the top of the eighth and he got us the rest of the way as we held on to win 2-1! Gallen stayed undefeated as a member of the White Sox, allowing a hit and two walks with eight strikeouts and an unearned run, improving his ERA to 2.84, while Helsley saved his fourth game with a two-inning three strikeout effort. We had five hits ourselves while pitching a complete-game shared one-hitter, with Lipcius leading the offense with two hits, a run and two RBIs.

Tomorrow the Cubs come to town, to put their 29-36 record, fourth place in the NL Central, against our first-place 38-27 record here in the AL Central, our status at 11 games over .500 is our best so far this season and we’re coming off a sweep of LA while theyre coming off BEING swept, in their case by the Giants at Wrigley Field.