Game Thread: Blue Jays at White Sox

South Siders kick off final first half home stand against northern neighbors

While the Chicago White Sox couldn’t complete a sweep of the Rockies in Denver yesterday afternoon, they’ll have a chance to continue showing small signs of positive momentum as they enter the home stretch of the first half with tonight’s series opener against the Toronto Blue Jays at Rate Field.

The South Siders are catching Toronto at a less-than-ideal time, having just seized the mantle of “hottest team in the league” with back-to-back home sweeps of the Yankees and Angels last week. With the rest of the division spiraling, they’ve won 10 of their last 11 games and have surged to a shocking, three-game lead in the AL East. FanGraphs now has them with playoff odds of 87%, more than double their preseason projection.

Meanwhile, even with yesterday’s 6-4 loss and still no series sweeps for the season, the Sox have won outright three of their last five series, including taking two of three from the Jays in Toronto in late June. The Bluebirds’ lone win in that series came thanks to the effort of José Berríos, who takes the mound once again this evening. Berríos is tied for third among active pitchers with 26 career starts against the Pale Hose, and he’s made the most of those innings: His 15 wins trail only Justin Verlander’s 23 for the active lead, and only Max Scherzer and Shane Bieber have Berríos’ 3.01 ERA beaten. He’s coming off perhaps his worst start of the season, a six-run shelling at home to the Yankees, but that followed a two-start stretch in which he allowed just six hits and a sole unearned run over 14.2 IP against the Sox and St. Louis Cardinals.

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On the home side, Sean Burke takes his positive momentum to the hill for his 18th appearance (15th start) of the year. Shane Smith rode an electric first 12 starts to a well-earned All-Star berth, but for most of the last two months, Burke has been the team’s most reliable starter (non-Adrian Houser division). Since getting roughed up for a 6.00 ERA through his first six starts, Burke has worked 60 innings at a 3.15 ERA clip, and he’s found a particularly nice groove since the end of May. Four of his last seven outings have resulted in quality starts, with a strikeout rate (24.9%), walk rate (6.8%) and FIP (3.29) solidly better than average.

His last time out was perhaps his most impressive performance yet, holding L.A.’s powerhouse lineup to one run over six innings on Wednesday. His fastball topped out at 98 mph for the second straight outing after peaking around 95-96 mph earlier in the season — a substantial jump that might just allow this level of performance to hold, if he can sustain it.

As far as what to watch for tonight, pay attention to how Burke handles the right-handed power in this Jays lineup, which relies heavily on Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette, and a resurgent George Springer. Burke has a reverse platoon split on the season, with better numbers against lefties than righties, largely because his bread-and-butter has been his fastball-curveball combination. That’s what he usually attacks lefties with, and they’re extremely difficult to tell apart if the former is being consistently spotted up in the zone. Against righties, however, he leads with his slider, which he has difficulty spotting with as much consistency as the curve. Tonight’s outcome may rest on whether he’s able to throw enough good sliders to keep the Jays’ right-handed big boys off-balance, and whether he’ll once again have enough juice on his fastball to compensate for it if he doesn’t.

Oh yeah: Colson Montgomery is in line for his first home appearance tonight. Monday evenings on the South Side typically draw sparse crowds, but the one we have tonight will probably get pretty loud if he can keep up the pace of his 4-for-8 start to his big league career.

Game time is at 6:40 p.m. CT. Watch on CHSN or catch on the radio at ESPN 1000.