The Chicago White Sox opened their three-game series against the Kansas City Royals on Tuesday with Miguel Vargas batting first, a move that put one of their hottest hitters at the top of the order and pushed Kyle Teel farther down. The game started at 6:40 CT at Kauffman Stadium and was shown on CHSN and Chicago WMVP 1000 AM.
That mattered because Vargas was in just his 12th game of the season leading off, and he came in riding a seven-game stretch in which he hit.348/.500/.783 with three home runs. He has looked like the kind of table-setter a lineup wants, especially with the White Sox trying to turn recent form into something that lasts through a series.
The rest of the order followed the same recent-production logic. Tommy Pham stayed in the second spot and was the designated hitter, even though Randal Grichuk had been the stronger lefty bat on the roster by the numbers. Grichuk batted third in left field after hitting.338/.355/.648 with four home runs in his last 30 games, while Munetaka Murakami hit cleanup at first base despite 14 strikeouts in his last 22 at-bats. Chase Meidroth, coming off his 15th home run on Sunday, batted fifth at second base, and Teel slid to sixth at catcher after going 10-for-20 with a.100/.357/.150 line over his last seven games.
The bottom of the order kept the same pattern of recent form mixed with role. Brenton Doyle batted seventh in center field after hitting.364/.364/.500 in his last seven games and doing well in Tristan Peters' absence, Colson Montgomery hit eighth at shortstop, and Braden Montgomery rounded it out in right field. The White Sox had a record of 80-76, and the Royals were 67-89, but the story in the opener was less about the standings than about how the White Sox arranged their bats against a left-hander.
What they did not explain was why this was the exact mix they chose. Vargas got the runway at the top, Pham held the two spot, and Teel moved down while the club kept Grichuk in a premium place against the matchup. That leaves the rest of the three-game series as the real test of whether Tuesday's order was a one-night answer or the shape of how the White Sox want to run the lineup from here.
