White Sox Minor League Update: April 12, 2025
EIGHT games — and six losses
All right, I can’t put this puppy off any longer, here we go with a truly Old School, eight-game minors update. How can this be, Brett, as the rookie leagues are not playing and Great Falls is now an independent ball team? Well, the entirety of the North Carolina slate of games was washed away by rain on Friday, while Birmingham had its own game soaked away on Thursday. So, a reminder, because I’m not gonna note this eight separate times, ALL of the games today were seven-inning doubleheader games. And, yes, six of them were losses.
Opener: Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp 4, Charlotte Knights 3 (Gameday box) (Statcast box)
The Knights dropped to worse than .500 with today’s doubleheader sweep. Jairo Iriarte virtually assured a a 6-7 season record with a wild start, needing 37 pitches to complete just one inning of work (four walks, a wild pitch, two earned, 21 pitches off of the plate). Charlotte was in the game well enough to hang reliever Adisyn Coffey with the loss instead of Jairo, but overall a flat start to the day.
Nightcap: Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp 3, Charlotte Knights 1 (Gameday box) (Statcast box)
And things got no better, as nightcap starter Justin Dunn pitched into the fifth but threw 41 strikes to 40 balls and walked four. Among four regulars scalding the ball (Edgar Quero, Tim Elko, Corey Julks and Andre Lipcius), only Quero stood out in this one, going 1-for-2 with a walk. Meanwhile Kyle Teel is slumping badly at the plate and let Jax go 7-for-7 stealing bases against him, with the basic math saying that was more than a steal per inning for the Jumbo Shrimp offense.
Opener: Chattanooga Lookouts 4, Birmingham Barons 1 (Gameday box) (Statcast box)
This was a milestone game, as it was the first start of Noah Schultz’s career where he pitched deep enough (five innings) to earn the win. And earn his first pro win he would have done — had Peyton Pallette not utterly imploded for four earned while attempting to cover two innings in this walk-off win for Chatty.
Nightcap: Birmingham Barons 3, Chattanooga Lookouts 2 (Gameday box) (Statcast box)
My, how the turntables turn; Schultz was fairly awful in his season debut and bounced back to kill it in the opener; Hagen Smith looked one step from the South Side in his Barons debut — and could not escape the first inning in tonight’s nightcap (2/3 IP, two earned, two walks, two Ks). The good news for the Barons? Well, three pitchers combined to no-hit the Lookouts over the final 19 outs of the game, ensuring a split of the twinbill and a move back to a winning record on the season (4-3).
Opener: Greensboro Grasshoppers 4, Winston-Salem Dash 0 (Gameday box) (Statcast box)
The Dash managed just three singles and two walks, leaving starter Lucas Gordon and the pitching staff zero hope of a win in the shutout. Gordon had a strange game: Grasshoppers contact against him was loud (three earned runs and a homer over just 3 2⁄3 innings) but the southpaw missed plenty of bats (seven Ks and 17 swings-and-missed, tied for most in High-A today).
Nightcap: Greensboro Grasshoppers 4, Winston-Salem Dash 3 (Gameday box) (Statcast box)
So the nightcap was slightly more productive (four singles, seven walks) but a loss is a loss. The Grasshoppers pushed across their eventual winning run in the top of the seventh as two walks and two stolen bases off of reliever Carson Jacobs, on of all things a double-play grounder. The reeling Dash dropped to 2-6 on the heels of this sweep.
Opener: Kannapolis Cannon Ballers 16, Lynchburg Hillcats 13 (Gameday box) (Statcast box)
Finally, an unabashedly fun game to write up, as the CBs hung 16 on the Hillcats with some relentless station-to-station offense (13 hits, 11 of them singles and the pricier ones just doubles). That included the most delicious of crooked numbers: 11 RUNS in an endless top of the fifth inning that saw 16 Cannon Ballers step to the plate (Braden Montgomery 2-for-2 with an RBI, Lyle Miller-Green 2-for-2, . Still, this wasn’t one for the staff ERA, with 11 earned runs eased by nine walks. The opener really was a matter of which pitching staff surrendered first, last, and most dramatically.
Nightcap: Lynchburg Hillcats 8, Kannapolis Cannon Ballers 2 (Gameday box) (Statcast box)
Naturally, then, Kanny was stifled to five hits in the nightcap, and an overall hit to the run differential with a six-run loss. Jordan Sprinkle did his part, however, with the only two-hit effort of the game for the CBs, raising his outrageous eight-game average to .529 on the season. Oh, he swiped a base, too, giving him seven on the season. Kannapolis fell to 4-4.