Twenty strikeouts. On Opening Day. Against Milwaukee.

I want to be careful here because I know how this city works — I say something honest about the White Sox and half of Bridgeport stops talking to me for a month. But I have been watching baseball on the South Side for longer than some of these players have been alive, and I have an obligation to say what I saw on March 26, which is this: the Chicago White Sox struck out twenty times in a single baseball game, which is a thing that happens, technically, within the rules of the sport, but which is also a thing you do not expect to witness on the first game of the new season, before March is even over, against a team from Wisconsin.

The starter, Shane Smith, did not make it out of the second inning. I will say that again: the man who was chosen, out of all available options, to be the person who starts the baseball season for the Chicago White Sox — a role historically reserved for your most reliable arm, your most experienced competitor, your steadiest professional — could not get through two innings against the Milwaukee Brewers. He was replaced. The replacements also struggled. The final score was 14-2, and I want to acknowledge that the 2 is real and happened and represents genuine effort by somebody on that roster, and I am grateful for it.

Now, I understand what a rebuild is. I’ve lived through a few of them. Back when Frank Thomas was in his prime, people forget there were some rough years around the edges — years where you’d go to the park on a Tuesday and the crowd was three guys and a dog and the dog wasn’t paying attention. The White Sox won the World Series in 2005 and then spent the next several years doing whatever they were doing, and then they rebuilt, and then they won a bunch of games for a stretch, and then they went 41-121 in 2024, which was at the time the worst record in baseball history, and then the rebuild officially started being called “the rebuild” by the front office, which is a word that means “please be patient, we’re working on it, the process takes time.”

The process, in year two, has produced a team that struck out twenty times on Opening Day. I’m not saying the process is broken. I’m saying twenty strikeouts.

There was one bright spot, I will give them that. Munetaka Murakami, the Japanese slugger they brought in to replace Luis Robert Jr., hit a home run. The crowd was pleased. Murakami tipped his helmet. The scoreboard still showed Milwaukee 14, Chicago 2 at the time, but for a moment, in the middle of that, someone hit the ball very hard in the right direction, and that is what you hold onto when everything else is what it is.

GM Chris Getz, who is a reasonable man doing a difficult job in an unreasonable situation, said before the season that the team has made “meaningful progress” in its rebuild and that the roster “reflects a commitment to building the right way.” I believe him, in the same way that I believe someone who tells me the renovations will be done by March and the sink is going to work eventually. Maybe it will. The sink works when it works. But twenty strikeouts, Chris. Twenty.

I’m going to keep watching. I always keep watching. That’s what it means to be a baseball fan in this city — you watch even when watching is not a pleasant activity, because somewhere in the middle of a fourteen-to-two loss, some kid from Osaka hits one into the left field seats and for a second, on a cold March night on 35th Street, it feels like the whole summer is still out there in front of you, full of possibilities, not yet broken. The season is 162 games. We have 161 to go. The process continues.

I am choosing to believe in the process. I am also choosing to believe that our pitching coach has some phone calls to make.