Column: Chicago White Sox can save baseball from the Houston Astros and continue their Cinderella season

HOUSTON — It was not a job they asked for, but it's one that's been thrust upon the Chicago White Sox after their storybook regular season.

Someone has to save baseball from the Houston Astros.

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Why not the Sox?

The Astros are a .500 team with an outside chance to go to the World Series, which would be a potential disaster for MLB, Fox Sports and America in general. They've never recovered from the cheating scandal, and probably never will. No one outside Texas can love this team.

The Sox, meanwhile, are a Cinderella's Cinderella, two years removed from having the worst record in modern baseball history. If the Sox were on "American Idol," they'd be Jennifer Hudson — impossible to root against.

"I'm not going to say they should be (rooting for the Sox)," general manager Chris Getz said at Monday's wild-card series workout day at Daikin Park. "But the amount of people that have reached out, whether they be other organizations or people that perhaps are fans of other clubs, they really have complimented us and found something special in our group.

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"I think it has attracted people beyond White Sox fans, which is cool. You look at where we were and where we are now, and people are curious about how we got here and what did we do? I think a lot of people can get behind that. They can, and so we're going to continue to be who we are and go out there and play the best baseball we can."

Due to circumstances beyond their control, the Sox won't get to play in front of their fans unless they beat the Astros in this best-of-three wild-card series. They spent most of the second half leading the American League Central before Cleveland's late run gave them the division title and the playoff bye.

So now the Sox will just have to do it the hard way, a recurring theme of this season.

On the bright side, they'll get to play one of the least imposing playoff teams in history — the 2026 Astros. It's a team so bad that owner Jim Crane fired their general manager on Aug. 24 and never even bothered to replace him.

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Crane and his three assistant GMs are making the roster decisions along with manager Joe Espada. Imagine how Sox fans would feel if Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf was making the postseason pitching decisions.

Espada said Monday the Astros would go with a bullpen day for Game 1.

Advantage Sox? Uh, wait. White Sox manager Will Venable said they're also going with a modified bullpen day, too.

Bulk-free Sox?

"There can be a lot of different ways we go about it," Venable said, adding that a 3-4 inning bulk guy was probably not in the cards.

It's a battle of bullpen arms with every matchup undergoing extra scrutiny, which happens this time of year every year. Get ready to second-guess on your favorite social media site.

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The Sox are not a great team by anyone's definition. But they can be great on any given day, and at least they won 84 games and had a run differential of plus-56, becoming one of only six teams in the AL with a positive run differential. None of the AL West teams finished with a positive run differential, the first time since divisional play that's happened.

You'd think the Sox would be favored over the Astros at a neutral site, but once again the Sox are underdogs, at least according to the oddsmakers.

"Since the beginning of the season, what were our odds of making it here?" Sox outfielder Tristan Peters said. "We don't care about that kind of stuff. If people don't expect us to go far in the playoffs … we do."

Naturally, the Sox are not going to say anything disrespectful of the Astros. That's not proper baseball etiquette. But other than superstar Yordan Alvarez, this is not a particularly scary lineup. It does have some sock, but the Astros were middle-of-the-pack or lower in every major category but home run hitting, where they led the majors with 226. They ranked 13th in runs scored (734) and 18th in hitting (.242).

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Their pitching was not much to worry about either — they ranked 24th with a 4.47 ERA. Defensively speaking, the Astros were 18th in Outs Above Average (minus-10).

In other words, mediocrity might be an upgrade for this team.

But in a short series, anything goes.

That's what makes Game 1 so pivotal and puts Venable under so much pressure to make the right pitching moves. Sox fans still recall manager Rick Rentaria's shaky performance in Game 3 of the 2020 wild-card series against the Oakland A's. Dane Dunning was the opener and came out in the first for Garrett Crochet, who was removed with forearm tightness in the second for Aaron Bummer, forcing an audible in the plans.

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The Sox wasted their top relievers early and used nine pitchers overall in a 6-4 loss to the A's. Renteria was fired after the playoffs. Sometimes you can stick with a pitcher too long, as Tony La Russa did in the 1983 American League Championship Series, leaving Britt Burns in for the 10th inning of Game 4 and watching Baltimore's Tito Landrum hit a game-winning home run at old Comiskey Park.

Playoff decisions that don't work out never die. They linger in fans' minds forever.

Whether Sox fans like the way Venable has handled his staff, it's worked more often than not. There are no Tom Seavers in the rotation. But this is his first playoff game as manager, so it will be interesting to see how he handles it in a short series.

Venable said Monday he doesn't feel any extra pressure because of the vast amount of preparation involved.

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"Every decision we make is very thoughtful," he said. "Our process for that decision, we feel like at this point, is dialed in. That doesn't mean we're going to get it right every time. That doesn't mean that it's going to work all the time …

"But it's the playoffs, (with all) the scrutiny and everything, and the impact of each one of these decisions means more. But I'm excited about it. I'm ready for it and our staff is ready for it, too."

A delicious season like this still needs a tasty dessert. Let's see what dish the Sox will serve.