The Turn After López

On Tuesday the club filed two transactions with the same date on them: Reynaldo López to the 15-day injured list, the transaction's words "Right shoulder inflammation," and JR Ritchie recalled from Gwinnett. On Wednesday the recall took the turn, and Chicago beat Atlanta 8-4 at Wrigley Field to win the third game and the series, two games to one. The season series closes at three apiece.

Ritchie, 23 and in his first major-league season, recorded fourteen outs on 82 pitches: seven hits, six of them for extra bases, six earned runs, two walks, both in the first, five strikeouts and two home runs, and he left with two out in the fifth and Alex Bregman on third. It was his first appearance of any kind since August 2, forty-five days. The club optioned him to Gwinnett the day after that start, and his six Triple-A starts there, 33 2/3 innings, eight earned runs and 44 strikeouts, fifteen of them on September 6, preceded Tuesday's recall.

Against his own fifteen major-league appearances, the night reads this way. Six earned runs is the most he has allowed in the majors; the prior high was five, twice, on May 18 at Miami and June 17 against San Francisco. Seven hits is also a most; he had never allowed more than five. This is, statistically speaking, not ideal. Two home runs is not a most, since he allowed three on June 17, and his season total stands at eleven in 62 2/3 innings, with the ERA at 5.03. His longest start remains his first, seven innings and two earned runs at Washington on April 23, and it remains his only quality start in nine.

The damage had two authors. Bregman doubled, homered and tripled off Ritchie and flied out to Michael Harris II against Owen Murphy in the seventh, a single short of the cycle; he was also thrown out at third on the first-inning double, on a relay from Harris II to Ozzie Albies to Austin Riley to Ha-Seong Kim, after Michael Busch had scored. His fifth-inning triple, two runs, came "on a ground ball to left fielder Mauricio Dubón" in MLB's play description. Pete Crow-Armstrong walked, homered and tripled against Ritchie and homered again leading off the seventh against Owen Murphy, his 43rd and 44th, three runs batted in, eleven total bases.

Shota Imanaga pitched six innings on 100 pitches, one run, no walks, eight strikeouts, and retired eleven in a row through the fifth. Ray wrote this morning that Wednesday would test Tuesday's sentence, "Six runs on three swings is a good night, not evidence that the offense travels," and Wednesday produced eight hits, four runs, no home run and one hit in nine tries with a runner in scoring position: three of the runs on groundouts, Matt Olson's, Riley's and Sean Murphy's, and the fourth on Dubón's ninth-inning double, the one hit. A night that scores without Tuesday's kind of swing and without the other kind either moves the sentence in neither direction; six road games remain.

The ninth, against Ryan Rolison and then Ryan Zeferjahn: Albies walked on thirteen pitches, seven of them fouled off in a row; Harris II singled; Zeferjahn came in; Dubón doubled to right to score Albies; Riley struck out; Sean Murphy grounded out to score Harris II; and Mike Yastrzemski, batting for Kim, grounded out to end it, both runs charged to Rolison.

Atlanta is 89-64 and first in the East. Philadelphia won 3-0 at Washington and is 84-68, four and a half back, with nine to play for Atlanta, six of them on the road, and the magic number at five by MLB's count. Atlanta does not play Thursday.

The turn, then. The listed starters at Houston are Tyler Mahle on Friday, Grant Holmes on Saturday and Martín Pérez on Sunday, and nothing is listed after Sunday. Chris Sale, whose last start was September 11, is not among the three, and Mark Bowman reported at MLB.com that the club is holding him for the following Wednesday against Cincinnati on six extra days of rest, a decision Walt Weiss discussed before the game. “It’s a little bit of an extended break,” Weiss said, “but we feel it sets him up for the postseason.” That accounts for Sale's turn. It does not account for López's. Tuesday the 22nd and Thursday the 24th against Cincinnati carry no name from anyone, and nobody has said who takes the next turn in the spot López left.

So the question is open, and it is a question. One start by a 23-year-old recalled the day before is a start, his most earned runs and his most hits, and not a verdict on him, on the fifth spot or on October. The club has not said which names that month's rotation will carry. The listed probables say who pitches in Houston; Weiss's sentence says where Sale's next start falls; neither says whose turn comes after Sunday, and September has nine games left in which to say it.