Game Thread: White Sox (46-42) at Guardians (47-43)

The Sox need starter innings in a non-start from Erick Fedde this afternoon. | Patrick Gorski-Imagn Images I don’t have a lot of money, and I’m on a payment plan for my taxes this year. It’s almost done, and not particularly bad — just another bill at the end of the month.

Except for several months now, I’ve been paying a different kind of bill at the end of each week, one that I think should count towards my tax burden: Will Venable won’t make me stop writing about openers on Sunday mornings.Any chance I could get some kind of tax credit tacked on to next year’s federal budget? At least a break on the state level, maybe?

My primary gripe with openers isn’t that the strategy isn’t sometimes effective, it’s that it’s overly taxing on a bullpen. The logic critical to selling the idea of burning a reliever or two in the early stages of the game is that innings are innings, and it doesn’t functionally matter whether a reliever makes their appearance in the first inning or the seventh inning. In practice, though, I don’t think that’s necessarily true.

Full transparency, I’m shooting from the hip here, having not looked closely at league-wide numbers, but experientially the reality says that a starting pitcher almost never faces as many hitters as they probably would have had they actually started the game.Take today’s presumed bulk man, Mr. Erick Fedde.

One could argue that the use of the opener is the prime reason that he’s been a serviceable pitcher to this point in the season. He’s given up two or fewer runs in his last four outings as a bulk pitcher. Even if you include his eight-run clunker out of the bullpen against the Giants in May, his ERA is a solid 20 points better this year out of the bullpen than as a starter.

Nonetheless, there’s a reason that despite pitching brilliantly behind an opener — just four earned runs over 25 innings — Sean Burke still takes the ball in the first inning for most of his appearances. The problem, I’m saying, is length. Despite his g