Rebuilding progress on display in home opener: Is there something different about this White Sox team?

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This year's home opener looked a lot like last year's home opener. Until it didn't.

You might remember back to Thursday, April 5, 2018. The White Sox owned a 7-3 lead heading into the eighth inning of their game against the Detroit Tigers. The offense was on early, but Joakim Soria coughed up the lead in the ninth and a two-run 10th for the visitors sent the South Side fans curious as to how something like that could have happened. One hundred losses later, fans knew all too well how it happened.

Fast forward to Friday at Guaranteed Rate Field, when an early offensive surge sent the White Sox out to a 6-1 advantage on the Seattle Mariners, only for Reynaldo Lopez to give those five runs back, surrendering the game-tying homer in the sixth. A few batters later, Jace Fry gave up a go-ahead homer. The White Sox were behind. The 32,000-plus in the stands had seen this all before.

But maybe there's something different about these White Sox.

"We have a good team. What happened last year is in the past. We battled last year. This year, we're just in a better position," third baseman Yoan Moncada said through a team translator after the game. "We come every day to try to win games. I think we're a much better team than last year."

There might be something to what Moncada was saying, as last year's team might not have been able to win this game. As described above, it didn't win this game when it was played a year ago. But after getting plenty of help from Mariners reliever Cory Gearrin (two walks and a bases-loaded hit by pitch), Moncada lined a ball to center field to drive in the game-tying and go-ahead runs in the seventh inning. A clutch moment from a different-looking player who's playing for what might be a different-looking team.

As general manager Rick Hahn acknowledged during his pregame media session, everything is magnified in these season-opening games. It's impossible not to overreact, even though the sample sizes are unavoidably tiny. But the White Sox offense continues to impress. Ten runs on nine hits Friday included another productive performance from the red-hot top of the White Sox lineup. Leury Garcia was on base three times and scored all three, Tim Anderson was on base four times and scored all four including on his eighth-inning home run, Jose Abreu was on base three times and scored twice, and Welington Castillo drove in a huge run by simply being in the way of a baseball in that seventh inning.

And, you surely noticed, that's without mentioning Moncada, who was dropped to the No. 5 spot for Friday's game. He entered with nine hits in his first 20 at-bats of the season, including a pair of smashed extra-base knocks in Wednesday's win at Cleveland. He stayed smokin' Friday, just missing a grand slam in the first inning that ended up a two-run double and driving in those clutch runs in the seventh with a base hit. He's hitting .458 on the young season.

As the White Sox move forward in their rebuilding process, they have talked about it being time to see progress from individual players. If last season was about getting adjusted to a full season of Major League Baseball for guys like Moncada, Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo Lopez, it's now time to show what they learned and turn it into positive results. Certainly no one's doing a better job of that than Moncada, who's reaping the rewards of offseason adjustments following a disappointing 217-strikeouts 2018 campaign.

Seemingly in the blink of an eye, Moncada has gone from a player experiencing severe growing pains to the guy fans want to see up in big situations. He was on the receiving end of multiple ovations Friday, and not just reactionary ones. Anticipatory ones, too, with fans rising hoping to see Moncada come through in the clutch. He did.

"I think that you learn from your mistakes," Moncada said. "Last year, I learned a lot. It was all the experience of my first year at this level, and because of that experience that I gained, I'm in a much better place right now. And probably that's why I'm feeling more comfortable on the field."

Six games is nothing in the grand scheme of a baseball season, and these are by definition overreactions. But maybe the progress is happening before our eyes. Maybe there will shortly be more for the front office to pin its rebuilding hopes to than potential. Moncada's the best example at this point, but Anderson and Abreu and Giolito and Lopez and Carlos Rodon — not to mention Luis Robert and Zack Collins, a pair of highly touted prospects who started their minor league seasons with two-homer games Thursday night — aren't far behind.

"I think there's reason to be excited about the performance of several young players and their performance so far at the big league level," Hahn said before the game. "I'm not going to make too much out of five games, but I am going to go back to (what happened during spring training in) Glendale and what we've seen out of seven-plus weeks in terms of Moncada's performance over at third base, the adjustments Lucas Giolito has made, a healthy Carlos Rodon and a year of a growing Tim Anderson.

"There's a lot of positive from guys we're counting on for the long term. I want to see that continue for six months. That's why you try not to get too worked up over five games. When guys starting showing you on a consistent basis that they're capable of being the guys you expected them to be, that's reason for optimism and reason to be excited."

During the 100-loss campaign a year ago, packed houses of White Sox fans on the edges of their seats were rarities. That's the reality of a team with the win-loss record the White Sox had. But that's what happened Friday on the South Side. Call it the perfect storm of the home opener starting the weekend and a thrilling game with a dramatic comeback.

But if this really is an early sign of progress from this White Sox team, if stuff like this keeps happening on the field, those kinds of crowds might not be rarities much longer. Fans might no longer have to buy into hope for the future and might have to start buying tickets to see it in action.

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