White Sox newcomers show what remade offense is capable of in win vs. Cubs

This one didn’t count.

The games don’t start doing that until Friday.

But the White Sox gave a glimpse at what their newfangled offense is capable of in Sunday night’s exhibition game on the North Side.

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It figures to be a far more formidable force in 2020 after Rick Hahn went to work remaking the lineup during the winter. A team that struggled to generate power and get on base during the 89-loss 2019 season got an injection of those attributes thanks to the arrivals of Yasmani Grandal, Edwin Encarnación, Nomar Mazara and Luis Robert.

Mazara wasn’t in the lineup — he was feeling a bit “under the weather,” according to Rick Renteria — but the other three went 4-5-6 in the White Sox batting order Sunday night and rudely greeted Cubs pitcher Jharel Cotton with three straight doubles in a fifth-inning rally that ended with a six-spot on the hand-operated scoreboard at Wrigley Field.

The hits weren’t cheapies, either, all of them leaving the bats with exit velocities north of 105 miles an hour. Not that the White Sox didn’t get in a significant shot off starting pitcher Kyle Hendricks before he left, with Adam Engel crushing a home run to break the dam that had kept the bats mostly silent the previous four innings.

But after Hendricks was lifted, that’s when things really got rocking for the White Sox lineup, with Grandal driving in a pair with his double to right-center, Encarnación sending Grandal home with a double down the left-field line and Robert depositing a ground-rule double into the Wrigley ivy to score Encarnación. And it didn’t end there, either, with Leury García smoking a line drive right at Ian Happ, the ball going all the way to the wall and going for an RBI triple.

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All that thunder — including some from a couple unlikely suspects — showed what this new White Sox lineup is capable of. Those additions might just work.

“if you see our lineup, it’s going to be a strength,” Robert said Sunday through team interpreter Billy Russo. “We have hitters who hit for power, hitters who hit for contact and speed we’re going to try to take advantage of. … If you combine all of that, you will see we have a very good lineup and a balanced lineup

“We’re going to be able to do some damage, and it’s going to be a good lineup to navigate through. That’s going to be our strength.”

Indeed, the quartet of aforementioned new faces — it’ll grow to a quintet once Nick Madrigal makes his major league debut — combined with 2019 holdovers Yoán Moncada, Tim Anderson, Eloy Jiménez and José Abreu should make for a rock-solid group. The way those four caught fire last September already had the White Sox dreaming big about 2020. Then the offseason moves came, and the long awaited leap from rebuilding mode into contending mode looked oh so possible.

One inning in one game that didn’t count against a pitcher who’s not exactly the Cubs’ best will not define a season that hasn’t even begun yet. Had Hendricks simply stayed in the game for a 15th out, we might not be having this conversation.

But even before the bus ride up Lake Shore Drive on Sunday evening, this White Sox lineup was the talk of “Summer Camp.” It’s looked capable of this kind of thing since the spring, a big part of the reason that the White Sox could find themselves in a three-team race for the AL Central crown in this shortened season.

RELATED: Nick Madrigal badly wants spot on White Sox roster for Opening Day

It’s an impressive group, and you need to just ask their own pitchers to know it. After all, before the White Sox teed off on Cotton on Sunday, they were blasting their own pitchers’ pitches into the seats at Guaranteed Rate Field during a steady stream of intrasquad games.

“I’m glad I don’t have to face our offense anymore,” Lucas Giolito said Sunday. “I have a lot of faith in our offense to get the job done. I’m not seeing too many holes. I think that we’re going to make a lot of noise here.”

“You see the lineup we’re putting out there,” Aaron Bummer said earlier this month. “I walked in, it was Abreu, Encarnación, Eloy. It’s not going to stop. I think the depth of that lineup has gotten a whole lot longer, and I’m glad that they’re all on our side.”

“This is a pretty potent lineup, as you can see,” Carlos Rodón said last week. “It’s not an easy one to face. It’s probably one of our best lineups we’ve had in a while. I think it’s a lineup that’s going to do a lot of damage.”

Rave reviews. And there’ll only be more of them after Sunday night.

It’s just one game, of course, and one that didn’t count, at that. But fans and players alike will undoubtedly be thrilled after weeks of the White Sox playing no one but the White Sox.

We’ll see how it all plays out, but there might be no team that wants to play the White Sox if the fifth-inning explosion Sunday night is a sign of things to come.

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