CHICAGO _ Tim Anderson may have fanned the flames of his running tiff by saying, "I don't like the Royals," after the White Sox's sweep-completing victory Wednesday.
But if you think his manager is worried about Anderson stoking a feud with a division rival, the smile he flashed Thursday said otherwise.
"We don't like the Royals, the Indians, we don't like anybody that's not a White Sock, so let's make that clear," Rick Renteria said before the Sox opened a four-game series against the Indians with a 10-4 victory at Guaranteed Rate Field. "Anybody that's not a White Sock, we don't like. We want to make sure we beat them if we can every day of the week and twice on Sunday."
Anderson was still reveling in his eighth-inning RBI double that gave the Sox an 8-7 victory Wednesday. The game was also notable for Glenn Sparkman's second-inning ejection for a pitch that hit Anderson in the helmet.
"It's a lot of fight," Anderson said Thursday. "We go out and compete every day and have fun. It's even better when we go sweep the Royals."
"Timmy is a competitor," Renteria said. "And he's making no bones about, just, we're trying to win ballgames, we're trying to get better as a team and an organization and we need that attitude, we need a little bit of that fire. And that's kind of an edge that hopefully will put us over the top."
While Anderson's fire has fueled his All-Star Game candidacy _ he entered Thursday leading the American League with a .337 average and was tied for third in the majors with 13 stolen bases _ how much that helps put the Sox over the top is a whole other matter.
The Sox responded to getting swept by the Twins in Minnesota by coming home and sweeping the Royals, who at 18-37 had the second-worst record in baseball entering Thursday behind the Orioles (17-39).
The Twins _ who outscored the Sox 26-5 last weekend _ had baseball's highest winning percentage at .685 (37-17), and the Sox are a combined 3-8 against the Astros, Rays and Red Sox, other teams in baseball's top tier.
The Sox (26-29) entered Thursday two games behind the second-place Indians (28-27) in the AL Central. The Twins led the division by 9 { games.
The Sox turned Thursday to left-hander Manny Banuelos, whose recent work should give the coaching staff pause.
Banuelos returned from the injured list Saturday in Minnesota and gave up five runs on five hits and three walks while striking out four in four innings for his fourth straight loss. In his previous six starts, Banuelos' ERA had jumped from 2.51 to 7.71.
He didn't fully allay concerns in 5 1/3 five-hit, three-walk innings, but he limited the damage to three runs.
The bigger story was that Sox hitters refused to let Carlos Carrasco dominate them for a third straight game. The Sox got to Carrasco for six runs on 10 hits after he held them scoreless in his previous two outings against them.
Eloy Jimenez's two-run double in the second put the Sox on the board first, and Yonder Alonso added a two-run homer in the third.
Jose Abreu all but salted away the win with a two-run blast in the seventh, and the Sox added three more runs in the eighth.
Breaking out the broom against teams like the Royals can give the Sox confidence, but it means little if they're undermined by unreliable pitching or can't come up with timely hits to beat better teams.
"We made sure we addressed and understood what it's going to be like to compete against clubs like Minnesota and Houston and Boston," Renteria said. "Those are the clubs you have to beat to be elite and give yourself a chance to get into the postseason and win a championship.
"You have to be honest with yourselves and look at what will be required of you to beat clubs like that. I think they took it to heart. I think they came out and wanted to make sure they played as good of ball as they possibly could."
Lucas Giolito, riding a five-start winning streak that includes 19 strikeouts over his last two starts, certainly has found his stride, and he thinks the team can too.
"We're playing good baseball. We didn't bring our 'A' game in Minnesota," he said. "That's something that we're starting to figure out, that we go in waves a little bit as the season started. And we're now realizing that, OK, we're better than that. We don't have to go into a series and just lose and it's like, 'What the hell just happened?'
"We're getting better at adjusting, talking to each other (and) figuring things out. And the goal is to be able to compete at the level we know we can every series."
