It’s the final stretch of the season, and SSS duty geezer and his son and west coast correspondent, Will, lean into lyrics from The Fantastiks to ponder the month ahead for the White Sox and how best to set up for the playoffs (spoiler: It involves staying healthy). With the Sox just a half-game behind the Astros for the second seed and home-field advantage in the first round of the playoffs (yes, we are assuming the playoffs — short of all the players with Cuban connections deciding to fly off to Havana for the month, that’s going to happen), the talk goes to the nice fact that the Astros have a much tougher schedule going forward, including a trip to San Diego this weekend. Pitching draws a lot of the conversation, from the strange but nice resurgence of Reynaldo López to resting starters to getting the bullpen in shape. Also, the two express wonderment that the Pirates were kind enough to throw high fastballs to Gavin Sheets Tuesday night, which may help show why, even beyond payroll, Pittsburgh is perpetually mired in last place in the NL Central. And, also on the wonderment front, they talk about the strong play of Leury García lately, and the bizarre disdain José Abreu and Yoán Moncada get from large segments of the Twitterverse. With all that, they somehow failed to mention Yasmani Grandal at all. And they decided to cancel the October series against the Tigers and end the season in September. Which would be a good idea. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices