If you overlook a four-hour rain delay and miserable fall football weather that lasted throughout the three-hour game, Sunday\u2019s 8-1 crushing of the Detroit Tigers was unqualified joy from first pitch to final out.<\/p>\n
In beating Detroit in three of four, the White Sox remained just one game behind Cleveland heading into a significant matchup advantage in the penultimate series of the season: The Guardians travel to 84-win Boston, Chicago to 67-win Kansas City. Cleveland swept the Athletics over the weekend, widening its lead on the White Sox by a half-game.<\/p>\n
Battling the rough conditions of soggy grounds and drizzle, the White Sox grinded out an opening tally after a walk from Colson Montgomery, a fielder\u2019s choice out at second base off the bat of Chase Meidroth, and Meidroth turning a pickoff into a stolen base. Up came Braden Montgomery, who smashed a 102 mph grounder past nonplussed Tigers first baseman Spencer Torkelson that the wet field sogged to a dead stop before it could be picked up in right field:<\/p>\n
Or, perhaps you would like the Japanese call of the first, and eventual game-winning, RBI?<\/p>\n
Given the fall mist, for a brief time it appeared that the single run would have to hold up, with a nod to the low-scoring affair just north at Soldier Field this afternoon. But at just about the time the Good Guys accepted the fact that they\u2019d be running around in clammy underwear for a couple more hours, they took their discomfort out on the baseball.<\/p>\n
In the fourth inning, the runs came via more grinding: ANOTHER Colson base on balls and a two-out single from Brenton Doyle put runners on the corners. Screamin\u2019 Sam Antonacci stepped to the plate, fresh off of a dogged fly ball pursuit that lured him almost to the infield for a diving catch, and the wild man took a two-strike slider off his toes and onto the scoreboard:<\/p>\n
Kyle Teel added an RBI single from there, and the rout was on. One inning later, the White Sox piled on with a two-run shot from Meidroth into the teeth of a wind biting in from left field.<\/p>\n
Now, just because this played out as an easy win doesn\u2019t mean there weren\u2019t some head-scratching moves from melting manager Will Venable. Caring not for the fact that his bullpen is absolutely gassed while starter Davis Martin is relatively fresh after a few-week vacation in August, Will trotted out after a Martin K to start the fifth, summoning Hagen Smith for what, at this juncture, was garbage-time work. Smith rose to the unnecessary occasion, you might say, by walking two to hand Detroit a rally. Thankfully, the lefty phenom bounced back with a nail-biting whiff of hot Bengals rookie Hao-Yu Lee and a broken-bat tapper to first from Riley Greene.<\/p>\n
Huascar Brazob\u00e1n, Trevor Richards and Luis Castillo held things down well enough to end it, while the White Sox piled on even more in the eighth, as two singles and a walk packed the sacks and another free pass and a sac fly brought two more scores in to arrive at the 8-1 finals.<\/p>\n
Another head-scratcher came at the start of the Sox eighth, as Tommy Pham (his suiting up for the White Sox in an of itself confounding) slapped a pinch-hit single to start the inning and was replaced on the bases by \u2026 injured center fielder Tristan Peters, for some reason pressed into action up five rather than enjoying a full day of rest and off-day Monday to rev up for the final six contests. And sure, why not insert Peters into left field to finish out the game?<\/p>\n
But, all\u2019s well that ends, and this one ended, 8-1, landing the White Sox one win from their first non-losing season in three years and two wins from their first winning campaign in four.<\/p>\n
After Monday\u2019s off-day, it\u2019s three games in Kansas City and three back home to take on the MLB-worst Colorado Rockies.<\/p>\n
MVP
Davis Martin: 4 \u2153 IP, 3 H, 2 BB, 6 K, removed from the game at 70 pitches, 18.1% WPA; he gonna start on three days\u2019 rest from here?<\/p>\n
Runners-Up
Sam Antonacci: 2-for-4, R, 2 RBI, 2B, SB, 17.1% WPA
Braden Montgomery: 2-for-4, RBI, 2B, 8.4% WPA
Colson Montgomery: 1-for-3, 2 R, 2 BB
Miguel Vargas: 1-for-2, R, 3 BB, K
Munetaka Murakami: 0-for-2, RBI, BB, K<\/p>\n
Cold Cat
Will Venable: Goofy choices in a win, but hey at least it\u2019s a win<\/p>\n
Runners-Up
Brenton Doyle: 1-for-4, R, K
Andrew Benintendi: 0-for-2, K
Randal Grichuk: 0-for-2, RBI, SF
Hagen Smith: \u2154 IP, 2 BB, K, 8-of-18 strikes
Trevor Richards: 2 IP, 2 H, ER, BB, K<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you overlook a four-hour rain delay and miserable fall football weather that lasted throughout the three-hour game,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":855110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[223137,363,99],"class_list":["post-855109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-chicago-white-sox-scores-standings","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=855109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/855110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=855109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=855109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=855109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}