The White Sox (47-43) took one on the chin to open the six-game homestand with the Red Sox (41-48), getting outhit, 11-4, and blown out, 8-1. Only two batters actually got a hit for the Good Guys, with Sam Antonacci snagging three hits, and Kyle Teel driving in the sole run for the South Siders. The Italians at least represented themselves all right on Italian Heritage Night at the park. The only real good news coming out of this game is that the Twins also beat the Guardians, so the one-game lead in the AL Central still holds up.
Noah Schultz got off to a rocky start, immediately getting into a bases-loaded jam in the first that set the tone for the ballgame. The lefty needed 33 pitches to get through it, but he was able to regain control and survive the bases-loaded jam, but that didn’t stave off the chaos for the remainder of his outing. The main problem for Schultz in this five-inning, 92-pitch outing, however, was that he continuously worked into deep counts that ran up his pitch count, on top of the two home runs and three walks. Noah allowed four runs on seven hits while striking out three, two of them by our old friend Romy Gonzalez.
Not only were the Red Sox jumping all over him, but Schultz wasn’t getting as many whiffs, averaging just a 20% called-strike-plus-whiff rate (CSW). His sinker was thrown 25% of the time tonight, and also drew the highest CSW (26%) of all his pitches. Schultz’s ERA has now increased slightly to 6.00, but he’s still extremely young and can continue to work on his command issues with more experience. In his defense, you can’t exactly win a game without the offense scoring any runs, so he wasn’t the only one at fault there.
The first frame for Schultz nearly spun out of control. Both Anthony Seigler and Ceddanne Rafaela reached on a pair of bloop hits to lead off the game: one that dropped in no man’s land, shallow center field, and the other was a strange swinging bunt situation that ended up in the Bermuda triangle between Schultz, Miguel Vargas at first, and Chase Meidroth at second. Willson Contreras walked to load the bases, adding a fresh layer of stress to the situation, but thankfully, Schultz buckled down and struck out Romy Gonzalez before inducing a line out to end the inning.
Schultz began the second frame on a high note after striking out Jarren Duran, but things quickly snowballed from there. On the very next batter, Andruw Monasterio took Schultz deep to left to give Boston their first run of the game. Connor Wong then caught Colson Montgomery playing back and decided to drop a bunt that ended up (generously) being ruled a base hit. Schultz forced a fly out, but then allowed his second homer of the inning to give the Red Sox another couple of runs, 3-0.
With the help of Teel, Schultz worked through the third without issue, cutting Contreras’ time on the basepaths short after his leadoff hit, getting thrown out at second to end the inning. That would be the first of two that Teel caught stealing on the night, as he made another great throw in the fifth to catch Wilyer Abreu. That momentum didn’t hold through the fourth, however, as chaos ensued to give another run to the Red Sox. A double, wild pitch, walk, and a squeeze bunt all happened in consecutive order, with Wong getting his second bunt down to tally an RBI, 4-0.
Truly a wild sequence of events:
On the other end of the ball, Payton Tolle was having a much easier time with the South Side offense than Schultz had with the Red Sox. Tolle worked through six shutout innings and gave up just two hits, one walk, and struck out six. He walked Miguel Vargas to lead off the game, and Antonacci was really the only player who showed up for the White Sox offense with two hits off Tolle and three on the day. The Good Guys were getting carved up by his fastball and cutter, averaging a 34% and a 31% CSW for his outing and racking up 15 swings and misses; for reference, Schultz had eight in comparison.
Until the seventh frame, the Good Guys only mustered two hits — both from Antonacci. The White Sox loaded the bases in the seventh to get a bit of a rally going, with Meidroth drawing a walk to lead off the inning, and Antonacci followed that up by snagging his third hit of the day. Finally, someone not named Sam got a hit, as Junior Perez singled to load the bases for Teel. In another timeline, Kyle blasts a game-tying grand slam against his former team, but instead we get an RBI ground out and back-to-back strikeouts to end the threat, 4-1.
The bullpen was solid through the eighth once they replaced Schultz, with three relievers combining for just one hit. That is, until the ninth, when the Red Sox ended up breaking the game open, but not without the help of the umpiring crew. Seranthony Domínguez took over in the sixth, and though it was a little dicey to start the inning, with a deep fly to left and two batters reaching base, he made it through unscathed by striking out both Anthony Seigler and Ceddanne Rafaela to end the scoring threat for Boston. In the seventh, Jordan Hicks looked as good as ever, striking out two of the three batters he faced for a clean frame, handing the final two over to Brandon Eisert in an attempt to maintain the three-run deficit so as not to make things worse.
In the ninth, Eisert walked two batters but needed just one more out. He had Contreras down to his final strike on a full count, until Contreras ripped a line drive down the left field line that the umpire originally called foul … before changing his mind mid-play to call it fair, which allowed two runs to score. Personally, I don’t understand how Will Venable didn’t make a way bigger deal out of this situation. Once a fielder sees the foul called, they ease up because they think the play is over. Apparently, the play was not reviewable for an unknown reason. This will likely make me lose sleep tonight, and it’s not like the bats did anything at all to help themselves, but that is just an unacceptable sequence of events that led to four Boston insurance runs.
To throw salt in the wound, Romy Gonzalez ripped almost an identical ball down the right-field line, also causing a slightly delayed fair call to drive in the seventh run for the Red Sox. Finally, Venable called it a day for Eisert, but Trevor Richards came in for the garbage time and walked Caleb Durbin before giving up a base hit to Duran for the eighth and final run.
It didn’t really matter up to that point, but the White Sox went down in order in the bottom of the ninth, finally putting us all out of our misery. You’re not going to win them all, of course, but the bats snoozed through this one after an off-day. The Good Guys will aim to bounce back tomorrow with Davis Martin on the mound, and hopefully the South Siders (and umps!) get a good night of rest and get ready for the next one.
