Well, the good times were bound to run into a blip eventually, and this blip happened in overwhelming fashion.
Sean Burke fed Shohei Ohtani an upper-zone fastball on the second pitch of the game and it ended up 409 feet away. Then, after a Mookie Betts single, Burke went 3-0 on Max Muncy, at which point Steve Stone warned Muncy would have the green light. Burke didn’t hear him and fed another fastball in the zone, this one deposited 415 feet away to make it three-zip.
After that, the only thing of
interest in the game for the sellout crowd was whether Yoshinobu Yamamoto would throw a perfect game. That drama lasted through 23 Sox hitters, until Mookie Betts booted a routine grounder by Chase Meidroth:
(For those keeping track of such things, getting on via error does not extend an on-base streak, so Meidroth’s ended at 22 and his hitting streak died at 12.)
Yamamoto ended up losing the no-hitter and shutout when Tristan Peters led off the ninth with a 388-foot shot just inside the foul pole, but who’s to say whether Peters would have gotten a nice fastball right down the middle from a pitcher who hadn’t thrown such a thing all game if the perfect game was still in play?
Whilst the Sox were flailing — Yamamoto ended up with seven strikeouts — the Dodgers mainly just watched pitches go by. Burke ended up walking five and first reliever Joe Rock, just up from Charlotte, added five more in three innings and hit a couple of Dodgers as well.
The mighty L.A. lineup did little more to help itself until Muncy hit a second two-run shot in the eighth — Ohtani being given little chance to do anything because he was walked three times and Betts being the only other Dodger to do much (three singles to raise his average to a mighty .196). The Dodgers left 11 on base in the first six innings alone, and that was after hitting into rally-killing double plays twice, and were 1-for-11 with runners in scoring position. Save that, things could have been truly ugly.
The loss runs the White Sox record to 37-32 and puts them a half-game behind the Guardians, who beat the Tiges and Tarik Skubal this afternoon. But José Ramírez suffered a broken hamate in the game, so Cleveland may be in trouble.
Rubber match against the Dodgers is tomorrow afternoon, Erick Fedde vs. Emmet Sheehan, who couldn’t even make it through the second inning against the Angels last time out.
