Timely hitting and some clutch home runs helped propel the White Sox (20-21) to their third straight win, defeating the Royals (19-23), 6-5. Four of the seven South Side hits were for extra bases, with three dingers and a double, including two clutch bombs that both took the lead at different points in the game. The pitching struggled early, but the offense carried its weight by keeping the Good Guys in the contest until the bullpen established itself late in the game, with the final two arms not
giving up a hit.
While it definitely wasn’t his best outing, Erick Fedde mostly did his job, eating five innings for the Good Guys, allowing two runs on six hits with a walk and two strikeouts. In today’s game thread, I referenced how Fedde has been making a habit of surrendering home runs, and naturally, he gave up two more in tonight’s start: a solo shot each for Bobby Witt Jr. and Salvador Pérez in the top of the first, 2-0.
The South Siders chased a two-run lead for the first four frames, but Fedde was able to settle in a bit after the round-trippers, hoping the offense would wake up. The Sox finally had an opportunity after loading the bases in the bottom of the third, with a base hit from Sam Antonacci starting things off, followed by back-to-back walks from Munetaka Murakami and Miguel Vargas. After four straight balls, Colson Montgomery came up to the plate in a prime situation, but he struck out on pitches that almost certainly would have been balls. Why he was even remotely considering swinging after so many balls in a row is beyond me — just one of those at-bats.
Finally coming alive in the fifth, the South Side bats posted a five-spot, first tying, then taking a three-run advantage to turn the game on its head. Drew Romo cut the lead in half after mashing his fourth home run since being called up, possessing a 1.092 OPS while holding a batting average below .200 (.192). Romo struck out for the rest of his at-bats, so perhaps the average makes sense.
To keep the inning rolling, Antonacci drove a double out to center to pick up his second hit and put the game-tying run into scoring position. As he already had a hot bat, Vargas was set up perfectly to drive him in with a base hit and tie the game up at two. Vargas has driven in at least one run in his last three games and has seven RBIs this month after accumulating nine in the entire month of April.
Mune struck out to bring Colson up, who put together a much better at-bat than earlier in the game and worked a base on balls to put another runner on. That brought up Chase Meidroth, who blasted his third bomb of the season into the White Sox bullpen, putting the Good Guys up, 5-2.
So quickly after taking the lead, the White Sox imploded once Fedde was replaced by lefthander Tyler Schweitzer, who only made it through one out before giving up two runs to bring the Royals back within one, 5-4. In the blink of an eye, the win fizzled out before Fedde’s eyes. Will Venable decided to go with Grant Taylor a bit earlier than expected. Unfortunately, the one hit he allowed in the final 2/3 of the inning was the tying run, also charged to Schweitzer, before striking out Witt to end the inning.
Taylor made it a nail-biter returning in the seventh, giving up back-to-back singles to start the frame, but struck out both Carter Jensen and Jac Caglianone before forcing a ground out to end the inning. Despite having to clean up Schweitzer’s mess, he was still assigned a blown save. Seranthony Domínguez is typically more of a ninth-inning kind of guy, but he was turned to in the eighth as the Good Guys worked to keep the game tied at five. Three-up, three-down for Domínguez was exactly what the Sox needed to get the bat back in their hands.
Even if you were given 10 guesses to predict who won the game for Chicago, you probably wouldn’t get it because it was a pinch-hit, go-ahead blast from Derek Hill to put the South Siders up one, 6-5. The best part was that the pitch was below the strike zone, but Hill muscled it enough to clear the left-center wall and put the ball into the bleachers.
Out for the ninth was southpaw Bryan Hudson, who has been nothing short of excellent in his 21 appearances (20 innings) this season. Hudson wrangled the Royals for a 1-2-3 inning to earn his second save of the year, but not without a little more help from Derek Hill, who made a diving catch out in right to rob a clutch hit from Witt. Hudson has maintained a sub-1.00 ERA (0.90), and tonight’s save also secured the W for Seranthony.
Wednesday is Noah Schultz Day. The lefty will be going against righthander Seth Lugo. We’ve got another night game tomorrow, so join us at the same time and place — 6:40 p.m. CT — to watch some quality baseball and hopefully get the club to .500.
