The first half is officially in the books, and the Chicago White Sox are in first place.
Sam Antonacci and Braden Montgomery homered, Miguel Vargas and Kyle Teel had multi-hit performances, and Noah Schultz threw five mostly stress-free innings as the Good Guys picked up their 50th win of the season, 9-1 over the Sacramento Athletics. The win lets them keep pace with the Cleveland Guardians at the top of the AL Central with fewer than 70 games left to play.
A six-run explosion in the first inning against
A’s starter J.T. Ginn led the charge, sparked by Antonacci’s third leadoff blast in the last 22 days and punctuated by Braden’s drifting three-run shot six hitters later. By the time they tacked on three more in the fifth inning to bring the score to its final resting place of 9-1, the afternoon felt like a celebration of one of recent memory’s more remarkable first halves.
A sweep of the Athletics to ride high to the break feels like a fitting bookend to a half that began in earnest with the Sox three-game trip to Sacramento in mid-April. We didn’t know it at the time, of course, but it was a series with Athletics that lit a fire which has now grown into the club’s first legitimate contender in a half-decade. On April 17, they flew into Sacramento on the heels of getting dusted for three games at home by the Tampa Bay Rays, dropping them to 6-13 with a -40 run differential on the season. A thumping 9-2 win to kick things off at Sutter Home Park set the pace for a series win, and the rest is history.
Since that 19-game thumping to start the season, Chicago has built a 44-32 record (a 93-win pace), with a +75 run differential that’s comfortably in the Top 10 in the big leagues. It’s not an elite, world-beating pace, but it feels sustainable. And fully playoff-worthy.
The Sox put this one away early, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a moment of tension. Though the July heat had the ball flying out of the yard, Noah Schultz’s velocity coming out of the gate was middling, and two of the first three batted balls he allowed checked in north of 100 mph, including a 105 mph blast from Shea Langeliers that gave the A’s a brief 1-0 lead. Schulta had allowed at least three earned runs in six consecutive starts, and another shaky outing would not be the positive note the Sox pitching staff wanted to go into the break on.
Whether the offense’s outburst helped take some pressure off, or if it was always meant to be, Schultz settled in for one of his best outings as a big-leaguer. He needed just 74 pitches to get through five innings, scattering just two other hits and (perhaps most critically) successfully avoiding a walk for just the second time in his 11 outings. In today’s game thread, I questioned Schultz’s heavy usage of a sinker that to this point had failed to generate positive results. The answer was a season-low 10% sinkers and an aggressively changeup-heavy approach to right-handed hitters while continuing to get good results with his nasty sweeper against hitters of both hands.
Lots of broadcast time in both booths was deservedly dedicated to the Sox All-Star trio of Vargas, Munetaka Murakami, and Tristan Peters. This week will be the first time since 2006 that the South Siders have sent three hitters to the All-Star Game, when Paul Konerko, Jermaine Dye, Jim Thome and A.J. Pierzynski all made the trip to Pittsburgh on their behalf. Vargas did notch his 20th double of the season, but Murakami and Peters were held to a 1-for-7 showing otherwise.
Vargas’ double made him the sixth Sox player to reach 20 homers and 20 doubles before the break, joining Frank Thomas (1993, 1994, 2003), José Abreu (2014, 2019), Luis Robert Jr. (2023), Jermaine Dye (2008), and Magglio Ordoñez (2000). Colson Montgomery, perhaps the other major star presence in the lineup at the moment, had a muted 1-for-4 afternoon.
Today was a day for the All-Stars, but also for the Garrett Crochet trade. Six of the nine Chicago runs were generated by Teel and Braden, while Chase Meidroth made some nice plays at the keystone despite an 0-for-4 day at the plate. Teel’s two-run single in the first inning was the scoring bridge between homers from Antonacci and Braden, with Braden also breaking the scoring open in the fifth inning with an RBI single. Peters was responsible for one other run batted in on a fielder’s choice, and the final Sox run was charged to a wild pitch.
Perhaps sensing a vacation on the horizon, the Sox bullpen was uncharacteristically efficient this afternoon. Jordan Hicks continues to look like a completely new reliever since his latest IL activation, striking out the side in order in immediate relief of Schultz. He’s faced 27 hitters over his last seven appearances, and he’s struck out 15 of them against just two hits and one walk. His fastball velocity continues to be up roughly 2 mph from its pre-injury levels. If this is the Hicks we can expect in the second half, it’ll be some badly needed relief for a bullpen that’s already crawling to the finish line.
They didn’t need to crawl today. When Seranthony Domínguez delivered an all-too-rare 1-2-3 inning in relief of Hicks, things felt strangely right in the world. Tyler Schweitzer had the audacity to allow a hit in each of his two innings of work. I don’t think anybody in that ballpark or watching at home thought it mattered.
I’m just going to leave this here instead. Not updated to include today’s result.
That does it for the first half! We’ll be seeing you tomorrow evening to watch Munetaka Murakami compete in the Home Run Derby at 7 p.m. CT on Netflix, joined by Vargas and Peters at the same time on Tuesday for the All-Star Game itself on Fox.
Apologies, our latest free poll embed software has gone under. That’s two such programs going defunct under our feet. We’ll regather and figure out what to use going forward, and will likely still stick polls here for this game at some point over the break. So check back!
