Last year it took until the second half of the season for the White Sox to earn a sweep, or follow it up a day later with something as lengthy as a four-game winning streak, and it came right as their lineup’s power production began to turn the corner.
This year, after Munetaka Murakami and Colson Montgomery both bopped homers in a series-opening romp against NL contenders in San Diego, they Sox have accomplished both feats by May 1, and their pair of power-hitting lefties in the middle of the order going off has already been established as a repeatable winning formula.
FIP isn’t going to steer you too wrong in the long run as a metric, but it lacks something in single game descriptiveness. For example, because of inability to land a backdoor version or get right-handed chases on his sweeper in a three-walk first inning, and not getting to strike three on anyone until the fifth, Noah Schultz’s FIP got measurably worse over the course of six scoreless frames. Even though between busting Ty France on the hands with an 0-2 heater to strand the bases loaded in the first, and Manny Machado lifting a 3-0 challenge sinker to be corralled awkwardly by Austin Hays in the right field corner to end the sixth and strand Fernando Tatis Jr. at third, the rookie lefty wasn’t threatened.
After surviving a 29-pitch first, Schultz worked a sub-12-pitch per inning pace for the rest of his Friday night. What he lacked for bat-missing or changeup presence against an all-righty Padres lineup, Schultz simply landed sinkers to get ahead and induced a lot of bleh, medium contact on pitches near the edges of the zone. Soft lineouts to infielders, medium-strength fly outs to the corners, the hallmarks of a Padres offense not quite blown away, but certainly not timing up the 6’10” sidewinder were on display all night, right up until he responded to a one-out Tatis triple in the sixth by popping up Miguel Andujar with a sweeper off the edge and before Machado’s last gasp.
A good study in contrast between Schultz’s outing and someone actually struggling to command with their stuff was provided by Padres starter Germán Márquez. He was spared the costs of his first of five walks when Murakami called out stealing via replay review to end the first. But Márquez opened the second by walking Montgomery on four pitches, quickly followed by back-to-back hits from the grindset twins Chase Meidroth and Sam Antonacci to put the Sox on the board.
When the dust was cleared and the last sinker missed to the arm side had been thrown, Márquez had allowed six of the first eight Sox hitters to reach in a six-run second. The only exceptions were a hard Hays grounded to the third–where instead of going for a traditional double play, Tatis airmailed an ill-adivsed throw home to the backstop to allow Meidroth to score–and an Andrew Benintendi sacrifice fly. And the last of the eight hitters was Murakami launching a full count get-me-over breaker for a three-run blast to right-center that left his bat at 111 mph and essentially put the game out of reach early.
It’s a shame to put a vargas-tootblan tag on this for Miguel’s fifth inning effort at a hustle double, since it looked like it could have been overturned on review. But he would have pulled up at first had he foreseen the belt-high changeup Montgomery got for the very next pitch, which the Sox shortstop flicked to right for only his ninth home run of the season. No matter, the Sox had margin to burn, and that would dictate the back half of the night.
Old friend Ron Marinaccio handled the final two innings for the Padres, and with the swing Murakami put on a two-strike heater in the ninth, was lucky to escape with as little damage as he did. But Tristan Peters had the third of three-straight two-out knocks in the eight to pad out the margin to 8-0, which was enough room for Tyler Davis, Osvaldo Bido and Jordan Hicks to ride it out to the finish.
Bido allowed three-striaght two-out hits himself and a pair of runs while cycling through the top of the Padres order in the eighth, and got within a swing of making things interesting when Xander Bogaerts strode up two on and two-out, before chopping a sinker to short. But ultimately, throwing Bido at the heart of the opposing order’s last chance is quite a victory cigar.
Bullet points:
*Murakami has the MLB home run lead back to himself with his 13th, which both was unambiguous that no Padres outfielder gave chase while still being no more than a seven out of 10 on his own self-established scale of magnitude. Montgomery is on a humble 46-homer pace.
*Meidroth got an interesting lineup placement at fifth and immediately validated it with a double in the six-run second, and did a nifty jump throw to wrap-up an inning-ending 4-3 double play in the third.
*Benintendi was the only starter who didn’t reach base. Antonacci singled twice while scoring a run and driving in another. The legend of Drew Romo grew with a three-walk night.
*Davis is up to nine outs on nine batters faced in his career after a 1-2-3 seventh, and hit 98 mph on his strikeout of Bogaerts.
Record: 15-17 | Box score | Statcast
