Angels 2, White Sox 1: Pitcher’s Duel ends with Wild Pitch Walk-off
Before tonight’s game, Luis Robert Jr. earned Player of the Week honors for the American League. Thanks to his big weekend against Boston, Robert became the first MLB player in 2023 to reach 20 home runs and 20 doubles while hitting .444/.524/1.111 for the week. Facing left-hander Reid Detmers, Robert continued his torrid pace at the plate by smashing a solo home run in the first inning.
That home run was the White Sox offense for the evening.
Dylan Cease got the start and looked strong out of the gate. He only needed 40 pitches to get through the Los Angeles Angels lineup after three innings. After striking on Mike Trout for a second time on a generous call, Cease fell behind to a 3-1 count against Shohei Ohtani. Trying to jam Ohtani with an inside slider, Cease instead watched his pitch travel 446 feet out to left field for a solo home run.
Cease would end the fourth inning by striking out Brandon Drury and Mike Moustakas, his sixth and seventh punchouts.
The White Sox had a brief rally cooking in the fifth inning when Andrew Vaughn singled and Jake Burger worked a walk. With runners on and no outs, Detmers stepped up his game, striking out Clint Frazier, Elvis Andrus, and Seby Zavala in order. Through five innings, Detmers matched Cease’s strikeout total with seven and only had 71 pitches. The game became a pitcher’s duel.
Matt Thaiss singled off Cease in the fifth inning but was left stranded. In the sixth inning, Cease was masterful, striking out Mickey Moniak, Trout, and Ohtani to reach 10 strikeouts for the game. At 92 pitches, manager Pedro Grifol had to decide how much further he wanted to push Cease.
Starting the seventh inning, Cease got to a 2-2 count against Brandon Drury. Drury hit a grounder into the hole between shortstop and third base off a knuckle curve. Tim Anderson was able to get a glove on it but couldn’t field it with an attempt at a jump throw. The official scorer initially gave Anderson a fielding error but later changed the scoring to an infield single.
Next was Moustakas, and he singled to center field, giving the Angels two baserunners in an inning for the first time against Cease on the night. At 99 pitches, that was enough for Grifol, who called for Joe Kelly to get out of the jam.
The decision paid off as Kelly struck out Taylor Ward on a fastball out of the strike zone and got Thaiss to ground into a 4-6-3 double play. Andrus did an excellent job of ranging to his right and made an underhand toss to Anderson at second. Staying flat-footed, Anderson’s throwing shoulder didn’t display any ill effects as his throw was accurate and timely.
That excellent defensive play made Cease’s final line official at 6.0 IP 5 H 1 ER 0 BB 10 K on 99 pitches. Cease generated 17 whiffs on 45 swings (38% whiff rate) and leaned heavily on his slider, throwing it 48 times.
Detmers had similar numbers as Cease going 7.0 IP 2 H 1 ER 2 BB 10 K on 105 pitches. Out of the 59 swings by White Sox batters, they whiffed 17 times against Detmers (29% whiff rate).
Robert Jr. picked up his second hit of the night with a single to right field in the ninth inning. Unfortunately, Eloy Jimenez would ground into a 4-6-3 double play ending that frame. Then it was the Angels turn with their middle of the order coming up.
Reynaldo Lopez pitched a scoreless eighth inning and was tasked to face Trout starting the ninth inning. On a full count, Lopez tried to fool Trout with a changeup, but the pitch wasn’t competitive, resulting in a walk. Then Grifol returned to the bullpen having Aaron Bummer face Ohtani, who was hitless in his career against the White Sox reliever. Like Lopez, Bummer had a full count against Ohtani, but his sweeper was nowhere near the zone.
Now with back-to-back walks, Bummer was facing some heat. The Angels add more pressure by having Trout and Ohtani go off on a double steal. Bummer spiked a sweeper that bounced away from Yasmani Grandal. If Trout hadn’t slid into third base, he could have easily scored the game-winning run – a good break for the White Sox.
Bummer would strike out Drury for the first out and had Moustakas batting. On a 0-1 count, Bummer once again spiked a sweeper that Grandal could not block. This time the White Sox were not so lucky as Trout raced home plate to score the game-winning run.
Game Notes:
- Luis Robert Jr. and Andrew Vaughn were the only White Sox batters with a hit
- Dylan Cease’s season ERA is now at 4.04
- Tim Anderson went 0-for-4. In his last 30 games, Anderson is batting .211/.248/.246. He’ll probably bat second tomorrow night.
- White Sox are 11-11 in June
Record: 34-46 | Box Score | StatCast
The only thing this team knows how to do well is lose.
Bummer- and Grifol’s steadfast deployment of Bummer- have finally left me speechless. And I’m a very loquacious guy
Grandal trying to block Bummer is an adventure.
It’s hard for me to be mad at the bullpen management because Lopez and Bummer were situationally appropriate calls. There may have been some managerial instinct in play as well, with Grifol trying to boost the confidence of two pitchers underperforming their stuff.
But if you told me that Lopez and Bummer pitched the 8th/9th then of course the White Sox lost.
Agree. Not pinning this loss on the bullpen or the way Grifol managed it. I just get particularly grossed out by the way in which Bummer fails to prevent runs. It’s as ugly as it is predictable
Raise your hand if you thought wild pitch/passed ball before it happened.
You mean who else predicted that Fireman Bummer would bust out his trusty hose full of gasoline? 🙋♂️You could set your watch to the entire three-batter-sequence pretty much.
This is the kind of offense you get when you have basically one good hitter in your lineup, and several starting players near league worst category. Their 2b, SS, RF are truly awful, plus Seby. Woof.
Think of how bad their record would be if Robert wasn’t having one of the best seasons for a Sox player in recent memory. Perhaps Nevin learned his lesson, but I’m baffled how any team could let Robert hit a home run the way he is going, with that lineup around him. Walk him every time if necessary, nobody else in that lineup is gonna make them pay for doing that. Not very often, at least.
Why does anybody throw Robert fastballs, ha?
I wish the Sox had stopped the Angels from scoring the winning run but it’s easy to forget that the reason it mattered is that the Sox run production is currently abysmal.
Looking at the season as a whole, it looks like the Sox have below average run prevention and even worse run production. That’s misleading as the Sox run prevention has gone from very bad to good as the season has progressed and their run production has gone from poor to very poor.
Games 1-80 (all games including tonight)
Sox averaged 4.025 runs scored per game and 4.7875 runs allowed per game.
Games 1-40
Sox averaged 4.225 runs scored per game and 6.025 runs allowed per game.
Games 41-80
Sox averaged 3.825 runs scored per game and 3.55 runs allowed per game.
For the year, the MLB average runs per game per team is 4.55.
Great job showing that sadly eye opening
These last few years, the Sox offense has been consistent in one facet: they go how TA goes. Dude needs to be put on the IL for however long it takes him to get right— I suspect it is mental/personal issues more than physical this season for him, but the physical isn’t too good either right now.
Luis is a certified stud. He’s gonna K a lot and swing at everything, and I do not care one jot bc he’s on pace to put up 40 homers as one of the top three or so best CFs in the game.
Anderson is an oft-injured 30 year-old SS whose game has fallen off a cliff. No IL stint is going to change the fact that it is time for the Sox to move on from him.
I had high hopes that the Sox would be sellers, but never considered that Tim might have almost no value toward that end. The Sox have an option for 14M on him next year. Will they even exercise it? Should they? Of course he’s a bargain for that if he plays at a normal high level for him, for a full season. But he hasn’t played 125 since 2018, and has missed about 1/3 of the games since then. That’s a lot of games to have to endure a backup, esp on a team like the Sox whose backups are all AAA level players. Tim hasn’t been worth 14M in 2022 or 23, beyond doubt. They aren’t going to compete next year either. Will be interesting what they do, if they can’t trade him.
I don’t want to kick the guy when he’s down, he’s had real personal problems, and some physical ones as well. But bottom line is that he doesn’t stay healthy enough to have full value or be considered a full time player. He is a head case too, and makes it impossible for any team to be above average defensively if he is at SS. He is an exciting player when he’s right, but like Eloy and Yoan, cannot be counted on. Time to move on, indeed. Add SS to the list of perennial holes this team will have for the next couple years at least. I sure hope Montgomery’s back issues are behind him.
“We need to move on from him”. There’s a lot of that going around…
My question would be, move on to whom? Do you trust this FO to find a player better than TA, even for how bad he is? Sure, they could save some money. Which would matter if they used that money to obtain other good players. But they won’t. In that case what do I care?
Which I think is the answer to this whole thing. They’ve achieved mostly apathy. I don’t care if TA is here next year. I don’t care what happens to Moncada. I hope Giolito can go win somewhere else because he seems like a genuinely nice guy. They took one of the most likeable young cores in all of baseball in 2019 and let it all evaporate in front of their (and our) eyes. Maybe they’ll retool, or reload, or reset, or rebuild. But they suck at all of that, and we’ll be watching another upper-70s win team in 3-5 years.
Probably the core was never that good. The front office sold us a bill of goods.
I think apathy is an intelligent and appropriate response/attitude toward this team. No reason to care at all, at this point. I doubt this team will be above .500 for several years, as you suggest. Not after losing Gio, Lynn, Clev. Their rotation next year will be worse than the offense this year.
So Vaughn and Burger get on, no outs, then Elroy makes an out, and the next three in the batting order have a combined wrc+ of 127 (Andrus 52, Frazier 57, Seby 18). And Victor Reyes sits in Charlotte, .313/.358/.541 for an .899. And our stable geniuses call up Haseley? They should have DFA’d Frazier to make room and brought up Reyes. In the meantime, they should have rotated Popeye with Andrus and Anderson before they sent him back down.
Reyes’ Charlotte numbers don’t mean much. But he would likely be good for an OPS over .600 which would be an improvement.
Like every Hahn dumpster dive, Reyes will turn out to be waiver fodder. Frazier had a 1+ OPS at Charlotte. If all 29 other teams pass on a guy, he isn’t going to turn out to be valuable to the Sox. Reyes or Colas would make more sense than Haseley, but it will hardly matter in the end.
That’s not true, the Sox can absolutely find useful guys no matter who passed on them. The problem is they still don’t get the concept of properly churning their roster. Frazier was worth a flyer, they called him up at the right time, but he’s still not any good. They are way overdue on releasing him and giving someone else a shot. Other teams do this effectively, but the Sox give these guys way too many chances when it’s obvious that it’s time to move on.
I doubt there is any team that can seriously claim to want to be competitive, that has had a league worst weakness like RF has been for the Sox for 3+ years, and has chosen to address it via guys like Eaton, Lamb, Sheets, Haseley, Frazier, Piscotty, Reyes, etc. Maybe once in a while a team can conjure a useful backup out of a group like that, but never a starter. To whatever extent someone was “worth a flier”, the results with the low or no ceiling guys the Sox get are repetitive, and predictable. The chance that Reyes or anybody else Hahn gets for free will be any different is near zero, if not zero.
Any idea the cost of all these guys? It has to be some of the most inefficient use of payroll and roster space in MLB.
Man do I agree with everything you typed ..FO handling of RF and 2nd base are an insult to Sox fans…… sadly nothing will change
I’ve become (un)comfortably numb.
Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello?
Can anybody hit it in there?
I’m feeling bad about myself that now I fantasize of different scenarios to fix the problem plagued Sox ….my latest is inexperienced sushi chef causes major blowfish disaster in FO sushi bar….never know it could happen
Sox lost huh? Good thing this is our contention window so it probably wont impact the team much…Sox Machine, and all of its contributors, deserve so much better than this team. You all do great work and its a shame the franchise doesnt value anything other than “more of the same” attitudes.