The White Sox started their home schedule like they ended last year's: by flat-out demoralizing the Los Angeles Angels.
After sweeping the Angels in their final three home games to avoid setting the record for most losses in a modern MLB season in front of a crowd that wanted to see that, the White Sox opened the 2025 season by rolling them behind six shutout innings from Sean Burke, and a three-homer offensive attack.
There were a couple of key differences. This time, the home crowd actually cheered the White Sox for taking the lead and expanding on it. Also, Nicky Lopez pitched for Los Angeles after a big three-run blast from Andrew Benintendi and a two-run shot from Lenyn Sosa put the game out of reach.
The White Sox were one batter away from starting the season with a shutout, but Cam Booser yielded a two-out solo shot to Logan O'Hoppe to give Los Angeles a highlight for angels.com.
For most of the afternoon, the game was a closer, sleepier affair. The game had largely lie dormant after the second inning, when the White Sox stung Yusei Kikuchi for three runs.
Austin Slater led off the inning by beating an inside-corner slider to the spot and lofting it over the White Sox bullpen for a 1-0 lead, and somehow the White Sox managed to scratch two more runs across the plate before Kikuchi could right the ship. Korey Lee earned an infield single after a replay review with one out, Jake Amaya poked a high slider to right field for a base hit, and after both advanced 90 feet on a Michael A. Taylor groundout, Miguel Vargas plopped an otherwise unremarkable jammed fly ball in the middle of four Angels in left center for two more runs and a 3-0 White Sox lead.
That's where the score stayed, because the outs started rolling in. Burke retired the last 14 he faced to get through the sixth, while Kikuchi rattled off 13 in a row for the same.
Burke threw 24 pitches in the first inning, spraying his fastball and slider at the start of the game. A leadoff double and a Mike Trout HBP put runners on the corners after one out, but he rallied to strike out Jorge Soler on a full-count slider, then froze Tim Anderson on the inside corner to escape the jam.
Burke faced a litte more trouble in the second inning after a pair of singles, but Taylor -- playing left field while Benintendi DH'd against the left-handed Kikuchi -- hauled in sizzled line drive to deep left to keep the runners in place, and Burke took it from there. Without any problematic counts, he was able to let his slider and curve lead the way over the remaining four innings, and he completed six innings on just 73 pitches.
Were this not his first start of the season, he would've been allowed to pitch into the seventh and beyond. Will Venable instead adhered to the standard practice of building up starters an inning at a time, and turned the game over to a bullpen that made every inning some sort of adventure.
Penn Murfee's seventh inning wasn't an issue because he struck out all three hitters he faced. He just threw 19 pitches by going full every time.
Jordan Leasure is the one who courted real danger in the eighth. He issued the White Sox's first walk of the game to a pinch-hitting Yoán Moncada after getting ahead 1-2 on two bad swings, and he didn't finish the inning. Taylor Ward flied out to right, but Nolan Schanuel shot a single through the middle to bring the tying run to the plate in the form of Trout.
Venable pulled Leasure for Mike Clevinger, who lost a nine-pitch battle to Trout, walking him to load the bases for Soler. He then got ahead of Soler 0-2 before three straight non-competitive pitches loaded the count. A fourth-straight pitch missed the zone, but Soler chased the fastball up, and Lee held onto the foul tip to send the crowd into a frenzy.
Clevinger might've been in position to record a four-out save, but the White Sox offense made it moot. Taylor and Vargas opened the bottom of the eighth with a pair of nearly identical singles through the right side off Ryan Johnson to put runners on the corners for Luis Robert Jr. Robert popped out, but when Johnson tried to power a 2-1 fastball by Benintendi up and away, Benintendi jumped on it and launched a no-doubter out to right to ease the tension.
Two batters later, Nick Maton drew a walk to start his White Sox career while pinch-hitting for Slater. Travis Jankowski replaced him as a pinch runner, but he ended up being a pinch trotter when Sosa drove a thigh-high cutter out to left center to make it 8-0.
Johnson, in one of those classic baffling Angels player-development decisions, was pitching in his first professional game, as he made it to the majors from the second round of last year's draft without a minor league game in between. He ended up giving up five runs over 1⅔ innings, and Ron Washington lifted him with a 1-0 count for Lopez, who walked Lee with a knuckleball, but then got a flyout to right to stop the bleeding.
Bullet points:
*While Burke threw 73 pitches over six, Murfee, Leasure, Clevinger and Booser combined to throw 70 pitches over three.
*The White Sox scattered their nine hits over nine batters. Vargas had two, and Andrew Vaughn was the only starter without one, going 0-for-4.
*A non-capacity crowd of 31,403 saw the White Sox establish their first winning record for the first time since March 30, 2023.
*Tim Anderson went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts in his return to the South Side.
