Even moral victories have been in short supply for a White Sox team that has been stuck on four wins, and despite their best efforts, that's all they can take away from a sixth straight loss.
The White Sox endured another overwhelming effort from Garrett Crochet to erase a 3-0 deficit in the seventh inning, but golden opportunities went by the boards in the ninth and 10th, whereas the Red Sox were able to cash in with their Manfred Man. Mike Vasil was able to get a routine flyout to start the extra inning, but an intentional walk and an unintentional walk loaded the bases with one out, and Triston Casas' fly ball off the Monster allowed the Fenway faithful to breathe a sigh of relief.
The White Sox came up empty in the top half of the 10th despite being set up for success. The Red Sox started with an intentional walk of Luis Robert Jr., who actually earned the caution today, choosing to let Garrett Whitlock take on Lenyn Sosa, Andrew Benintendi and Andrew Vaughn instead. Vaughn put up the biggest fight, but after two strikeouts kept the runners in place, Vaughn's deep flyout to right merely spelled the end of the inning.
That was the last of the golden opportunities that went unseized, as the White Sox went 1-for-10 with runners in scoring position. An inning earlier, Edgar Quero opened the ninth inning of a 3-3 game with a double inside the right field line off Aroldis Chapman. Joshua Palacios popped up two bunt attempts, the second of which was caught by Carlos Narváez for the first out. Brooks Baldwin couldn't repeat his heroics from the first season, swinging through a 101 mph fastball for strike thrree, and Chase Meidroth couldn't come up with his second run-scoring hit of the game, flying out to right instead.
Meidroth's first run-scoring hit at least made this game worth writing about. After Garrett Crochet blanked the White Sox over six innings, the Chicago lineup looked invigorated by the sight of anybody else. Greg Weissert created his own trouble by walking a pinch-hitting Palacios on five pitches with one out, but he got pinch-hitting Nick Maton to hit a grounder right to Triston Casas at first. Casas stepped on the bag, then fired to second, but the throw was wide, and Trevor Story couldn't hold onto the ball while trying to attempt a spinning, sweeping tag.
The White Sox capitalized on the extra out. Meidroth slapped a single through the middle to spoil the shutout, and then Robert smoked a 1-1 plate-splitting sweeper over the Green Monster. Robert had his strongest performance at the plate all season, going 1-for-3 with three hard-hit balls and two walks, the second of which was intentional to start the 10th.
The homer removed the decision from each of the starters. Shane Smith's start took an abrupt turn the way a Shane Smith start seems to do. He plunked three batters over the first two innings because his misses missed, but his fastball regained some of the high-90s hop it showed in the spring, which allowed him to use his changeup more sparingly. He dealt with some traffic early due to those spasms of wildness, but he only allowed a one-out Kristian Campbell single through four innings, and on a respectable 56 pitches.
But he couldn't make it out of the fifth. Ceddanne Rafaela rifled his first pitch of the inning off the Green Monster for a leadoff double despite Andrew Benintendi's best effort to cut him down at second, after which Jarren Duran muscled a high fastball into center to put runners on the corners for Rafael Devers. Devers fouled off a first-pitch fastball, and when Smith tried going back to the well up and away, Devers went with the pitch and took it over the Monster for a real "this is the big leagues" moment and a 3-0 lead.
Smith couldn't close out the fifth, setting up a long early evening for the White Sox bullpen, but the relief corps held up. The worst thing you could say about Jared Shuster, Cam Booser, Steven Wilson and Jordan Leasure is that they all failed to work clean innings, but discretion was the better part of valor.
- Shuster: 1.1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 1 K
- Booser: 1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 1 K
- Wilson: 1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 1 K
- Leasure: 1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 1 K
Leasure had a particularly chaotic brand of scorelessness. He surved a Narváez line drive off the Monster that Benintendi seemed to limit to a single, except his throw skipped past Brooks Baldwin to allow the extra base. David Hamilton then pinch-ran for the catcher, but he didn't count on Leasure snagging Rafaela's chopper up the middle, and Leasure made an on-target throw to third to cut down the lead runner. Leasure then got a second out with a flyout, but a wild pitch restored the runner in scoring position and prompted an intentional walk of Devers to bring Alex Bregman to the plate. They tangled for seven pitches, but Leasure prevailed with a 3-2 slider to end the inning.
As for Crochet, Quero shattered his no-hit dreams with a second-inning single, and while they mounted more traffic against him this time around, they couldn't do it for more than a base at a time, so he still never felt imperiled. Crochet scattered four singles and two walks over six innings, striking out seven.
