Shane Smith was one batter away from closing out six scoreless innings and heading into the bottom of the sixth with a 3-0 lead. He then walked his final two batters on nine pitches, and Will Venable came to the mound to congratulate the rookie on an MLB debut well done.
"It’s the day you look forward to for a very long time," Smith said. "To finally have it happen is pretty surreal. Just a lot of excitement."
Little did anybody know by the time the third out was recorded, Venable would have to come out to the mound a second time with the White Sox trailing 5-3.
Penn Murfee gave up a soft single to right to score the first earned run against a Sox starter in 2025, and a single through the middle by Ty France made it a one-run game. He then plunked Willi Castro to load the bases, an opposite-field single by Edouard Julien tied the game at 3, and a flare off the end of Jose Miranda's bat drove in two more and put the Twins on track for their first win of 2025. Murfee departed without retiring a batter, and Fraser Ellard ended the inning without retiring a batter himself, as he caught Julien attempting to steal home.
"After the first at-bat with a swing on the slider, in my head that calls for an adjustment in terms of what they might be looking for," Murfee said. "Obviously it's no secret: my slider is my pitch. I don't think I did a good job of getting them off balance. Your job in that situation is to generate some swing and miss and I didn't quite get to that the way I wanted to."
The unraveling spoiled the White Sox's chance to become the first team to open a season with five starts of five or more innings without an earned run, at least since the stat was invented. The way the final four innings unfolded, though, Venable had a choice between chasing an esoteric record and going to his bullpen earlier than he had to, and the dilemma was laid bare. Murfee got doinked to death, and while defensive lapses set up Harrison Bader's three-run homer off Jordan Leasure in the ninth inning that sealed the deal, it's the kind of night that's more likely to happen with a bullpen that struggles to get the strikeout.
Up until the sixth, the White Sox had built their 3-0 lead in a pleasing fashion, making Simeon Woods Richardson work and scoring in a variety of fashions while playing lockdown defense behind Smith.
After a busted hit-and-run ended the bottom of the first, a successful hit-and-run led to the game's first run in the bottom of the second. Andrew Benintendi went from first to third on Lenyn Sosa's single, and Brooks Baldwin lined a high fastball to center to put the Sox ahead 1-0.
Two innings later, Baldwin once again came to the plate with Benintendi on third and one out following a Sosa double, and a sac fly to right made it 2-0. Nick Maton then simplified the process with his second homer of the season, this one off Louis Varland with one out in the fifth.
"He's always ready to hit," Venable said of Maton. "A lot of pop in his bat. Really happy with the way that he's put together at-bats here for us and a guy that's meaningful in the clubhouse, too."
Once the game flipped and Rocco Baldelli used his better pitchers, rallies were a little harder to come by. Their only real threat came in the eighth, when Andrew Vaughn and Benintendi singled off Griffin Jax. Miguel Vargas followed with a well-struck line drive left of second, but Carlos Correa laid out for a diving catch to keep the runners frozen, and Lenyn Sosa struck out in his only unsuccessful plate appearance.
Bullet points:
*The top of the ninth started with a shallow fly ball that Benintendi didn't track and dropped for a double, and then Baldwin underestimated Byron Buxton's speed, as he didn't have time to look the runner back to second and get Buxton at first. Bader homered one batter later.
*The rookie mistake tarnished what was otherwise a good proof-of-concept night for Baldwin, if the White Sox wanted to make him the primary shortstop. He drove in a pair of runs and made a series of nifty plays, including a turn on a 3-6-3 double play where Vaughn fired to second before Baldwin reached the bag.
*Smith's final line: 5.2 IP, 2 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 4 BB, 3 K. Had he departed once setting the record, it would've been 5 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 3 K, but yanking him after just 59 pitches would've been a little extreme.
"Excellent," Baldelli said of his impression of Smith. "He was pumping it pretty good. It's a hard arsenal. He threw pretty good strikes. I think later in the outing we kind of waited him out a little bit, and got something going by letting him keep throwing and hopefully getting him out of the zone a little. We hit a few balls good, but overall he threw the ball well."
*Benintendi and Sosa both went 3-for-4.
*Miguel Vargas had a hard-luck 0-for-4. Along with Correa's robbery, he had a deep drive to left knocked down by the wind.
*John Schriffen decided to knock Pitching Ninja for some reason. Brian Bannister made it clear that the broadcaster did not represent the views of the organization.
