In a callback to the extreme absurdities of last year's team, the White Sox entered Friday with a 1-7 record in Shane Smith's starts, despite the whole part where he had a 2.08 ERA over that span.
Worse yet, the Rule 5 pick lowered his ERA to 2.05 in the Crosstown Classic opener. And the Sox did more than enough to drop to 1-8 when Smith pitches.
It takes some well-targeted failures to repeatedly drop reliably low-scoring games, and true to the spirit of their Armed Forces Weekend-themed camouflage hats, the White Sox achieved military-grade accuracy in a gruesome, game-changing six-run bottom of the second. Two failed plays at the plate, one error and five unearned runs turned a game that might otherwise be defined by Miguel Vargas' first multi-homer performance, into a classic divide between a Cubs team with serious ambitions, and a White Sox club too deeply mired in a rebuild to stand in their way.
Part of the positive, affirming mindset that Will Venable & Co. instill in the White Sox clubhouse is a belief that games are won, rather than lost. In that respect, the four extra-base hits Cubs batters drilled off Smith in the second alone represents where things really turned. The rub is that three of them, including Pete Crow-Armstrong's go-ahead three-run homer down the right field line, occurred after the inning should have been long over.
"My job is to pick up the infield when stuff doesn’t go their way," Smith countered. "My job is to make pitches. What happens when the ball’s in play is not entirely up to me. So, you know, just got to keep making pitches for those guys."
After a Carson Kelly ground rule double put two runners in scoring position to start the frame, Smith struck out Dansby Swanson on three pitches before inducing back-to-back slow choppers of the sort that a drawn-in infield is usually positioned to vacuum up. The first of which, off the bat of rookie Moises Ballesteros, drew a throw home from Andrew Vaughn just high enough that Matt Thaiss received it awkwardly and was late to get the tag down on a sliding Michael Busch. When Nico Hoerner followed with a bouncer to short, the throw home from Chase Meidroth presented no such issues--other than it might have been ripe for an inning-ending double play in a different defensive alignment--but Thaiss simply dropped it as Kelly slid in for the tying run, wiping an early 2-0 Sox lead off the board.
"We've been pretty aggressive playing in," Will Venable said. "That's just kind of our mindset. We're really just trying to limit runs. I've been more regretful when we've been back and you get a little dribbler and it feels like a free run. So that's kind of our style, and we just believe in being aggressive playing the infield in."
"Shane was throwing well," Thaiss said. "It sucks that we didn't back him up today. I gotta make that play too. It kind of spiraled from there."
Smith recovered to strike out No. 9 hitter Jon Berti, but having induced least four outs already in the inning, he had little to offer the top of the Cubs order but sliders that stayed too middle. Kyle Tucker followed Crow-Armstrong's three-run shot with a ringing triple, before scoring on Seiya Suzuki's ringing double.
Despite throwing 27-pitches in the first inning of his second career start, and watching Vargas club a hanging sweeper nearly onto Waveland Ave. in the process, Cubs starter Cade Horton responded by pitching like someone who had found a foothold. Sure, Vargas banged a 96 mph heater out to dead center for a solo shot in the bottom of the third, but that's just the cost of doing business. Horton retired seven of his final eight hitters to deliver a 6-3 Cubs lead to their bullpen, with a Josh Rojas bloop single being the lone outlier.
Smith, to his and his statline's credit, completed five innings with no further issue, striking out five. But the White Sox defense kept digging after he departed.
Thaiss' second error of the afternoon came when his throw to stop Nico Hoerner from stealing second skipped off Rojas' glove on a short hop and bounded into center. Hoerner scored two batters later when a Crow-Armstrong popup to the first base side caught a gust and tailed back into play, dropping beyond Rojas' grass.
In another two batters, Crow-Armstrong came home on a sacrifice fly himself, and followed it up the next inning by flaring a two-run single as a means of introducing Miguel Castro to the White Sox.
He should be acclimated by now.
Bullet points:
*Vargas doubled in the eight to complete the second four-hit game of his career, sealing up a single-game career-high 11 total bases in addition to his first multi-homer game ever. He has hit .351/.422/.622 since changing his hand position in his setup, and also made a nifty stab, spin and throw on a hard smash down the line by Kelly to end the sixth.
"Sometimes that’s how baseball works," Vargas said of his adjustment. "You try to figure it out and then one day you find out and it works. I’m very happy to get the results right away. I can be consistent with it."
*In fairness, the wind and the sun bedeviled defenders on both sides all day. A Kelly popup dropped between three defenders in short right field to key a three-run Cubs eighth against Yoendrys Gómez.
*Tyler Gilbert, who dealt with left knee bursitis in spring, departed his outing with left knee soreness in the sixth inning.
*The Sox and Cubs traded obstruction/interference calls at second base in the first two innings. Nico Hoerner was cited for blocking second on a Meidroth steal attempt in the first, setting him up to score on Vargas' homer. Brooks Baldwin was called for clipping Swanson's foot on a slide, and second base umpire Jeremy Rehak granted the Cubs a double play they looked unlikely to turn on Meidroth. Baldwin's cleat ended the last Sox offensive inning where multiple hitters reached base.
*Meidroth and Rojas both enjoyed two-hit games. Vaughn and Luis Robert Jr. combined to go 0-for-8.
