Appearances can be deceiving.
With the way he breezed through his first eight outs on Monday night, Davis Martin looked poised to top his best outing of the season with an even more thunderous triumph.
With Mariners starter Luis Castillo yielding a pair of 100+ mph drives to the center field warning track off the bats of Miguel Vargas and Luis Robert Jr., right after yielding a first inning single to Matt Thaiss, the three-time All-Star looked to be on the ropes.
And after back-to-back series wins against the Marlins and Reds, the White Sox looked to be playing their best ball of the season, but have now instead dropped five-straight to drop 20 games under .500.
The sharpest about-face came from Castillo, who followed the shaky first by pitching over a Joshua Palacios leadoff double in the second and stranding Chase Meidroth after a single and stolen base in the third, before permanently flipping the Sox offensive innings into Airplane Mode. He didn't throw 47 consecutive fastballs again, but didn't exactly flip that gameplan either to finish his seven inning by retiring the last 14 White Sox batters he faced in order.
"He's just been doing it for so long and he's so good," Thaiss said of Castillo. "He just knows how to pitch. Him and Cal [Raleigh] are dangerous together because they know the game well. He's one of the best."
Riding his newfangled slider to an even more relentless string of quick contact outs, Martin put together a career-high 7 1/3 innings of two-run ball. He struck out just three, but also allowed only four singles all evening. The problem is that three of them were all in a row, and he left the last runner in less than capable hands.
A strike away from facing the minimum in his first trip through the Mariners order, Martin threw a knee-high 0-2 changeup to Ben Williamson. All the Seattle No. 9 hitter could manage was a slow infielder chopper, but a balaclava'd Josh Rojas couldn't find the grip on a barehand while charging in from second. J.P. Crawford followed by inside-outing a cutter for a bloop that dropped in front of Austin Slater in left, setting up the only real hard contact Martin allowed all night to really sting, as Jorge Polanco laced an RBI single to right.
"Going into this series, you've got to know that Seattle's strength is their pitching staff," Martin said. "You need to be almost as perfect as you can be, and I wasn't perfect tonight giving up that one run in the third inning. That's what happens when you face a good rotation like this. You know what's at stake when you make a mistake."
On some nights for the White Sox offense, a 1-0 lead in the third inning is a knockout blow, but the Mariners had a little more loaded up. At just 81 pitches, Martin was brought out for the eighth to go batter-to-batter. After striking out Dylan Moore, Williamson singled on a pitch at his knees for the second time on the evening, and Will Venable went to Cam Booser.
Booser is viewed as one of the chief leverage options in a White Sox bullpen still trying to figure who they can trust. But he's sporting an ERA close to 6.00 after he went walk, single, first-pitch grand slam to Julio Rodríguez upon entry, leaving a cutter thigh high and middle-in for the face of the Mariners franchise to yank it just over the left field wall.
Removed of the notion that they could manufacture their way into a tie game, White Sox bats continued their hibernation even after Castillo departed. Troy Taylor opened the ninth by walking Meidroth and Thaiss to snap a streak of 17-straight White Sox hitters retired, and allowed a two-out bloop Andrew Vaughn RBI single to end the shutout.
"We hit some balls hard, but nothing to show for it," said Will Venable. "Had that one opportunity with [Austin] Slater with a runner at third base and less than two outs. Otherwise, just not a lot of opportunities."
Bullet points:
*Austin Slater went 0-for-2 with two strikeouts in his return, including whiffing with a runner on third and one out in the second. His timing looked off and Edgar Quero pinch hit for him in the eighth.
*Venable won his fourth review challenge in just nine attempts on a Leody Taveras attempted steal of second in the fifth. He lost his fifth of the season challenging Randy Arozarena's catch on a Vaughn lineout to end the seventh.
*The Sox narrowly avoided their sixth shutout loss of the season. They had 19 last year. Instead, Michael A. Taylor faced Mariners closer Andres Muñoz with two outs in the ninth representing the tying run.
*This game took two hours and 29 minutes.
