In the battle of the American League's two worst teams, the White Sox looked a cut below the Orioles in the opener.
It's less about the score, and more about the play that determined the one-run margin. With two outs and runners on the corners after Baltimore took a 1-0 lead in the sixth, the Orioles executed a double steal that didn't come close to an out on either end.
That's how the White Sox ended up trailing by two, and although they threatened Felix Bautista enough in the ninth inning to spoil the shutout, their bid for the game-tying run was stranded on second, and now they're 3-14 in one-run games this season.
The double steal was a culmination of the White Sox looking a tad anxious all game. Zach Eflin did an outstanding job of shaping counts in his favor, starting off 18 of his first 22 batters with first-pitch strikes. From there he was able to expand the zone, and had a lot of success running his sinker and fastball off the plate to lefties, and in on righties. Through five innings, he limited the Sox to a Lenyn Sosa single that was erased by a Josh Rojas double play.
The Sox started showing signs of figuring him out in the sixth, but even then, impatience got the best of them. Edgar Quero hit a first-pitch mistake for a single, and Sosa followed with his second hit to put two on with nobody out. Rojas came up intending to bunt, but while he pulled his first attempt back on a pitch well below the zone, Quero took far too aggressive of a secondary lead, and Adley Rutschman's throw to second caught him in no-man's land. Sosa was able to back-fill second base to keep a runner in scoring position as Quero was tagged out, but that gave the Sox one fewer bullet, and Rojas ended up flying out, and Chase Meidroth grounding out.
An inning later, Miguel Vargas singled and Andrew Benintendi walked with one out, and Luis Robert Jr., who struck out in his first two trips, fell behind 1-2 before working the count full. Eflin then ran a sinker well inside, but Robert couldn't resist swinging and racked up a hat trick. Joshua Palacios followed by getting ahead 3-0, but he too fouled off a sinker off the plate on 3-1, and when Eflin threw a cutter that was closer to the plate that Palacios took, home plate umpire D.J. Reyburn sided with Eflin and gave him the called strike three.
The White Sox came within a batter of being shut out, but Benintendi was able to hammer a high sinker over the head of Cooper Hummel in right to score Vinny Capra, who pinch-ran for Mike Tauchman after his one-out double. Robert followed by drawing the six-pitch walk he couldn't take the prior plate appearance, but Palacios fell behind 0-2, and Bautista's third two-strike splitter got the whiff he needed.
Sean Burke ended up being the hard-luck loser despite pitching six strong innings after Jared Shuster opened. He allowed five hits and a walk while striking out six, and did an excellent job of staying off the barrel. The slider in particular got some uncertain swings, including a back-door strike three that caused Adley Rutschman to lose his bat.
Rutschman struck back in the sixth, starting the inning by lining a hanging first-pitch changeup to right field for a single. Gunnar Henderson then foiled a up-and-away 1-2 fastball by shooting it inside third base, away from where Rojas was positioned, to put runners on second and third with nobody out.
Meidroth knocked down Ryan Mountcastle's one-hopper, which loaded the bases but prevented Rutschman from scoring. Ryan O'Hearn then hit a chopper to second that Sosa turned into a 4-2 force at home. Ramón Urías finally converted the run with a no-doubt sac fly to right field that allowed Mountcastle to tag to third. O'Hearn then took off for second on the first pitch to Emmanuel Rivera with no intent of reaching it safely by himself. Quero came up firing, and Mountcastle read it perfectly. He broke immediately for home while O'Hearn stopped halfway between first and second, and by the time Sosa caught the ball, he had no way of preventing the run from scoring.
Bullet points:
*Shuster wasn't terribly effective as the opener, plunking lefty Jackson Holliday to open the game, then giving up a leadoff single to O'Hearn in the second so Burke entered the game with an inherited runner. He did keep the game scoreless, at least.
*Quero was involved in a classic baseball sequence in the fourth inning. Henderson was briefly called out when he fouled a ball straight into the ground, and Quero picked it up and applied a tag. Reyburn reversed the call and was correct in doing so, because the replay showed the ball to the side of the plate. Three batters later, Rivera did the same thing, except this time the ball was on the plate when Quero picked it up for the inning-ending 2-unassisted.
*Dan Altavilla made his White Sox debut in the eighth with a scoreless inning, getting a pair of strikeouts around another Henderson opposite-field hit. Statcast identified pitches with a 6-mph split as sinkers, so one might be a changeup.
*The game concluded in 2 hours and 28 minutes, or a little bit ahead of the original 6:10 p.m. start time. The game was shifted up to 3:30 to beat an unfavorable forecast.
