Adrian Houser didn't look like a guy making his White Sox debut on the day he was officially signed.
Mere hours after his one-year, $1.35 million deal was announced, Houser delivered six shutout innings, and the White Sox bullpen avoided a late-inning cave-in this time around to snap a five-game skid with the scantest of support.
"It's been kind of wild with the whirlwind of getting here, traveling up here and then with the rain delay and all that kind of stuff," Houser said. "So all things considered, I feel like it was a pretty good day."
Houser allowed just two hits and three walks over six innings while striking out two, prevailing in what turned out to be a pitchers' duel between two 30-something righties spending their year on the fringes of Major League Baseball. The White Sox offense barely registered a run off 37-year-old Casey Lawrence, who threw five innings as the bulk boy in his third separate stint with the Mariners this season.
Whether it was because Houser truly rounded into form over his previous three starts, or more because the game was delayed by 1 hour and 35 minutes, and the cool evening never came close to drying out, he was able to subdue the Seattle offense with a sinker-forward attack that had plenty of secondary variety. He only recorded two strikeouts, but he generated eight groundouts, and his cutter, curveball, changeup, and even a handful of sliders helped tilt counts in his favor.
"He was executing with the two-seam and slider really well," said Edgar Quero, who met Houser a few hours earlier. "We talked a little bit about it before the game with [Ethan Katz]. We had a plan. We did it up really good."
The White Sox also played some of their best defense behind Houser. They turned a crisp 4-6-3 on the second batter of the game to eliminate the prospect of immediate trouble, then went around the horn to overwrite a one-out walk in the fifth.
Houser also got in on the act. He elevated to snag a Ben Williamson bouncer with one out in the third, and after Miguel Vargas got handcuffed by a hop on a Julio Rodríguez grounder for the Sox's lone defensive lapse to keep the sixth inning alive, Houser picked off Rodríguez. Tim Elko, who recorded the previous out by smothering a Jorge Polanco grounder behind first base, ran at Rodríguez and tagged him without a throw.
Houser left with a 1-0 lead, which Joshua Palacios provided in the third inning by smacking a single through the right side to score Chase Meidroth. Meidroth had reached with his own ground-ball single, then stole second after two disengagements.
Just like Monday, the penultimate inning threatened to detonate the chances of a win. After Brandon Eisert threw a 1-2-3 seventh, Steven Wilson opened the eighth by giving up a ringing double to Leody Taveras, who had thoughts of three bases. Wilson came back to get a harmless flyout from Miles Mastrobuoni, but he plunked ninth-hitting Leo Rivas to turn the lineup over to J.P. Crawford.
Will Venable then called for Cam Booser, who lost control of Monday night's game by giving up a grand slam to Rodríguez in the eighth. He set up the same situation when he lost the matchup advantage by walking J.P. Crawford to load the bases with still one out. He then faced Mitch Garver and got ahead 0-2, and after two misses and one good take loaded the count, Booser was able to spot a sweeper on the outer third to lock up Garver, who was looking for something else.
That set up a rematch with Rodríguez, and this time Booser commanded the situation. He pounded the inside corner with three increasingly hot fastballs, and then dropped a sweeper just off the plate, and Rodríguez caught it off the end of the bat for an innocuous flyout to center, ending the inning.
"Thankful Will had the trust to go right back to [me] and it’s kind of funny how the game works," Booser said. "If you are fortunate enough to get back in the next day, it’s best case. Just try to get out there and get right back to work."
Jordan Leasure then recorded his first save of the season, and not without drama. He needed 23 pitches and allowed a two-out double, but he came back from 3-1 to strike out Randy Arozarena for the second out, and then got Taveras to swing over a perfect full-count slider to end it.
"I went to the mound and talked to Leasure about Taveras," Quero said. "He was missing a lot of fastballs the game before he come here too. Just throw the fastball away, we are going to be fine, because your fastball is huge. He was missing a couple of fastballs. We come back with the slider and it was a good pitch."
Bullet points:
*White Sox pitchers recorded their fourth shutout of the season. The offense has only been shut out five times, so that's an improvement on last year's 7-19 deficit.
*Meidroth, Palacios and Lenyn Sosa all had multi-hit games, while the rest of the lineup went 1-for-20.
*The ball four to Dylan Moore that preceded the 5-4-3 double play in the fifth inning might've been the biggest missed pitch in a White Sox game this year.
