On too many nights this season, and certainly during the first two games in Queens, a more patient White Sox offense can resemble someone trying to assemble a ship in a bottle while sitting on a washing machine. Every new effort to string enough walks and singles together conjures less a feeling of threat, but a wait to see what sort of spin cycle will make it fall apart.
What Wednesday's rescheduled getaway day finale showed is that it only takes a big flash of doubles power to make this newly healthy Sox lineup occasionally resemble a pack of carpenter ants swarming a fallen donut hole. White Sox hitters socked a season-high five doubles, while Andrew Benintendi tripled and homered in a sweep-avoiding victory that resembled a low-grade exorcism of the two losses that preceded it.
After hitting a combined 1-for-15 with runners in scoring position on Monday and Tuesday, Sox hitters only went 3-for-13 on Wednesday, but they were consistently set up to make the breakthroughs hurt. Mets pitching only had one 1-2-3 inning, while Sox batters walked (six) as many times as they struck out, and reached base a combined 18 times, with Chase Meidroth singling with two outs in the ninth to extend his on-base streak to 15 games.
The offensive breakthrough drove just their second win of the season in a Shane Smith start, ironically on his worst outing of the year. Smith walked a season-high five over a season-low 3 2/3 innings on 86 pitches, with a lively challenge fastball being his most reliable source of his visits to the strike zone. Mark Vientos answered the challenge by lifting a high four-seamer out to right after Smith led off the third with two walks, and cut the White Sox early lead to 5-3 until they were able to pad their advantage in each of the final three frames.
The brand of at-bats than ran Mets starter Griffin Canning out of the game after three innings and just six fewer pitches than Smith, continued to generate traffic as swingman Brandon Waddell dipped into the later portions of a five-inning relief outing. Benintendi redeemed Mike Tauchman's doomed effort to advance to third on a Miguel Vargas grounder to short by whacking a two-out triple into the right field corner in the seventh. Moments after Vargas happily faceplanted into home plate, Lenyn Sosa followed with his third hit of the day by whipping a changeup through the left side to plate Benintendi, and the opportunity for the bullpen's sixth save of the season only got further away.
Korey Lee led off the eighth with his first hit since returning from the injured list, advanced to third on Josh Rojas' second double of the series and scored on a Michael A. Taylor sacrifice fly. Benintendi finished off the insurance procurement by ripping a line drive inside the right field foul pole for a solo shot in the ninth. The six-run margin helped ease the tension when Miguel Castro appeared to suffer a right knee injury slipping to cover first for the second out of the ninth. Bryse Wilson, working on short notice per usual, allowed his inherited runner to score on a Pete Alonso RBI single and walked another before finding the ears on a sweeper to finish off Vientos and the afternoon.
In his first game playing the outfield since getting activated, Benintendi looked like the bat the White Sox had been waiting on. He flicked a changeup into the right-center gap for a two-run single in the first, before Tauchman lined the first of two doubles in the second, scoring pair of runners who had reached on errors by a Mets infield defense that had starred in the first two games of the series. Sosa was rewarded for a leadoff hustle double when Rojas was able to score him with a slow infield chopper to open the afternoon with runs in each of the first three innings.
But for a while, it looked like a long day for the White Sox bullpen would have to make a 5-3 margin hold up. Wrapping up probably the best series of his life, Brandon Eisert ended the fourth by getting Brandon Nimmo to pop out, before going 1-2-3 through Juan Soto, Alonso, and Vientos, making a throw from his knees on a comebacker in between two strikeouts. Mike Vasil got revenge on his first organization with his best work of the season, striking out five over three scoreless innings, shepherding the game from medium-leverage to their seventh blowout (five runs or more) win of the season.
*Bullet points:
*White Sox 2-through-5 spots in the batting order (Tauchman, Vargas, Benintendi, Sosa) went 9-for-18 with three walks, six runs scored and seven batted in.
*Sox pitching held Soto to an 0-for-10 with two walks for the series. Their plan was to pelt him with sinkers. It helps that he looked independently out of sorts, but the Sox did not let him get right.
*After starting six hours early to avoid the weather, the nine combined walks from starting pitchers made this game draw out like a blade. Three hours and 18 minutes is a marathon in the pitch clock era.
*For the current version of Vargas, 1-for-3 with a double and two walks feels like an unremarkable day, but it was striking to see how much he's getting pitched around.
*The Sox said Castro has right knee soreness and is still being evaluated.
