Earlier in the day while discussing the perils of results-based analysis, a White Sox employee mentioned that in another world, the offense takes a super-aggressive approach on Shota Imanaga and it results in him racking up seven innings on 80 pitches, and everyone is left wondering why this team can't take a dang pitch.
Smash-cut to a few hours later, and Cubs rookie Cade Horton halted the Sox offensive momentum with 6 1/3 innings of scoreless baseball on 84 pitches, departing to applause from a legion of blue-shirted interlopers. Mike Tauchman's ninth inning solo shot off Ryan Pressly spoiled the shutout, at the least.
Subtly throttling down his fastball usage from his season average against the offense that's suddenly become aggressive against them, Horton held Sox hitters to one ball hit harder than 100 mph--a third inning Chase Meidroth lineout--a night after they collected 16 such batted balls against Imanaga and friends. The only scoring threat of consequence against him came early in the first inning, and was dispatched easily.
After Andrew Benintendi followed a Meidroth walk with a single through the right side, Miguel Vargas rolled over a sweeper for the first of three Sox double plays. Kyle Teel led off the second inning with a single and advanced to second on a Lenyn Sosa groundout. With Colson Montgomery's groundout and Michael A. Taylor's lineout straight to Ian Happ that followed, we've accounted for every Sox plate appearance with runners in scoring position in just this paragraph.
Such a quiet night for the bats meant any weak link in the pitching chain was set up to be the scapegoat, and lo and behold the White Sox bullpen still has a soft underbelly to find. Jordan Leasure entered for the seventh and his secondary command was looking shaky before he served up a belt-high splitter to Ian Happ, who lifted a fly out to right just wall-scrapey enough to leave doubt about whether he would have enjoyed a scoreless inning on a colder Chicago night. Back-to-back hard contact on high fastballs at the letters--a single from Nico Hoerner before a majestic drive tucked inside the left field foul pole from Matt Shaw--was less ambiguous.
Ambiguity left the building for good an inning later, right as Tyler Gilbert departed having allowed a two-out, bases-empty double to Pete Crow-Armstrong. Will Venable opted for Dan Altavilla for a right-on-right matchup, only to watch him throw gasoline on the situation and any notions of trade value. He faced five batters, retired none, walked three and hit another, the last of which at least intrigued a crowd eager for a fight. By the time Altavilla departed, a game that entered the seventh a scoreless tie was setup to go down as a blowout loss, and all subsequent paragraphs will sound like they're discussing a different night.
For his third-straight start, Aaron Civale looked totally in control through five innings. The curveball feel he found in Pittsburgh came back from the road trip as he recorded five of his first seven outs via punchout, and a shanked two-out single from Seiya Suzuki in the fourth accounted for his first hit allowed.
Civale's first and only spot of difficulty came from back-to-back singles to lead off the fifth, and a game summary will show him quietly inducing three-straight weak contact outs to escape it. Montgomery went to second on a Dansby Swanson chopper in an ill-fated attempt to start a double play, putting the lead runner at third with one out. But Civale got Hoerner to pop out to shallow right on a cutter away, before getting Shaw to chop pretty same pitch into the infield grass to end the threat.
If only Leasure had a cutter.
It seems a little early in the 'Civale is good' experience to gripe too hard about him getting pulled after two times through the order, but Will Venable lifted his starter at just 69 pitches. Since his immediate solution was queuing up Tyler Alexander to tackle a trio of lefties occupying the top-four of the Cubs order and it resulted in a scoreless sixth, this episode was probably not why they lost.
Bullet points:
*Horton had pitched into the seventh once in his career before this, when he twirled seven scoreless innings earlier this month in an eventual 1-0, 10-inning win against the Guardians. Getting shutout for 10 innings is worse than getting shut out for eight.
*Brooks Baldwin flew out to center to end the eighth at 106 mph, so Meidroth's third inning lineout doesn't have to be lonely anymore. Tauchman's homer (96.8 mph) probably could avoid getting pulled over in certain stretches of the Indiana Toll Road.
*It's been 26 games since the last time the White Sox were shutout. They have scored double-digit runs five times in this stretch.
