Shane Smith retired his first two batters on three pitches.
By the time he recorded the third out, he trailed 4-0.
Smith's slide to the All-Star break continued apace, as he labored through another difficult first inning en route to his third consecutive loss.
Smith opened the game with a Shohei Ohtani second-pitch groundout and a first-pitch flyout from Freddie Freeman, but he walked Will Smith on five pitches, then bounced a full-count changeup to Max Muncy for another free pass. He attacked Teoscar Hernández with a pair of fastballs, but Hernandez got the hands in on 97 mph on the corner and shot it past a diving Chase Meidroth to put the Dodgers ahead 1-0. A far worse pitch -- a hanging 1-2 curve to Andy Pages -- was rifled into the left-field corner for another run.
He then came at Michael Conforto with a sequence of five high fastballs around a changeup wide, and Conforto was able to get a broken bat on the last one for a two-run single that put the Dodgers on track to cruise to a series-opening victory.
Smith finally ended the inning with a Tommy Edman groundout, and it was the first of a few unhappy walks to the dugout. All six runs Smith allowed scored with two outs. After a 1-2-3 second, Will Smith reached on an infield single to start the third and scored on Andy Pages' single three batters later. After retiring Ohtani with ease the first two times, Smith rolled a 2-2 slider down and in with two outs in the fourth, and Ohtani hit a preposterous moonshot -- only 408 feet in distance, but 116.3 mph off the bat, and with a launch angle of 42 degrees -- to make it a 6-1 game.
At least Smith was able to weather the ugly first to get the game past the halfway point (4⅔ innings). If he's hitting a wall, you won't see it on the radar gun. Smith averaged 96 on his fastball, and topped out at 99 with his sinker, and he showed flashes of bullying the Dodgers with his velocity. His downfall involved a little bit of everything, as the first inning showed. He didn't have any feel for his changeup, which took his best secondary offering out of circulation and made it a little easier to target his fastballs. He threw some good curveballs, but he couldn't get away with the mistakes. He suffered some bad luck in the form of the Conforto broken-bat single and Smith's infield single. but the Dodgers have a lot of good hitters who can hit good pitching.
On the other side, Yoshinobu Yamamoto had few issues carving up the White Sox's lineup. He allowed just three hits and a walk over seven innings while striking out eight, and the second inning was the only one that required him to throw 20 pitches.
Based on the quality of plate appearances, the Sox can consider themselves lucky to score a run. That came in the fourth courtesy of Lenyn Sosa, who drove a rare Yamamoto hanger into the left-field corner for a double that drove home Andrew Benintendi, who led off with a single.
Josh Rojas struck out swinging to end the inning, and Yamamoto ended up retiring the last 10 batters he faced. Brooks Baldwin's leadoff walk against Jack Dreyer, the first Dodger reliever in, accounted for the only baserunner over the final five innings.
Bullet points:
*Credit Tyler Alexander for keeping the game respectable. He entered with two outs in the fifth to face the right-handed Pages, but he survived a deep flyout to center and went on to retire all seven batters he faced.
*White Sox pitching limited the Dodgers to seven hits and three walks, but they maximized their opportunities by going 4-for-6 with runners in scoring position.
*Baldwin struck out in his first two plate appearances, but he handled all plays in center field, including the aforementioned warning-track drive from Pages. Benintendi looked more active in left in order to help out.
