PITTSBURGH -- No one on the right side of the PNC Park press box, nor on the Sox Machine/108 tailgate trip is unfamiliar with the experience of attending a White Sox game, seeing a ringing drive soar through the night air at a crucial moment and hearing a torrent of "Sell the team!" chants raise up in response.
Hell, had his 2024 walk-off homer against the Sox been hit on the other side of town, Mike Tauchman would have already been involved in such a moment. Instead on Saturday night in Pittsburgh, everything was flipped onto the other side. And when Tauchman blistered an 0-2 slider for a go-ahead bases-clearing double just beyond Oneil Cruz's reach in center, that proved to be the breaking point for much of the Pirates faithful.
And also the Pirates.
"Chase [Meidroth came up and had another big hit. It was a great inning for the boys," Tauchman said.
Before Meidroth flipped his first hit of the second half into short left to plate Tauchman and cap a six-run top of the sixth, Pittsburgh starter Mike Burrows was flummoxing Sox hitters through four hitless and scoreless innings and staked to a 3-0 lead. For the second-straight night, it was that scamp Luis Robert Jr. triggering the action.
"Offensively, defensively, he does it all, and he’s a great guy to have around," said Kyle Teel. "A great guy to have on your team because he’s so talented. He’s been having a ton of success and I’m glad to see it."
Robert reached on a one-out infield single in the fifth and moved up to second as second baseman Nick Gonzales' rushed throw bounded into the dugout, setting him up to steal third and score on a Lenyn Sosa single. If Josh Rojas looping a slider for a 77 mph double that was perfectly placed to allow Sosa to score from first felt like uniquely bad luck for the home team, it only accounted for the second of six two-out runs for the Sox on the night.
The game effectively turned for good with the entrance of lefty Caleb Ferguson to open the sixth, set up to face a pair of lefties sandwiched around a right-hander. Miguel Vargas followed Andrew Benintendi's popout with a ringing double to right-center, but it's when Teel fought off an outer half heater for a swinging bunt single that Will Venable was placed in the driver's seat, and Ferguson was left out to dry.
Never sad to see a lefty on the mound, Robert plated Vargas by pushing a grounder through the right side on an apparent hit-and-run, and was followed by Austin Slater pinch-hitting and drilling a grooved 2-1 sinker to tie the game 4-all. Two batters too late, right-hander Isaac Mattson entered the game spraying so wildly that he nailed Sosa with a full-count fastball to load the bases and all but ensure that the inning would get to Tauchman.
"He continues to put quality at-bats together," Venable said of Tauchman. "It doesn’t matter lefty, righty what the situation is. I feel really good about our chances when he’s up there. He’s been a total pro, plays the game along with the pitcher. Has an understanding of how they are going to attack him."
White Sox starter Adrian Houser entered Saturday night in Pittsburgh allowing just a .207 batting average on his sinker, accounting for just 20 hits on the season. Even an idyllic vision for a sinker is as a low-slug pitch which can't be lifted, rather than a low batting average pitch. Ground balls, for all their ills, get through the infield for singles pretty regularly.
To be clear, not all of the 10 hits Houser allowed on his sinker in his shortest outing in a White Sox uniform (4 1/3 innings) were on the ground. But if they weren't, they were of the low line drive variety, and when Gonzales finally elevated one for an RBI double off the wall to make it 4-2 Pirates in the fifth, Venable was striding out of the dugout in short order. Ideally any rival scouts in attendance were still too busy trying to get their hands on a Mac Miller bobblehead to notice.
"Felt like I had some good stuff tonight, just wasn't executing as well as I wanted to in some big spots," said Houser, whose velocity was up on the night. "It's not super-frustrating, it just comes down to better execution, get some pitches down or a little bit better located and those balls go right at guys. Or they don't find the holes or they're not hit quite as hard and we're able to make a play on them."
Even after replay review, Kyle Teel fell just inches short of his first career home run to lead off the seventh against Carmen Mlodzinski. He settled for merely a double, becoming the third Sox hitter on the night with two hits or more, and after a Robert walk and a Brooks Baldwin bunt, scoring when Sosa lined another single to become the fourth.
After all the innings Houser has saved for the White Sox bullpen since his arrival, five different relievers recorded the last 14 outs of the game without further damage, with Wikelman González getting the ninth.
Bullet points:
*Sox hitters went an absurd 7-for-13 with runners in scoring position. This is the first time they have scored double-digit runs in back-to-back games since 2021.
*The Sox RBI leader is...Robert, with 38, breaking the tie at 37 he had with Benintendi entering the game. Sosa drove in three to pull closer at 34.
*When Gonzales laced a hard grounder past Vargas with two outs in the first, the crowd focused on whether Bryan Reynolds would be able to motor home from first, but Tauchman opted instead to easily throw out Gonzales at second with the aid of a full-extension Colson Montgomery tag.
*Teel got dinged for a passed ball in the top of the fifth, allowing Andrew McCutchen to advance after a leadoff single. As a result, Gonzales' RBI double off the right field wall plated an unearned run.
