There are a lot of moving parts in the waning hours before the MLB Trade Deadline. The positioning of the Rate Field press box and the glass windows between suites on the 400-level provided quite the view of Dave Dombrowski & Co. huddling, talking on the phone, hashing out ideas that ultimately proved to be in service bringing Twins closer Jhoan Duran to Philadelphia.
Things can get out of order in such a chaotic situation, and the Phillies mistakenly provided a use case for adding an elite reliever after they had agreed on the deal.
After old friend Tanner Banks wriggled out of a jam in the sixth, the Phillies brought in Max Lazar for the seventh to preserve a 2-2 tie, only to watch him yield an MLB season-high seven consecutive hits as part of a seven-run White Sox inning. If you got overserved at Rate Field during the massive pregame rain delay and are way too into numerology, the results of this game must have hit like an atomic bomb.
"We hit a lot of hard ball against Walker there and it finally paid off for us and to string those together," Will Venable said. "That's a total group effort, a kind of a 9-on-1 attack, and those guys did a great job."
Ironically, the miraculous inning opened with a Josh Rojas leadoff double, only to see him gunned down at the plate on a Mike Tauchman single, thanks to a perfect throw from Johan Rojas and a send from Justin Jirschele that proved to be more aggressive than needed with time. But soft singles from Lenyn Sosa and Andrew Benintendi followed before the Sox started graduating to soft home runs.
With Sox already up 3-2. Miguel Vargas raised up for the third letter-high fastball of his at-bat and lofted a Paul Konerko-style humpback line-drive over the Sox bullpen. The game-breaking three-run homer ended up in the waiting glove of an awestruck kid wearing a "My First Sox Game" sticker. That's how you draw it up.
Channeling the feeling of playing Madden '98, the White Sox followed up by running the same play again to see if the Phillies would make an adjustment. Kyle Teel lined a single to right-center before Luis Robert Jr. smashed a grounder to third, and legged out an infield single for his third hit of possibly his last game on the team. Lazar was finally relieved by Seth Johnson, who struck out Colson Montgomery to end the hit streak, only for Edgar Quero to provide a demonstration on why high splitters are bad. Swinging from his weaker side, Quero served an opposite field fly that carried over the wall for the second sub-100 mph three-run homer of the inning.
"We’ve been doing the little things we weren’t able to do the first half," Robert said via interpreter. "We’ve been productive and the results are there."
That made it 9-2, which both took some steam out of the threat when Bryce Harper launched a high drive to left with two runners on at 103 mph the following inning. It also made it funnier when the diminuitive Benintendi leaped to rob Harper of a three-run homer at the last moment. Sometimes, it's just not your day.
Only Venable and a cadre of other team employees know how many arms the White Sox had available for their bullpen day, such that adding more to Tyler Alexander's three hitless innings to open the evening was necessary. Losing a six-pitch battle to Bryce Harper when the two-time MVP served a knee-high changeup down the right field line for a one-out double punched a leak into the dam.
Three-straight medium contact singles followed, including after Mike Vasil arrived and yielded a seeing-eye grounder to Otto Kemp that put the Phillies up 2-1 in the fourth.
However Phillies starter Taijuan Walker was tottering much more violently than any member of the Sox bullpen cohort. Teel's second inning solo shot was one of five balls hit 95 mph or harder off Walker in the inning (and only the third-hardest), which he miraculously escaped with only one run allowed because Montgomery's 113.2 mph bullet found a glove and Robert hit a 111 mph wall single that caromed directly to Brandon Marsh in left, before he was barely thrown out trying to steal second.
"Just trying to be on time for a fastball, threw me a cutter up and in and just turned on it," Teel said. "There's so much talent on this team, and to be able to positively impact this game is important to me and it's important to the guys. So it's a great feeling."
Montgomery got revenge two innings later with a display of his goofy opposite-field juice. He stayed on a low-and-away (secretly an awful location to him) splitter and drilled a bullet that slid over the wall in left-center just as Marsh was positioning himself for the carom.
At least Marsh had a garbage time solo shot off Steven Wilson in the ninth to comfort him.
Bullet points:
*Chase Meidroth left the game in the fifth after he was hit by a pitch in the right thumb. He looked to be in a lot of pain and very frustrated, and was replaced by Sosa, but the X-rays on his thumb were negative.
*Phillies catcher Rafael Marchán appeared to commit a game-changing two-base throwing error on an attempted backpick with two runners on in the fifth, allowing Mike Tauchman to score from second. But his arm swing hit the mask of home plate umpire Clint Vondrak, and the whole play was called back due to interference.
*Vondrak continued to innovate in the eighth, calling Quero for a pitch clock violation while Vasil was throwing warm-up pitches.
*The start of the game was delayed by a three-hour and forty-five minute rain delay. The White Sox gave the media free pizza in the press box, so all is forgiven.
*Max Kepler (triceps strain) and Adrian Houser (leaving town) were both pregame scratches.
*The Sox are at 40 wins, a total they reached in the second-to-last game of the 2024 season.
