By the miracle that is this weird sport, a Wednesday getaway day matchup between rookie starters piggybacking with guys coming off the injured list served as arguably the most pitching-dominant game of the 2025 season. And in such a world, the team that didn't have someone pitching for the first time in four months held the advantage.
On the heels of Shane Smith twirling five scoreless innings, Martín Pérez returned to a major league mound for the first time since April 18, after an odds-defying recovery from a significant flexor strain. He's had two rehab starts, but the big league game is a different beast and it took a moment for Pérez get his bearings.
"My legs were shaking a lot," Pérez said. "I was so nervous on the first inning. I don’t know if you guys see it. It was good to be back after almost four months, to be back on the mound and compete again.
Kerry Carpenter greeted the respected veteran by lining a changeup for a leadoff single, before Spencer Torkelson whacked a 2-0 cookie to the wall in center for a double to put a pair of ducks on the pond. Pérez compounded his troubles by walking Riley Greene on five pitches to load the bases, before placing a changeup just away enough that Luis Robert Jr. was able to run down Wenceel Pérez's ensuing rocket to left-center and turn it into a sacrifice fly rather than a bases clearing double.
From there, Pérez got to work like the days of old. He fooled Javier Báez with a changeup, before inducing a sharp grounder from Jahmai Jones to escape with only a single run of damage, and strung together seven more outs worth of weak contact and varying speeds with no further issue. All things considered, 3 1/3 innings of one-run ball was quite an accomplishment.
"In Boston after the game [where I was injured], I was sitting with [head trainer] James [Kruk], and he told me, ‘Hey Martín, at some point maybe you are going to get surgery.'" Pérez recalled. "A lot was going on in my mind. I get the second opinion from [Dr. Keith] Meister, and he said 'You don’t need surgery. Because if you get surgery, you go home. It’s over for you.' I went through all the routine and all the rehab and now we are here."
But that single hiccup was far more trouble than the Sox inflicted upon their counterparts. Tigers rookie Troy Melton is a legit mid-rotation prospect, and that assertion won't require much convincing after he carved up Sox hitters with two distinct mid-90s fastballs, flying in the face of the lineup's second half raison d'etre.
"I think I made a couple of good contacts with the baseball, just out," said Edgar Quero, who flew out to the wall in center and lined out with his new torpedo bat. "[Melton] was pretty good. He was locating the sinker. He was pretty good attacking the hitters early. He did a pretty good job."
Luis Robert Jr.'s leadoff double in the fifth was the first Sox baserunner off Melton, and Andrew Benintendi, Miguel Vargas and Quero all striking out behind him accounted for all three of the team's at-bats with a runner in scoring position. At least the Tigers don't have three positional prospects as good or better than Melton who have yet to even reach Triple-A. I mean, can you imagine?
"That was the message coming into today, being ready for fastballs early in the count," Will Venable said. "That’s exactly what we saw. [Melton] was able to mix it up and spin some early-count breaking balls. A really good job of him and for us, we had the right approach, we just got beat."
Melton was dominant, but also rate-limited and departed after five scoreless inning on 56 pitches, with Sawyer Gipson-Long providing two innings of relief behind him fresh off of being activated from the IL. Curtis Mead greeted SGL with a sharp one-out single off an 0-2 fastball in the sixth, but was wiped out by a Kyle Teel double play. With that, we've discussed all the hits the Sox had on Wednesday in vivid detail.
Smith pitched with an extra day of rest again and at long last, looked like he benefitted from it. His fastball touched 98 mph and worked upstairs for whiffs, such as when he blew away Carpenter to end a third inning that opened ominously with a leadoff walk of Jake Rogers.
Largely moving away from his slider against Tigers left-handers, the changeup that Smith developed this offseason had a welcome return to a starring role. He got five whiffs on it out of the eight swings it generated, including a beautiful, falling-off-the-table cambio to Greene for his first of five strikeouts in five scoreless frames.
"Just getting on top of it," Smith said of his resurgent changeup command. "A lot of my stuff — fastball, curveball — getting on top of it. Changeup's got to be the same thing. Just letting the grip do the work. Letting the hand drop down and trying to get in the side of it, I think that’s when the fingers come around it and that’s when the pull or fade that’s uncompetitive happens."
Smith sprayed his fastball enough (three walks) that a hook after five innings was a natural stopping point (92 pitches), rather than careful handling. Waiting for the White Sox offense to put him in line for the win would've taken far longer.
Bullet points:
*The Sox had gone 41 games since their last time being shut out, a 10-0 loss to the Diamondbacks on June 23.
*The Tigers went 0-for-2 with runners in scoring position, with the jam against Pérez representing their only real scoring opportunity.
*Smith has reached 101 innings pitched on the season, and he'll be setting a new career-high with every out for the rest of the way.
"That’s a pretty low benchmark in terms of starting pitching," Smith said. "But for me, that’s a career-high for me. Really want to build on that. Obviously want to finish this year strong and throw as many innings as I can, just build up as much workload."
