A cardinal rule of White Sox baseball was debunked Saturday night.
It was once believed that if the Sox can survive an incidence of throwing to Lenyn Sosa while's not standing on first base, then nothing can stop them.
When Sosa received a throw from Curtis Mead on an Anthony Volpe sacrifice bunt in the 10th, a few steps ahead of where Chase Meidroth had correctly set himself up for the wheel play, the Sox first baseman simply tagged the runner out on the baseline without incident, nor did he walk under a ladder or break a mirror in the process of doing it.
Yet that breakthrough, nor Jordan Leasure looking borderline dominant against the heart of the Yankees order in the ninth, nor Grant Taylor's get-right outing in the 10th, proved to be the dragon the White Sox needed to slay to snap their now five-game losing streak. Sosa missing out on a walk-off knock by mere feet with foul balls to each side of the field in the 10th made it plain enough that there had been no drastic shift in baseball's karmic balance.
"It’s a tough one, no doubt about it," said Will Venable. "These guys battled and put themselves in a really good spot to win that ballgame and just came up short. This group all year has battled back and we’ll do the same and be ready to go tomorrow."
Instead it was just two teams with a wide disparity in resources and talent, and by going 2-for-15 with runners in scoring position, the scuffling White Sox offense drew things out long enough for water to find its level.
It found it specifically in the 11th, as Tyler Alexander against the top of the Yankee batting order made for a three-run inning. Cody Bellinger may have gotten jammed on his go-ahead bloop single to left, and Volpe certainly got lucky by chasing a changeup off the edge for a shanked double to right. But in between them was a ringing example of 91 mph down the pipe to Jazz Chisholm Jr. doesn't work, even with the platoon advantage.
"No one wants to have that result but I believe we gave it everything we had, and the best part about baseball is we've got a game tomorrow," said Kyle Teel.
The White Sox, in turn, went hitless in eight at-bats with runners in scoring position over the final four innings. The only true offensive production they managed involved a man from Down Under.
Mead lacks the experience, and has looked too stout defensively at third to really earn any genuine Roger Dorn comparisons. But that Cam Schlittler fastball he took off the hand to lead off the fifth really kickstarted the Sox offense in a way that wasn't happening by traditional means against the hard-throwing Yankees starter.
Again utilizing non-traditional means, Brooks Baldwin moved Mead into scoring position by lining a comebacker off Schlittler's side/butt area. While the 102.1 mph blow did ultimately little to slow Schlitter's path of destruction through the White Sox lineup, he did eventually hang a 0-1 curveball to Mike Tauchman for a two-out RBI single, briefly tying the game in between booming Yankee solo homers.
The events of film Major League also never depict Dorn's character speaking in a gentle but clearly present Australian accent, nor do they show him lifting his barrel up to spray a 94 mph Devin Williams fastball into the right field corner for a leadoff double in the seventh. Yet Mead did this as well, positioning him to score on an archetypical 10-bounce Chase Meidroth bleeder through the infield to re-tie the game.
Back in April, it was normal to have optimistic feelings about Shane Smith amid the White Sox getting regularly poleaxed, and what once was old is now new again. Hating the present state of his slider and only conditionally trusting his changeup, Smith has resolved himself to attack with heaters, just as his upper-90s velocity is showing second wind. He opened the night by blowing away Trent Grisham with a 97.5 mph four-seamer and didn't look back.
Well, he looked back in the fourth when he hung a changeup to Aaron Judge, who deposited it to the moon for a go-ahead solo shot. And after the somewhat surprising decision from Venable to bring Smith out for the seventh--surprising given his season-long innings management, unsurprising given the paucity of pen options--Smith ceded another solo shot to Austin Wells on a letter-high 2-2 fastball.
"If anybody's going to beat me, it's going to be me," Smith said. "It's kind of how I was in that rough stretch, I was beating myself a little bit with not staying aggressive, and not throwing pitches in the zone, and not attacking hitters."
While there was space between Smith and true dominance across his 6 1/3 innings of two-run ball, there wasn't room for shame, and how much more can be expected these days?
Bullet points:
*Shane Smith looked more like an All-Star in the month of August: 33.2 IP, 31 K, 13 BB, 2.67 ERA.
*Colson Montgomery and Will Robertson combined to go 0-for-10 with four strikeouts, with Montgomery taking the larger portion. Robertson at least got a meaningless RBI on an 11th inning groundout.
*All three Yankee hits with runners in scoring position (3-for-12) came in the 11th.
