Tonight marked the fourth time Yoendrys Gómez pitched into the sixth inning, but only the first time he recorded an out in the sixth inning.
Still, it can't be called progress just yet. The Padres still managed to come up with four runs, turning a 2-1 White Sox lead into a game San Diego won going away.
Granted, the collapse had more to do with Fraser Ellard than Gómez, but nobody covered themselves with glory. Gómez started the inning by giving up a single to Fernando Tatis Jr., who then took the next 180 feet on a fastball behind Luis Arraez's back and a huge jump on an uncontested stolen base. Manny Machado then dropped a single to center to tie the game at 2, and that's when Ellard entered.
It only got uglier from there. Ellard entered a stretch of the San Diego lineup that featured four lefties over five batters, but ironically, the only Padre which Ellard retired was the right-handed Ramón Laureano. He walked the lefty Jackson Merrill on four pitches, struck out Laureano, then walked the lefty Gavin Sheets on five pitches to load the bases. That brought the lefty Ryan O'Hearn to the plate, and while Ellard was able to get the count to 2-2, he threw an outer-half fastball that O'Hearn blistered to the left-center gap to clear the bases.
"The walks with Ellard there, made it tough on us," said Will Venable. "Some traffic and [we] weren’t able to work through it."
If that wasn't enough, the lefty Jake Cronenworth came to the plate, and Ellard lost an eight-pitch battle before Venable came out to take the ball. By the time Steven Wilson got the game back under control, the score was already too far gone.
Up until that point, it looked like a mere variation on Friday night's themes. The White Sox took a first-inning lead with a Colson Montgomery-Miguel Vargas one-two punch, except Vargas had to settle for an RBI double instead of a two-run homer. Chase Meidroth and Kyle Teel repeated that same sequence against Yu Darvish in the third inning to reclaim the lead after the Padres tied it up in the second on a Merrill solo shot.
All the while, Gómez followed Davis Martin's plan of pounding the strike zone and trusting the defense, and completed five innings on just 64 pitches, throwing 50 for strikes.
"We were attacking the hitters," Gómez said via interpreter. "They are a good team, and they took advantage of a couple things but I think it was a good outing."
It helped that Mike Tauchman might've turned in the defensive game of his life, turning in three highlights over the course of four innings. He ended the third inning with a sliding catch on Arraez's line drive to right, then popped up in time to beat Freddy Fermín back to first for a 9-3 double play. He made another sliding catch to take a hit away from Merrill in the fourth.
Still, Tauchman saved his best effort for the sixth. After Wilson entered to mercifully relieve Ellard, Fermín hit a high fly slicing down the right field line. Tauchman loped to it on a direct line, then leaped fearlessly into the screen, springing back onto the field with the ball in his glove after his bottom landed three or four steps up the aisle.
""He's a guy that leaves it out there every single day," Teel said. "The one where [Tauchman] went into the seats, it was just unbelievable. It's awesome to be on the field with him every single day."
It was a real Keyser Soze moment for a guy whose legs work only intermittently, but maybe that's what it took to finally bring that miserable inning to an end.
Bullet points:
*Cam Booser emulated Ellard in the eighth by losing two lefty-lefty battles around retiring Laureano. Merrill doubled, and then Sheets singled him home.
*The White Sox were nearly held scoreless after the third inning, but Lenyn Sosa homered off Robert Suarez with two outs in the ninth to both end the scoreless streak and retake the team lead in home runs with 21. Sosa is 2-for-2 with two solo homers against Suarez for his career.
*The White Sox were 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position because both of their run-scoring hits drove home the runner from first.
*Colson Montgomery avoided striking out for a third straight game, finishing 1-for-3 with a walk off Mason Miller.
