Buoyed by the return of one old friend before the game, the White Sox took the field against another familiar face and snapped their six-game losing streak.
"It was great to have him here today," said Miguel Vargas of his countryman José Abreu. "He’s such a great person. I’ve been talking with him so long, since I’ve been in the big leagues. He’s helped me a lot in the offseason. For me, he’s my idol and my role model."
Vargas made his mentor proud by tagging Dylan Cease for a two-run homer in the first inning, but unlike the other losses that populated this skid, the White Sox figured out how to put together a second crooked number, and a stout effort from Davis Martin and the White Sox bullpen allowed it to hold up.
The White Sox didn't face Cease last year during a season that merited a fourth-place finish in the National League Cy Young race, but the one they saw tonight resembled the one in the middle of a frustrating season. Four of his six innings were scoreless, during which he retired 12 of the 13 batters he faced. However, in the two innings where the White Sox scored, Cease had a hard time righting the ship -- even though the Sox tried to help him out with aggressive baserunning that backfired in both frames.
Before Vargas came to the plate in the first, Colson Montgomery had followed Kyle Teel's one-out walk with a soft single to left, and Teel was cut down trying to go from first to third on Ramon Laureano. Laureano made a fine off-balance throw to third, and Teel overslid the bag. When Vargas reached down for a 2-1 slider and poked it into the White Sox bullpen, it only gave the White Sox a 2-0 lead, rather than a three-spot.
In the fourth, Vargas was the one who started a rally with a one-out walk. He advanced to second after Mike Tauchman took a Cease fastball to the elbow, but was cut down by Freddy Fermin when he tried to advance on a curve in the dirt during Edgar Quero's at-bat.
"You hate when outs are made on the bases, but not all outs on the bases are equal," Will Venable said. "Those are in the spirit of being aggressive and trying to do the right thing. We ask these guys to do that. And sometimes it doesn't work out, which is fine. But I love the mindset."
Just like the first inning, the White Sox avoided short-circuiting. It helped that Cease drilled Quero in his elbow -- a fastball that Quero didn't take too kindly -- to restore the runner on second. Curtis Mead then dropped a single to center field that scored Tauchman, and then Justin Jirschele sent Quero home on Will Robertson's single to right. The risk was very much rooted in the calculus that, with Michael A. Taylor on deck against a righty, Quero was more likely to score on something going amiss with the throw. Jirschele was proven correct, as Fernando Tatis Jr.'s strong throw skipped past Fermin as Quero approached. Quero thudded into Fermin with his slide into home for a 4-2 lead, and Martin made use of the insurance run.
Martin is up to 43 major league starts in the winding road of his professional career, and this one seemed like it borrowed some elements of previous iterations. He retired the first seven batters he faced in order, before getting thrown into a stretch of three singles with a missile fly out mixed in that turned the game over to the heart of the Padres order. But Manny Machado's awful night at the plate included hitting first-pitch heaters back to the pitcher, so Martin escaped the third with Luis Arraez flipping a changeup for an RBI single being the only damage across.
Jackson Merrill led off the fourth with a bloop double, and when a repeat of Martin's sharp defense offered an opportunity to catch the Padres centerfielder in a rundown, his teammates drew it out for so long that Ramon Laureano could backfill the base and scored when Ryan O'Hearn hooked a first-pitch changeup for an RBI single. Again minimizing the damage, Martin froze Jake Cronenworth with a sinker under his hands before inducing a Freddy Fermin groundout to strand a pair of runners, before cutting through the heart of San Diego's order for a perfect fifth.
When Laureano led off the sixth with his own double before stealing third base, Will Venable left the infield back with a 4-2 lead, and was content to let Gavin Sheets draw the game within a run on a groundout. That left Martin with the most underwhelming brand of quality start, but an apt compromise for a pitcher who was regularly under fire once the lineup turned over for the first time, yet never committed the gamebreaking sin. It's the type of performance that makes Martin's hatred for walks seem more logical than pathological, because his carefully crafted escape plans would have crumbled under more than one free pass in six innings.
The White Sox bullpen had a much simpler time of it, especially since Teel atoned for his mistake on the basepaths by erasing a baserunner with his arm. Jordan Leasure gave up a one-out single to Fermin, who was replaced on the basepaths by Bryce Johnson. Tatis came to the plate as the San Diego lineup turned over and worked a full count, but he couldn't lay off a high Leasure fastball while Johnson took off for second, and Teel made an on-target throw that made the tag for Chase Meidroth a simple one.
Leasure then retired the first two batters of the eighth before turning it over to Brandon Eisert for a lefty-lefty matchup. He lived up to the LOOGY job by striking out Merrill, and Grant Taylor handled the ninth with ease for his fifth save of the season.
"Between [Taylor], Leasure and Eisert, that was crisp," Martin said. "I don’t think you can ask for a better seven, eight, nine out of those three guys. It’s something I think is really positive and something that those guys have been doing kind of behind the senses. Just kind of want to shed some light on that because they’ve been really good down the stretch."
Bullet points:
*Cease dropped to 8-12, and his ERA rose to 4.64. Davis Martin improved to 7-10, so he now leads the team in wins.
*Martin got a visit from head trainer James Kruk while he was warming up for the fourth, but stayed in the game. He was not inclined to share what was discussed.
"All good. All good, baby!"
*The "successful rundown" tag was used for the Sox catching Jackson Merrill too far off second base in the fourth, because that's the only option other than "botched." Had "tedious rundown that allows the batter to backfill the base" been an option, that would have been the choice.
*Meidroth went 0-for-4 with a strikeout at the top of the order, halting his hitting streak at 13 games.
*Hispanic Heritage Night drew 30,505 to Rate Field, the sixth-biggest crowd of the year.
*José Abreu threw out the first pitch and missed arm-side, but that seemed besides the point.
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— Chicago White Sox (@whitesox) September 20, 2025
