What's your favorite type of win? As a White Sox fan, you're not really in position to make requests, but how about it?
Ninth inning rally? Dominant starting pitching performance? 13-12 slobberknocker?
How about the home team jumping out to a big early lead and then slowly threatening to blow it over the course of two hours? No?
Well, again, you're not in position to choose. The last eight Sox hitters were retired in order and their offense didn't manage a hit after the fourth inning, at which point they held a 6-1 lead. Five relievers combining for a scoreless final three innings would suggest some youngsters in the Sox bullpen shining to protect a one-run advantage. And still, no, not in any straightforward manner.
"A lot going on out there," said Will Venable, a honest man.
Grant Taylor began the ninth inauspiciously, walking backup catcher Hunter Feduccia without showing his best velocity, before spiking his first pitch to Tristan Gray and stepping off the rubber. He left with a right groin strain that will require an MRI on Thursday and could still easily end his 2025 season, but that's still significantly less terrifying than the initial injury scare, and the subsequent bullpen scramble it caused.
Wikelman González was the surprising first choice to try to finish the save, and looked like a curious one when he finished the walk of Gray with four pitches. But after the Rays granted him an out with Chandler Simpson bunting the runners over, Yandy Díaz couldn't get on plane with González's heater, striking out on fastballs in the zone at the end of a game where he homered and reached base three times. That made it three batters faced, which allowed Venable to pull out Tyler Gilbert for a lefty-lefty battle with Brandon Lowe, who succumbed to a barrage of sweepers to seal the victory.
"They still had a number of guys on the bench where they could match up," Venable said. "We talked about maybe bringing in a lefty there, Gilbert or [Tyler] Alexander, but just thought Wikelman was the right choice. He did a great job and was able to pass the baton to Gilbert there in a big spot, where he was just kind of really going all in on that at-bat against Lowe."
Despite all that, there's a case to be made that this game was determined in the second inning. Newly recalled Sean Burke's stuff looked crisp even allowing a solo shot to Díaz in the first, only for him to come out for the second and walk the bases loaded on 14 pitches. With his starter flagging after just spending nearly a month in Triple-A because of his tendency to waste pitches, Venable got González up for the first time on the night, only for Burke to capitalize on a pair of gifts to engineer an escape.
His first present game from home plate umpire Nic Lentz, who granted him a low strike call on a first-pitch curveball, triggering Carson Williams to chase a similarly located second one, and swing way under a high fastball for the first out. The second gift came from Burke's close friend Colson Montgomery with the infield drawn-in, as the White Sox shortstop corralled a Simpson chopper, backed up to get the out at second and fired to first in time to get arguably the fastest man in the sport and finish off the escape.
"I was hoping he would turn it quick enough because I know Simpson can fly," Burke said. "So as soon as I saw him--my head shifted over--and I saw the throw was beating him, I was excited."
The bottom half of the frame brought out rookie Mason Montgomery as the second part of the Rays' bullpen game, against whom the Sox used good fortune to drag out the inning until it ran into questionable process. A Miguel Vargas bloop was followed by a Chase Meidroth bunt, followed by a Michael A. Taylor RBI double down the left field line, with none of those hits sizzling off the bat hotter than 80 mph. But Montgomery followed that up by losing left-on-left battles he was supposed to win; hanging an 0-2 slider to Mike Tauchman for a two-run double before walking Kyle Teel.
By that point, Rays manager Kevin Cash had right-hander Kevin Kelly warming, and Lenyn Sosa striding up, but left Montgomery in just so Sosa could spray 98 mph on his hands into left-center for another two-run double. Only then was Montgomery pulled, setting up the right-hander Kelly to face Colson Montgomery, throwing both platoon considerations and surname synergy into the wind. Montgomery grounded out to first, but it's the principle of the matter, and the five-run inning that had already preceded it.
Burke's fourth walk of the game came in the third, but he pieced together two scoreless innings after his escape that would lend themselves to the notion that he was settling in with a lead that ballooned to 6-1 after three innings. But the leash for Burke was more "guy just up from Charlotte" than "opening day starter," and Brandon Eisert started throwing when Williams homered on a first-pitch hanger to open the fifth and turn the lineup over.
When Burke couldn't solve Díaz for the third-straight time, he was pulled after a one-out single, only to watch Junior Caminero launch an Eisert changeup off the edge out to left to trim the Rays deficit to 6-4.
All's well that ends well.
"It’s good to win games," Vargas said. "For the second half, we’ve been playing so much better baseball. We are all together and trying to get good results. We are all happy and engaged to each other."
Bullet points:
*The Rays walked seven times but only plated one of them. There were plenty of items in this game for them to ponder in Cancun a month from now.
*The White Sox home run race continues to offer a surprising level of intrigue. Andrew Benintendi roped a middle-middle sinker inside the right field foul pole for a third-inning solo shot and his 19th home run of the year, bringing him a dinger away from a share of the lead with Sosa, and pushing Montgomery to third place.
*Burke hit 99.8 mph on the radar gun in the first inning, which a Statcast search indicates is a career-high. He sat a more customary ~95 mph for the rest of the night. He hasn't earned a win since June.
*Mike Vasil got a strikeout of Williams in the sixth because he tried to call a second batter's timeout in the at-bat, on a 2-2 count. Hopefully it was as scintillating on television as it was in the park.
Since Vasil had just allowed an RBI single to Feduccia to draw the game to 6-5 and put the tying run aboard, it was also a sneaky critical moment.
*Meidroth was robbed of a multi-hit night by a terrific diving catch from Rays centerfielder Jake Mangum on a shallow bloop in the eighth.
