The White Sox are playing their best baseball of the season, even when they aren't playing their best baseball of the season.
The Sox extended their winning streak to a season-high six games with a 7-5 victory over the AL Central-leading Tigers in Detroit, even though they made a couple of mistakes that would've characterized the quintessential debacles of previous seasons. Instead, falling behind only set up a sixth straight come-from-behind win, which the White Sox had never done before.
It turns out a steady drumbeat of runs -- seven, meted out over six different innings -- provides a margin for error. The White Sox just kept scoring, whether it was by stringing together productive plate appearances (they outhit the Tigers 11-7), or by having Andrew Benintendi and Colson Montgomery accelerate the team home run race (they both hit their 18th of the season). The bullpen wobbled, but it was able to ensure that Jordan Leasure was the last White Sox pitcher of the game, and for the good reason.
Shane Smith ended up the victor, even though he gave up four runs over five innings in fashions both frustrating and painful.
In the third inning, a 2-0 lead evaporated on his first two pitches. He plunked Dillon Dingler with a first-pitch curveball, then watched Parker Meadows hit the first pitch he saw since coming off the injured list over the right field wall for a game-tying homer.
Yet the sequence in the fourth inning was the one that left the mark. First he walked Wenceel Pérez with two outs, after which Colson Montgomery knocked a Zach McKinstry bouncer into shallow left, turning an infield single into a double that put runners on second and third.
To cap it off, Smith bounced a curve about five feet in front of home plate on Kyle Teel's backhand side. Teel swatted at the bounce and lobbed it into fair territory, and seeing the hang time, Pérez broke for home while Teel and Smith both charged for the ball. The pitcher and catcher arrived at the same time and made "battery" too literal of a concept. They collided and hit the ground as the ball rolled back behind home plate, and as they lay on the turf, McKinstry came hauling around third to put the Tigers up 4-3 on the ultra-rare two-run wild pitch.
Somehow, everybody in a White Sox uniform bounced back. Smith remained in the game to finish the fourth while throwing a scoreless fifth, and with the White Sox tacking on run after run, that was good enough to be on the other side of the decision when the dust settled.
Montgomery was at the center of the action, coming up with four RBIs over three different plate appearances. In the first, Montgomery pulled a single through the right side, scoring Curtis Mead for the game's first run.
After settling for a run-scoring fielder's choice with the bases loaded in the fifth, Montgomery made the other RBIs more eventful. After Edgar Quero's leadoff single was nearly stranded at first, following a pair of outs at shortstop, Montgomery faced Kelvin Montero and fell behind 1-2. But when Montero tried a back-foot slider for a swing and miss, he instead left it knee-high, and Montgomery cranked it into the right field seats for a two-run shot that put the Sox ahead 7-4.
Montgomery also started a rally in the fourth, drawing a leadoff walk against Flaherty, advancing to second on Chase Meidroth's bunt single attempt turned sacrifice, and then scored two batters later on Will Robertson's broken-bat single to right.
But he wasn't the only one making things happen. Dominic Fletcher made his presence felt in his first game for the White Sox in 2025, doubling twice and scoring twice, first on a Teel single in the third, and then on Montgomery's fielder's choice. After the White Sox missed a chance to break the game open in that bases-loaded situation the inning before, Benintendi opened the sixth with a lefty-lefty solo shot off Bailey Horn, putting the White Sox ahead 5-4.
Montgomery's homer provided the needed insurance. Will Venable chose to protect the lead with two guys back from Charlotte in order to spare some arms, and he lived to tell the tale. Tyler Gilbert pitched around a one-out single in the sixth, but allowed a walk and a single with two outs to keep the seventh alive. Dan Altavilla took over and got Gleyber Torres to ground out to end the inning, but then he yielded doubles to two of the three batters he faced in the eighth, and that's when Leasure entered for the five-out save.
And Leasure did while facing the minimum. He located well, striking out two and throwing 16 of 25 pitches for strikes. He also ended both innings with solid contact. Dingler's lineout to short in the eighth was clocked at 97.9 mph, and Torres' fly ball with two outs in the ninth traveled 372 feet. Fortunately, it was to the sizable left-center power alley, and Andrew Benintendi flagged it down at the front of the warning track.
Bullet points:
*The White Sox last won six in a row back in May 2022.
*The White Sox arrived in Detroit at 4:30 a.m. after the late night in Minnesota.
*Bryan Ramos was the only White Sox starter without a hit.
*Horn, a one-time White Sox draft pick and two-time former White Sox farmhand, took the loss.
*The box score shows Meidroth was caught stealing, but that's because he ran on what he thought was a full count with two outs in the seventh inning. It was a 2-2 count to Andrew Benintendi, and so Meidroth was surprised to see the throw arrive at second when Montero threw ball three. Had it been an earnest steal attempt and Meidroth slid, he probably would've been safe.
*Teel had his own baserunning scare earlier that inning. He replaced Quero after grounding into a fielder's choice for the first out, and then had to retreat back to first when Mead smoked a line drive to short. He didn't see McKinstry drop the ball, pick it up and throw to second because he was too busy scrambling back to first, so he was sure surprised when Mead's foot landed on first base in front of his face. Then Montgomery homered, so all efforts paid off, as goofy as they may have looked.
