Between four injuries to their rotation and their ailing planned starter Eric Lauer sitting 89 mph out of the gate, the Blue Jays had the plurality of their innings Sunday come from Austin Voth, who was cut by the White Sox out of camp.
While that didn't trigger an offensive explosion in response, the Sox' first sweep of the 2026 season was nevertheless driven by the comparative starting pitching riches they enjoyed. Davis Martin's six scoreless innings--sans opener--easily represents the team's best starting pitching performance of the year, and there's a W by his name as the White Sox swept the defending AL champs for a reason.
"Davis was amazing today, locating his stuff pretty good; good location, attacking the hitters, and he got good results," said Edgar Quero, who reached base three times while catching the shutout. "The results are coming right now, and we're feeling pretty good about that too."
After looking like his stuff was down during his five-inning debut in Miami, Martin hummed 95 mph all day, mixing two versions of his fastball, and flipping his scouting reporting by flipping in more two-strike curves than kick changes. Even as he struck out a batter per inning and didn't yield an extra-base hit, it'd be fair to wonder how Martin's day would have gone if his third inning took a different turn.
A full count walk to Andres Giménez led off the frame before Brandon Valenzuela lined his first major league hit to turn the Jays lineup over with a pair of runners on. After a George Springer fly out, Martin induced a potential double play ball from Nathan Lukes, but Miguel Vargas was briefly frozen by the sight of Giménez charging toward him, and settled for a single out at second. That put the fate of the game up to point on a pair of full-count battles with the heart of the Toronto order. Vladimir Guerrero didn't chase a four-seamer on his hands to load the bases, where as Addison Barger grounded a sinker hard up the middle, putting Tanner Murray's shortstop acumen on display in heroic fashion.
TANNER MURRAY 🤯 pic.twitter.com/MsKQStoG5t
— Chicago White Sox (@whitesox) April 5, 2026
"He was just somersaulting and I was like 'get rid of it, get rid of it, get rid of it'" said Martin. "I gave him a big hug in the dugout. He was my pick to click, flying under the radar in camp."
"I almost fell over when I got it," Murray said. "I turned around and saw hundreds of faces and I was like, 'Mune’s got me somewhere over there.' I threw it to him, he made the play and we got out of the inning."
Most of the day didn't require spinning and twisting acrobatics to keep Toronto scoreless, but the White Sox only ever compiled a sufficient lead rather than a commanding one. Chase Meidroth slid a medium-speed roller down the left field line for a leadoff double in the first, and would have scored on Miguel Vargas' sharp single to center even if Daulton Varsho hadn't played it into a triple.
Munetaka Murakami's leadoff walk in the third marked the end of Lauer's day, but the early injection of right-hander Austin Voth largely flummoxed a Sox lineup planned around a lefty starter. Luckily, Lenyn Sosa is unbound by the rules of man, and lined a Voth cutter down the left field line for a two-out RBI double to score Murakami. Veteran-enabled two-out offense reared up once more in the fourth. Austin Hays is known as a pulling-and-lifting machine, but two of his biggest blows so far have involved staying closed and hitting the ball to right, and his line-drive single off a Voth high fastball scored Luisangel Acuña after a leadoff single.
The burden of success is that the White Sox spent the afternoon nursing a slight lead with seemingly few of their high-leverage relievers available. Will Venable covered as much of the afternoon with Jordan Leasure as could be considered reasonable, as he struck out Springer to strand two of Bryan Hudson's runners to close out the seventh before cutting through the middle of the Jays' order for a 1-2-3 eighth.
Chris Murphy pitched over a leadoff walk to Okamoto to record both his second career save, and his first scoreless appearance out of his last four.
"If [poor play from the road trip] carries into this homestand, you could say that it might be too much to overcome, but we all came together as a group and collectively locked the hatches," Martin said. "It starts with Will saying 'Hey guys, this isn't what we did in spring, this isn't the kind of baseball that we practiced and drilled in for six, seven weeks in spring training.' The off day, the rain delay off day kind of came at the perfect time. Gave everybody a day to kind of collect their thoughts at home, settle in at Chicago and come to the field excited, ready to go for this homestand. I think it was a culmination of it, but yeah there was a visible effort and conversations being had of 'Hey, we need to steer this in the right direction now.'"
Bullet points:
*Acuña had an eventful second inning. He made a running, diving catch on a sinking liner from Varsho, whacked an infield single that deflected off Okamoto, should have been backpicked off first but Guerrero dropped the throw, and stole second. He did not score.
*Sox leadoff hitters reached base four times. They scored in three of those innings.
*Murray went 0-for-2 with two infield popups in his major league debut before being pinch hit for by Colson Montgomery, who singled in the ninth.
*Everson Pereira's left ankle wasn't recovering fast enough to avoid the IL.
"He was working really hard with his rehab," said Venable. "We weren’t seeing enough progression as far as his health goes to be comfortable putting him out there. Just give him some time to recover and get back out there after his rehab stint whenever that might be."
*Grant Taylor will open for the White Sox once again on Monday
