Just as a two-out bunt isn’t stupid if it works, having your star first baseman yield a run in extras by failing to corral the third out isn’t disastrous if the other team does it too.
Minutes before Tristan Peters sent fans home happy with a walk-off 10th inning single to right, Rate Field was deflated by an untimely reveal of a surprising flaw in Munetaka Murakami's game. For the second time in a week, his back heel came off the bag while corralling a wayward throw from Miguel Vargas, allowing extra runner Davis Schneider to score from third to put the Blue Jays up a run in the 10th.
About 10 minutes later, hope was seemingly lost with Vargas stranded on third in the bottom half of the frame. But during Austin Hays' eventual strikeout, a foul tip struck starting Toronto catcher Alejandro Kirk's hand and forced him out of the game for a cold Tyler Heineman.
Seemingly out of moves with Derek Hill striding to the plate after pinch-running for Andrew Benintendi earlier, Will Venable got wacky.
"Skip came out and was like 'if they're playing back, don't be afraid to drop one down'" Hill said. "You've got a new guy coming in, he hasn't thrown for three, four hours, you never know what can happen."
With fans groaning in response, Hill laid down a bunt in front of home plate on the first pitch, only for Heineman throw to sail just wide of Vladimir Guerrero's reach. The resulting chaos allowed the speedy Hill to reach second, where he scored with a slide after Peters scooped a knee-high Jeff Hoffman splitter into right for the winner.
"I think they lifted me by the jersey and it ripped a few buttons off," said Peters, who collected his first big league hit less than a week ago. "I might have to get a new jersey. I don’t know how I ended up in the air."
The wild finish obscured a game that otherwise started out looking familiar, if only because it featured Dylan Cease laboring despite superior stuff. A Murakami single to left-center was the only hard contact he yielded in the first, but he sandwiched a four-pitch walk to Chase Meidroth and taking his eyes off a flip from Guerrero on a Vargas roller around it to plate the game's first run.
Vargas started the similarly small ball-coded White Sox third inning with a one-out walk, followed by a Colson Montgomery swinging bunt single. Venable quickly put both runners in motion on a double steal, and Vargas both beat the throw and the infield coverage to the bag at third. That set up Hays to plate a pair by tucking his hands in on a 98 mph fastball, lining a single to left to build a 3-1 lead that held for...a while.
"Especially in the AL Central in April, we know there’s going to be wind, weather, and slug is maybe not part of our offensive package, and we’ve got to find any way we can," Venable said.
Jordan Leasure could argue that none of the first four pitches he threw to open the eighth inning caught much of the plate, but after Ernie Clement poked an edge slider up the middle, his first-pitch fastball to Andres Giménez wound up catching a lot of the right field foul pole to tie things up. Either way, Cease laboring but not factoring into the decision either way during a game on the South Side just felt right.
Maybe this one seems obvious, but as of Friday evening, Sean Burke now has six career outings of six innings or longer, where he yielded one walk or less, and as it turns out, they've all been pretty good.
The White Sox soft-launched Burke's second outing of the year behind Grant Taylor as an opener, only to watch last year's opening day starter yield an early 1-0 lead via back-to-back doubles to the first two hitters, the first of which required a leaping effort from Peters at the wall to keep Addison Barger in the yard.
Blessed with a far livelier heater than the one he had in Milwaukee, Burke yielded just two more baserunners through the end of the seventh, striking out seven while issuing no free passes. One of those two hits was a soft Guerrero single in the sixth, right ahead of Barger just getting under a first-pitch sinker for a far less scary fly to Peters to end a mild threat. Rather than Friday's bullpen hijinks being sowed by overexposure, Burke provided the longest and best start of the White Sox season to date; had it actually been a start, that is.
Bullet points:
*Ozzie Guillen will have his jersey retired by the White Sox before their Aug. 8 against the Cleveland Guardians. Scott Podsednik read the news in the CHSN studio, which was projected on the stadium Jumbotron, so that everyone could see the World Series-winning manager overcome with emotion.
"I was very surprised, very, very surprised," Guillen said. "They did it the right way, I guess. They made me cry. I didn't even cry for anything, you know, much. Because I know how this moment is so important for my family, myself, that show you or that show myself the White Sox organization care what I did for them."
*Grant Taylor used all of nine pitches to complete a perfect first inning with a strikeout. Seranthony Domínguez and Sean Newcomb eventually wound up combining for two innings without an earned run allowed, so the Sox didn't run out of leverage arms as a result. Taylor is opening again on Saturday.
*The White Sox ran themselves out of a pair of developing rallies, with Peters getting picked off second in the sixth after Luisangel Acuña failed at two attempts in getting a bunt down, and pinch-runner Derek Hill getting nabbed trying to steal second in the eighth, right as Peters was whiffing on a full count fastball to complete the inning-ending double play.
*Home opener attendance came out at 33,171, which is not a sellout.
