The White Sox haven't actually advanced to a level where a 3-3 split on a west coast trip, or a 4-2 season series victory over the Angels should register as a disappointment, it just feels that way. And in a getaway day rubber match defeat in Anaheim, it started feeling that way very intensely, very early.
It's always felt facetious whenever a baseball executive has said "the great thing about this sport is that everyone gets to have an opinion about it." So in a very similar way, the nice thing about Noah Schultz's shortest and worst start of his young career is that there's room for debate about how much his teammates greased the tracks toward seven runs across in 3 2/3 innings.
Schultz was staked to a 1-0 lead that should have been more when pair of soft singles from Jorge Soler and Oswaldo Peraza started the trouble in a five-run Angels' second. He looked to be potentially on the cusp of escaping with the lead intact when Nolan Schanuel rolled an 0-2 sinker over to Chase Meidroth on a grounder that was likely too slow for an inning-ending double play, but that became academic when Colson Montgomery fumbled the exchange, and a correlation vs. causation debate broke out as the next four hitters reached and broke the game open.
Scuffling veteran catcher Travis d'Arnaud launched a three-run homer two hitters later to give the home team a lead they would never yield, and introduced a more concrete theme of Angels hitters being unfazed by Schultz's elevated four-seamers; arguably the best weapon of his first five starts. For after a Bryce Teodosio bloop double, Zach Neto would square up another one for an RBI triple to right.
Only after the Angels were up 4-1 did ambiguity of responsibility return to Schultz's ugly afternoon. A sunglasses-less Meidroth was blinded by the sun on Mike Trout's infield popup, letting it drop without a play to go down as an RBI single that plated Neto, and added four more throws to a 30-pitch inning. Schultz's cutter wasn't the safety valve back into the strike zone he needed it to be on Wednesday, and his third and fourth walks of the day ended his afternoon with the bases loaded with two outs in the fourth. Even amid Schultz's clear struggles, there's still room to argue that Osvaldo Bido could have done a better job of cleaning up the mess than plunking the first two hitters he faced to push two more runs across.
A patient team approach was needed to solve the loud stuff/shaky control/endless changeups dynamic offered by Angels rookie starter Walbert Ureña, and Sox hitters had it for a minute. Montgomery led off the second with a ringing double, and scored on an Andrew Benintendi sacrifice fly to deep center after a bloop single from Meidroth, before a pair of walks sandwiched around a Tristan Peters strikeout re-loaded the bases. Sam Antonacci coaxed out a meaty 2-1 changeup, but popped it up to end the threat.
The Sox trailed 5-1 the next time one of their hitters came to the plate, and swung like it. Ureña completed four more scoreless on just 48 pitches to qualify for his first major league win, with a leadoff walk to Meidroth in the fourth quickly wiped out by a Benintendi double play serving as the only baserunner.
Innings against the non-leverage portions of the Angels bullpen weren't entirely removed of intrigue. After a pair of walks around a Meidroth single loaded the bases against Brent Suter in the seventh, Antonacci leaned into a Drew Pomeranz heater in very on-brand fashion, letting an RBI HBP clank off his elbow guard. It served as a prelude to the climax of Munetaka Murakami's golden sombrero; an unchallenged called strike on a 1-1 fastball off the edge set up a knee-locking Pomeranz curve to strand the bases loaded.
*Bullet points
*Meidroth suffered a bloody nose from faceplanting in a head-first slide into second, when he tagged up from first on Benintendi's sac fly to deep center. Between that and switching to sunglasses after his dropped popup in the second, he had one of most unsatisfying days a player can have while reaching base three times alongside multiple webgems.
*Schultz has 16 walks in 25 major league innings. That's not his game, and won't play.
*Sox hitting entered the afternoon with the worst batting average with runners in scoring position, and went 1-for-6 to drop that figure to .215 on the season
*Grant Taylor of all people got a 'just getting some work in' assignment with the bottom of the eighth, and allowed a run on a single, a walk and a sacrifice fly
*Murakami has two four-strikeout games on the season and both have come against the Angels.
*Bido actually delivered seven outs on only 27 pitches with no further damage after the plunkings, but being the bulk reliever in a blowout while the Sox still have to add Trevor Richards to the roster has to be an ominous feeling.
