Jordan Hicks came into this game with a 3.45 ERA, which is fine for a medium-leverage reliever.
He also came into the game allowing two baserunners per inning, which is the kind of performance that has a GM's finger on the DFA button.
He'd managed to walk that tightrope for his first 17 appearances with the White Sox, but the 18th was a catastrophe that put a once-entertaining opener to this year's Crosstown series out of reach and brought the White Sox's five-game winning streak to an end.
"With their lineup, [the Cubs] make it really tough on you, to the point where you feel like you have to be perfect and can't make any mistakes," said Will Venable. "A couple mistakes there, and they were able to create a lot of traffic, and obviously we weren't able to get the outs when we needed them."
Hicks entered with the White Sox trailing 6-4, as Bryan Hudson's 19-game scoreless streak came crashing to a halt in the seventh with two runs on four hits and a hit batter, even though Hudson opened the inning by retiring two of the first three batters he faced. A throw from Jarred Kelenic cut down the trailing runner at the plate to bring that inning to a merciful end, so perhaps the critical damage was already done.
But Hicks, who'd only made three appearances this month because there isn't an obvious situation for him, was tasked with holding the line in the eighth, and he instead walked four batters and threw just 15 of his 35 pitches for strikes. Dansby Swanson opened the inning with a double, and then the Cubs let Hicks do the work for them afterward. Swanson moved to third on a groundout and scored on a wild pitch, which temporarily cleared the bases, except then Hicks walked four of the next five batters to make it an 8-4 game. That left Tyler Schweitzer in the unenviable position of entering with the bases loaded, and although he only needed to retire Carson Kelly to escape, Kelly instead lined a ground-rule double to the right-center gap to push the Cubs into double digits.
The White Sox never led, but they were able to erase two other deficits earlier in the game. When the Cubs tagged Burke for a run on a couple hits in the first, Colson Montgomery responded with a solo shot to start the second, seizing the day on a hanging 2-2 changeup. The Cubs then took a 4-1 lead over the fourth and fifth innings, harassing Burke with three hits in each frame and leaving Trevor Richards to make his second White Sox appearance with runners on second and third and one out.
"Frustrating. I kind of liked how my stuff was, and thought I did a pretty good job of getting ahead of guys for the most part," Burke said. "This one was a little bit hard to swallow because of the nature of the game. It’s definitely better than not having any command or leaving stuff over the fat part of the plate. At the end of the day, runs still scored and this game is about results."
It went far better than his debut, as Richards struck out Moises Ballesteros and got Carson Kelly to ground out to keep the game within reach, which mattered when the Sox climbed all the way back. Cabrera opened the fifth with walks to Chase Meidroth and Andrew Benintendi. Meidroth scored after a pair of productive outs, while Benintendi crossed the plate on Drew Romo's scalded double over the glove of Seiya Suzuki in right.
After a scoreless inning from Grant Taylor, Miguel Vargas sliced Ryan Rolison's first pitch of the sixth over the right field wall for his 10th homer of the season, which tied the game at 4. Montgomery then singled and Meidroth walked to maintain pressure, and Craig Counsell went to Trent Thornton. He nearly induced one double play, but the Cubs didn't have the timing right on a hot one hopper, and Dansby Swanson ate the ball after tagging second. Jarred Kelenic couldn't take advantage with one out, getting locked up on a 1-2 curve, and Tristan Peters lined out to right to strand the runners.
"This was the type of game that everyone wants to play in," Vargas said. "We battled the whole nine innings. We stayed doing that, a great job. We were down, and we still scored in the last inning. I feel that's a mentality for us, to keep going, the game's not finished. Tomorrow is going to be a new day for us."
It's hard to call it the inflection point of the game, because Hudson is part of the leading-in-late-innings bullpen, and the Cubs got to him before the front end was called into action. Hudson's inning started innocuously, as he had two outs with a runner on first at one point, but Seiya Suzuki kept the inning alive with a single, and when Hudson drilled pinch-hitter Matt Shaw on the hip with a first pitch sweeper, he lost his margin for error. Kelly followed with a grounder over third base that Vargas could only knock down, which put the Cubs ahead 5-4, but Pete Crow-Armstrong's subsequent single was a legit liner to right for the run that proved decisive. The three sweepers he tried missed badly, and the Cubs succeeded sitting fastball.
Bullet points:
*The White Sox were outhit 14-8, but they were out-baserunnered 21-12. Compounding problems, the Cubs went 6-for-14 with runners in scoring position and scored six of their 10 runs after two outs, while the Sox were 1-for-10.
*Burke was aggressive in the strike zone, landing 64 of his 91 pitches for strikes and issuing just one walk over 4 ⅓ innings. But he was a little too in the strike zone, because he generated only five swinging strikes, and one of them reached base because Romo couldn't block a curve in the dirt.
*Burke and Hicks were credited with two wild pitches apiece, but Romo's blocking has been his biggest weakness thus far.
*The Cubs did help Burke avoid a crooked number in the fourth when Crow-Armstrong tried bunting home Ballesteros, the Cubs' slowest runner, with runners on the corners and one out. Burke handled the bunt and flipped a throw home easily to foil it, and then PCA got confused about the number of outs and was seen diving back into first as Munetaka Murakami caught a pop-up behind him to end the inning.
*Romo did hit his first single of the season after six extra-base hits. He finished 2-for-4 at the bottom of the order to raise his average to .200.
*Kelenic hit his first homer as a White Sox, and it wasn't cheap: 446 feet to dead center off Javier Assad in the ninth. The Sox outhomered the Cubs 3-0 and lost by five, which isn't easy to do.
