The White Sox have been so bad in recent years that a one-run loss in the rubber match of a road series against a should-be AL contender, or that they'll do no worse than a split in their season series against each of last years' ALCS participants, registers a sonic leap.
They've been so good in recent weeks that Wednesday felt like a game that should have been won, but was coughed up via failures in a few crucial moments.
Newfound menace Jhonny Pereda, the Mariners backup catcher pressed into duty by Cal Raleigh's injury, put Seattle in front for good with a leadoff solo shot in the seventh to break a 2-all tie. His first major league home run came off a middle-down 0-1 slurve from Sean Newcomb, who entered to escape a fifth inning jam and was attempting to pull off his first outing with three ups since March.
A tough way for Newcomb to fall short of 10-straight scoreless appearances got worse, as he recorded two more outs around a Julio Rodríguez double before handing the ball to Jordan Hicks for a right-right matchup with Randy Arozarena. Hicks is now at a 5.60 ERA for the season as his own low and middle 0-1 breaker wound up over the wall in left-center.
That two-run blast gave the Mariners a margin that would hold up over Chase Meidroth singling, and scoring when Colt Emerson's turn of a would-be Tristan Peters' inning-ending double play ball in the eighth got away from Josh Naylor, and Randal Grichuk greeting lefty Jose A. Ferrer in the ninth with a leadoff pinch-hit solo shot. Ferrer recovered to exact some measure of revenge against Colson Montgomery for his go-ahead blast off him in Washington last September, making him the last of three-straight strikeout victims to close it out.
It was a respectable effort at comeback win No. 13 on the year, but it wouldn't have been necessary without the Sox cannibalizing some better chances before. Mariners starter Emerson Hancock battled wildness in the second, and only in the second, over his five innings of two-run ball. All three of his walks came to lead off the frame, but he wriggled out of a bases-loaded, nobody-out jam because Peters chased at a pair of dirted changeups for a strikeout, before Drew Romo rolled over a 3-1 knee-high fastball for an inning-ending double play.
Maybe that failure loomed large in everyone's mind. For when Peters looked to redeem himself by automatic doubling Meidroth over to third with one out in the sixth, the Sox opportunity began to fizzle before Romo could really get involved. Pereda back-picked Meidroth drifting so far off third that Peters had time to backfill his spot in the resulting rundown, only to set up Romo rolling over another 3-1 pitch--a changeup this time--to end the threat.
Sean Burke exited his season-worst outing against the Mariners last week of two minds. Maybe he needed to expand beyond his fastball-curveball proclivities, or maybe if he just didn't groove an 0-2 fastball to Luke Raley with the bases juiced this time, his outing would look entirely different. Wednesday afternoon wound up being a test case of the latter theory, and removed of the one unforgivable mistake, it provided his team a chance to win.
With the bases juiced and no one out in the fifth, well-located heaters to Naylor and Arozarena produced unproductive outs, before Will Venable opted for Newcomb versus pinch-hitter Rob Refsnyder to complete the escape and keep the game tied at 2. But the diminishing returns of such a binary attack showed up elsewhere, mostly via his own struggles to contain Arozarena.
Burke hit Arozarena with a 2-0 pitch in the second, before he stole second easily and trotted home when Dominic Canzone laced an elevated curve for an RBI double down the right field line. After he walked in the fourth, Drew Romo had a better throw on Arozarena's steal attempt that was nullified by an obstruction call on Luisangel Acuña for having his cleat in front of the bag, even though it didn't visibly alter the slide. That set up Patrick Wisdom, after seeing Burke's whole arsenal during an extended at-bat in the second, to time up a plate-splitting slider for another run-scoring two-bagger.
The callous way the Sox wasted chances obscured the runs they were able to scrap together to keep this a tie game through six. Sam Antonacci singled for the first Sox hit of the game with one out in the third, stole second and scored on a soft Andrew Benintendi two-out flare aptly described as a "water balloon" by Mariners' play-by-play man Aaron Goldsmith in its trajectory over the Seattle infield. Antonacci was in the middle of three-straight singles in the fifth, with the last coming from Munetaka Murakami tracking and whacking a 2-0 sweeper through the right side to score Acuña, but was stranded at third when Benintendi lined out to short, before Montgomery flew out.
Bullet points:
*Burke's five punchouts put him at 201 for his career. Who's to say if this is a big benchmark to respond to, but the team made a lot of social media noise about it.
*A Miguel Vargas sighting of any kind feels like a victory, even if his hand strength wasn't necessarily demonstrated by his pinch-hit walk in the eighth.
*White Sox hitters struck out 36 times over their three games. Montgomery won't miss this place, as he went 0-for-11 with his seventh strikeout ending the day.
*It was a non-awful 2-for-9 showing with runners in scoring position, with both hits yielding runs, which just goes to show often feelings about RISP performance are vibes-based.
