Before Thursday's rainout, when the probable starter for Saturday was TBA and Hagen Smith was under consideration, one of the stopping points to consider was whether it was wise to make a prospect working on his control face a veteran and disciplined Dodgers batting order in his big league debut. The defending champs' offense is not at full-strength, but they are top-five in walk rate and bottom-five in chase rate once more.
Smith is making his start in Charlotte, and even at his worst, it'd be unfair to think he could match the 10 free passes White Sox pitching issued in his absence. But even at his best, it'd be unfair to expect to match Yoshinobu Yamamoto flattening the Sox offense into a pancake, taking a perfect game into the eighth, and a no-hitter into the ninth. Sometimes the positioning of the press box along the first base line is a blessing, because all of the stressed-out reporters got a perfect view of Tristan Peters curling a drive around the right field foul pole to spoil history.
Miguel Vargas lined Yamamoto's 10th pitch of the afternoon 100 mph into Max Muncy's glove. The reigning World Series MVP struck out just seven with 13 whiffs, and made only judicious use of his trademark splitter until the latter innings. Along with all the tumult going on in the top half of every inning, it could sneak up on you that the Dodgers ace was just breezing through a top-10 scoring offense in the league with a relentless barrage of clean, economical innings. The Sox entered the day fifth in MLB in home runs, but Yamamoto allowed zero hard-hit fly balls until Peters' blast to lead off the ninth.
Even the slightest cracks in perfection did not arrive until the seventh. Vargas had the best Sox at-bats all day--all season, really--and lined out at 103 mph to old friend Alex Call in the seventh. Colson Montgomery got ahead 3-1 and eventually ripped a full-count, middle-middle splitter 110 mph directly into Freddie Freeman's glove in the eighth. Given his 22-game on-base streak, it would make sense for Chase Meidroth to break through, but it came on a slow roller that Mookie Betts booted, leaving Yamamoto one-out shy of matching Yusmeiro Petit's all-time record of 46 consecutive batters retired.
After Anthony Kay, Bryan Hudson, Trevor Richards and Chris Murphy combined to retire 19 consecutive Dodgers hitters to close out Friday night's victory, maybe turnabout was fair play. Sean Burke was trailing after two pitches, and down 3-0 after five batters. And after six weeks of unmatched energy and excitement at Rate Field, it really stands out when the Sox find themselves trudging through a dirge from the start.
Burke missed high with 94 mph to open the afternoon against Shohei Ohtani, such that when his second try to sneak one under the slugger's hands found the zone, it was rocketed out to right for his 20th home run in 42 games against White Sox pitching. Montgomery not being able to corral a Betts slow roller up the middle extended the first long enough for another Burke fastball to meet a similar fate against Muncy. He missed high and away three-straight times to start the at-bat, such that the lefty slugger was ready to unload on a decently elevated but overly middle four-seamer for a two-run blast.
That constituted the bulk of the damage of Burke's choppy four innings, as he held Dodgers hitters to 1-for-6 with runners in scoring position, but the laborious nature of his fastball command really is what shortened his afternoon. One of his five walks pushed Betts to second after his one-out single in the third, putting him in position to score on a Kyle Tucker parachute flare on an outside fastball to make it 4-0.
The three walks Joe Rock issued--during his team debut--in the sixth inning alone to push across the Dodgers' fifth run felt mostly immaterial, because by then, the groans and gasps of a packed Rate Field had shifted to a mounting anxiety to a mounting anxiety that their ballyhooed offense was headed toward the wrong side of history. Muncy launching his second homer of the afternoon off Brandon Eisert in the eighth, a two-run shot, only reasserted that there was no other competition to follow.
*Bullet points:
*Thankfully there are two other teams Ohtani has homered against more than his 20 in 42 games against the Sox. But he has 22 homers in 81 career games against the A's, and 23 in 90 games against the Rangers.
*Burke had back-to-back five-walk games last May too, so at least there's precedent. He ripped off three-straight quality starts after that flareup.
*37,832 was the announced attendance. At least the sellout crowd received Colson Montgomery bobbleheads.
*The Sox have still not been no-hit since Francisco Liriano's six-walk, two-strikeout effort in May of 2011. This...wouldn't have stung as much as that one did.
*The Cleveland Guardians won, and have reclaimed first place in the AL Central.
