It's one thing to be overmatched by Yoshinobu Yamamoto, he of the third-place Cy Young finish and World Series MVP in 2025.
It's another thing to get handcuffed by Emmet Sheehan, a cromulent starter to be sure, but one who came into this afternoon's rubber match with a 4.70 ERA thanks to a home run problem.
After Yamamoto took a no-hitter into the ninth inning on Saturday, Sheehan carried a one-hit shutout bid into the sixth. But whereas the solo shot Yamamoto allowed to Tristan Peters merely spoiled a personal bid at further personal history, and was the only hit and run allowed in a six-run victory, the solo shot Sheehan allowed to Sam Antonacci leading off the sixth tied the game and opened a portal to hell.
"That dude is a really good pitcher too, they mix well, their coaching staff had good scouting reports on all of us," Colson Montgomery said. "We just had to calibrate. We were just seeing what he was going to do. Because to lefties, he usually throws a changeup, but he didn’t throw it that much. You have to read the at-bat, the situations, and I wouldn’t say we were saying, ‘Oh my gosh, we are going to get no-hit again.'"
Antonacci had just lost the Sox's final challenge on an 0-1 changeup when Sheehan tried to pump a high fastball past him for strike three. But Antonacci was ready to take out his frustration, and turned around 95 mph at 105 mph for his first career over-the-fence homer that tied the game at 1.
That broke the seal, and the Sox hounded Sheehan the rest of his remainder of the inning. Vargas lined a 100.7 mph single, stole second, then scored on Andrew Benintendi's 99.8 mph double that put the Sox ahead 2-1. That chased Sheehan from the game, but the Sox weren't done with his tab. Lefty Jack Dreyer came in to face Montgomery, but started him with two identical pitches, 92 mph fastball on the upper, inner part of the zone. Montgomery fouled back the first one, but the second he lofted out to right field for a two-run shot and a 4-1 White Sox lead.
Braden Montgomery then started a fresh rally with a sharp single, after which Chase Meidroth ran with an outer-half fastball and rode it just over the wall in right for the third Chicago homer of the inning and a 6-1 lead.
"They continue to tap into that slug, some of it is a little surprising," said Will Venable. "Maybe Chase going backside there is a little surprising. At the same time, he and all these guys have taken really good swings."
The White Sox then spent the final three innings nursing that margin. Grant Taylor was already warmed in anticipation of high leverage, but although he entered in medium leverage at most, he and Serathony Domínguez conspired to make it close-and-late by the end of the game.
Taylor came out giving up an unusual amount of hard contact for the second-straight outing, with a leadoff double to Dalton Rushing coming around to score on a wild pitch and sacrifice fly in the seventh. He rallied to strike out Shohei Ohtani after falling behind 2-0 and got Andy Pages to ground out over the course of six pitches to afford him the opportunity to pitch the eighth, when Mookie Betts took him deep with one out to make it the ninth-inning save situation Domínguez craved.
It was a good compromise, because Domínguez entered against the bottom of the Los Angeles order, so both the pitcher and Venable got what they wanted. But Domínguez immediately introduced peril by walking Ryan Ward on four non-competitive pitches, which guaranteed a plate appearance by Ohtani barring a double play.
Domínguez couldn't locate his secondary pitches initially, which allowed ninth-hitting Kyle Freeland to fend off a number of decent fastballs until he timed up one he could hammer into the right-field corner for an RBI double that made it a 6-4 game, and allowed Ohtani to stride to the plate representing the tying run. Nobody seemed to mind when Domínugez failed to locate any non-fastballs to Ohtani for a four-pitch walk with a base open, but when he missed wildly on a fastball to Pages, that's when Drew Romo decided to slow things down with a mound visit.
Whatever Romo said worked, because Domínguez found his cues afterward. He fell behind Pages 3-1, but executed a sweeper that Pages nubbed foul, which enabed his subsequent sinker to be grounded up the middle. Meidroth made a sliding backhand stop, but once he realized that the timing wasn't there for a game-ending double play, he was able to shovel a glove flip to Montgomery for the second out.
"I just reopened a raspberry," Meidroth explained for his hobbling after the play, which he said he valued over the home run. "Our pitchers, they bust their ass every day and doing something like that to help them out is awesome. We take so much pride in our defense here."
The task at hand didn't ease with Freddie Freeman coming to the plate, considering he took Bryan Hudson deep for the game's first run in the first and Venable said he would have brought in Chris Murphy had Pages reached, but Domínguez saved his best for last. After falling behind 1-0 as is his custom, he nailed his last four pitches -- a backdoor sweeper for a called strike, an up-and-in fastball that sawed off Freeman, a splitter that required an emergency hack to foul off, and another backdoor sweeper that Freeman swung over for the final out.
"He's been in those spots before," Venable said of Domínguez. "You're worried about pitches there more than anything, maybe the stuff ticking down. But you know you trust Ser in that spot."
In the process, he nailed down a series victory against the Dodgers and a 4-1 hoemstand against the two best records in baseball. With the Tigers and Guardians rained out, the Sox also moved back into a tie for first place.
Erick Fedde picked up the win, but while he threw the most innings of any of the five White Sox pitchers, it was only by one out. He was less the bulk boy, and more of the middle of a bullpen game, as Venable followed up Hudson's first innings with 2 ⅓ from Sean Newcomb to combat the righty-killing Los Angeles menace.
"This morning we were going over the lineup and they told me we were probably looking after Ohtani's second at-bat, somewhere around there," Fedde said. "They were really upfront with me about it, that they were just going to do their best to put guys in positions to succeed, and obviously it worked out."
Fedde showed why Venable was reluctant to have him enter any earlier than he had to by allowing the first batter he faced to reach in each of the three innings he appeared. Fedde also showed mettle. He stranded Mookie Betts on second with a pair of strikeouts in the fourth, with Romo assisting on a challenge to flip a call into a strikeout of Kyle Tucker.
He then worked around a leadoff double by Ward, intentionally walking Ohtani with two outs and getting Pages to ground out. Freeman walked to start the sixth, but while Tucker was able to extend the inning with a cheap infield single that put runners on the corners with two outs, Fedde emptied the tank against Ward with five well-located pitches, with Ward flailing at a changeup off the plate for strike three. That preserved the 1-0 deficit until Antonacci flipped the script.
Bullet points:
*The White Sox have won eight consecutive home series, their longest streak since 2003.
*Meidroth set a career high with his sixth homer, while Vargas reached 10 steals for the first time with still no unsuccessful attempts.
*The White Sox were 2-for-3 with runners in scoring position; the Dodgers were 0-for-5, with Pages having a particularly painful day in the second spot.
*Romo had a rough day by striking out in all three plate appearances and committing catcher interference on an Ohtani swing, but maybe that mound visit validated everything.
