By and large, when Noah Schultz struggles, it's because he's not throwing the amount of strikes he's accustomed to throwing.
That wasn't the issue tonight. For the second straight outing, Schultz avoided walking a batter, but while walklessness led to five innings of one-run ball against the Athletics before the break, filling the zone led to 11 Texas hits over 3 ⅔ ineffective innings en route to a thorough pantsing at Globe Life Field. The White Sox were outscored 10-0, but being outhit 18-3 might register as the more embarrassing figure on the line score.
Schultz fell behind 2-0 in the first inning, but it was the kind of sequence that made one think he could pitch past it. Wyatt Langford floated a changeup off the end of the bat into left field for a soft single, and then Brandon Nimmo redirected a first-pitch fastball over the left-field wall as a reminder that major league hitters can do that. Schultz pitching around a lucky infield single in the second inning led credence to that notion.
But there was a concurrent theme over those first two innings: Schultz wasn't missing bats. That turned out to be far more indicative of the remainder of his evening, because with so many balls in play, the Rangers had ample opportunities to let luck tilt in their favor.
For instance, Schultz got a well-struck flyout and a routine flyout to center to open the fourth, but before he could close the door, the Rangers strung three hits together -- a hard Josh Jung single, a bloop single by Brandon Nimmo, and then a laser double by Jake Burger for a 3-0 lead before Schultz could record out No. 3.
Schultz never recorded the third out of the fourth inning. He had one out, nobody on and Elias Díaz down 0-2, but Díaz hammered a 2-2 fastball to left for a double, and Schultz gave up four more hits -- including three with two outs -- before Will Venable finally saw enough and went to the bullpen.
In Schultz's defense, a number of the hits were impossibly soft, and a couple of them finding gloves could have made for a five-inning outing, even if he would've taken the "L" just the same. But Schultz only got five whiffs on 43 swings, and he was using an unusually heavy four-seam approach despite it being flat in terms of peak velocity (only one cracked 96 mph) and carry. His breaking ball wasn't particularly biting either, and coming off eight days' rest, fatigue shouldn't have been an issue.
It also didn't help the White Sox offense was just as flat as Schultz's fastball, giving viewers nothing to distract from his issues. Kumar Rocker pitched six innings of one-hit ball, and Marco Gonzales, pitching in the big leagues for the first time since August 2024, worked around a couple hits and a couple of walks to preserve the shutout with a three-inning save.
To say they never threatened would be an understatement, because they went 0-for-3 with runners in scoring position, and all those chances came after Miguel Vargas doubled to start the ninth. Rocker wasn't traditionally overpowering, but his slider-forward attack generated lots of ordinary contact, and it found gloves. The Rangers owned the 10 hardest-hit balls of the evening and 15 of the top 18.
Trevor Richards and Tyler Schweitzer suffered the same indignities as Schultz, giving up seven hits and five runs over 3⅓ innings between them. Schweitzer entered in relief of Richards hoping to strand runners at second and third with one out in the fifth, but instead gave up a blistered two-run single to Alejandro Osuna and a two-run shot to Wyatt Langford that truly put the game into Position Player Pitching Territory before the halfway point. Schweitzer wore it well enough to require no other pitchers through seven, which left the eighth for Luisangel Acuña's second outing of the year. His eephus didn't miss bats, either, but somehow he pitched a 1-2-3 inning.
Bullet points:
*The White Sox have been shut out eight times this year.
*Cleveland moved back into a tie for first place, but their win meant the Twins lost, and the Tigers were similarly clobbered by the Cubs.
*The White Sox have a three-series streak going of lots of runs in the first game (14, 12 and 10), and just about nothing in the second game (0, 1, 0).
*Chase Meidroth made a great ranging play to his right in the first inning to take a cheap single away from Josh Jung, and knock down Nimmo's homer to a two-run shot versus a three-run job.
