The best and healthiest versions of Noah Schultz's minor league work featured a lot of efficient, economical strike-throwing.
In that vein, a 33-pitch first inning to open up his second start since returning from the injured list, four free passes (three walks, one very painful-looking sinker to Wilyer Abreu's elbow), and 92 pitches to allow four runs over five frames in a loss to the 26th-best scoring offense in MLB was a disappointment.
But more specifically, Schultz spent the last of his bullpens before his rehab assignment working on a more vertically-oriented version (Zach Bove said "depthier") of his slider to get under the barrels of right-handed hitters. So that the deciding blows of sleepy, homestand-opening defeat came via a pair of moderately powered righties golfing the regular version of Schultz's slider out to left is a more specific disappointment, or perhaps the final nudge before an adjustment. No. 8 hitter Andruw Monasterio whacked a two-strike slider over the Sox bullpen in the second, and was followed by Colson Montgomery mishandling a bunt before Ceddanne Rafaela lifted another low-and-in slider out to left to stake Payton Tolle to an early 3-0 lead.
"Just two pitches in the honeyhole, definitely spots where you should never really end up there," Schultz said. "We've been working on a variation with the slider/curveball, one with a little more depth so it doesn't end up in there. I can look back now and wish I threw the other one. In the future, definitely one to circle and look back on."
The early Red Sox lead proved to be an enduring one.
There was ample time to focus on Schultz's every wart because Tolle's six scoreless innings were so darn uneventful, as the possibilities of a lefties whose low arm angle makes his fastball a potent weapon were put on full display. Tolle made Will Venable's lineup look wise when Miguel Vargas started off the first with a six-pitch walk, but the inning was over 15 pitches later without anyone so much as reaching second base, and the Red Sox rookie lefty was done issuing free passes or working inefficiently for the rest of the night. The only two hits he allowed were both soft singles to Sam Antonacci, which should advance the agenda of the rookie starting more against left-handers, but didn't lead to rallies.
"He pitched a great game," said Kyle Teel. "Credit to him. It's about how we respond tomorrow."
One of those rallies didn't come until Tolle departed in favor of fellow lefty Danny Coloumbe, and few righties Venable sprinkled in the middle of the order started to make things happen. Chase Meidroth led off the seventh with a walk before Antonacci's third soft lefty-on-lefty single of the night. Junior Pérez's swinging cue shot bunt didn't scream platoon weapon, but he sprinted up the first base line enough to make it look like a line drive in the box score.
"I was able to get a few cheap hits, but that’s how baseball goes," Antonacci said. "Obviously not the best of numbers left-on-left, so just really honing in on what works for me. Just try to go the other way a little bit more off them, and I was able to do that tonight. But obviously didn’t get the win, so doesn’t really matter I guess."
Momentum died when the White Sox only got the bare minimum out of bases loaded, no one out. Willson Conteras' diving stop turned Teel's hard grounder into a run-scoring forceout, before right-hander Justin Slaten came on and struck out both a pinch-hitting Jacob Gonzalez and Tristan Peters with curveballs to end the threat.
Trailing all night leads managers to explore non-optimized strategies, such as a second inning of Brandon Eisert in the top of the ninth. Even with two walks, it was an out away from ending quietly until Contreras lashed a liner down the third base line that umpire Nestor Ceja initially signaled as foul, before reversing his call late and letting play continue as two runs scored. First base umpire David Rackley's call on Romy Gonzalez's RBI double in the following at-bat was improved by merely being late rather than initially inaccurate. And Trevor Richards entering was another slight improvement in the sense that after three batters faced, the top of the ninth finally ended with a four-spot on the board, with nothing in the game worth considering beyond Schultz's shaky night.
"He obviously pointed the wrong way," Venable said of Ceja's call. "He acknowledged it was a mistake but we were just talking about whether it was challengeable or not. Where it landed, it was in front of him so it wasn’t challengeable."
Schultz had his cutter working at times, even got a strikeout with a changeup, and was dealt some poor luck when Jarren Duran led off the fourth with a shanked double down the left field, got to third on a wild pitch and scored on a Connor Wong safety squeeze that Vargas couldn't find the ears on. But he also wriggled out of the first inning unscathed on a bases loaded Caleb Durbin lineout, and he ended his night still in this liminal space as simultaneously the team's highest ceiling starter and the rotation's current weakest link.
"Wanted to go heavier offspeed, but not being able to land the sweeper or changeup as much as I'd like to, definitely frustrating," Schultz said. "A lot of things that I definitely need to work on. The walks have been pretty high, something that I'm not too happy with. Something that I need to clean up for sure with mechanics. I thinking I'm finding out my identity as a pitcher with pitch mixes and seeing what to throw most and figuring out different lineups and how to attack them."
Bullet points:
*Vargas charged Wong's safety squeeze and had Duran out at the plate if he had a clean grip on the ball. He didn't and decided to go home anyway, letting loose a bouncer that skipped away from Teel, and prompted dueling chaos from both sides. Monasterio stayed planted at second until he realized Wong was more than halfway around first, and the White Sox eventually tagged out the lead runner with a 2-4-5-4-6 rundown that was as tiresome as it reads.
*Teel went 2-for-3 throwing out basestealers, 3-for-4 on ABS challenges behind the plate, and had at least one wild pitch get away from him for the fourth-straight game. It's hard to miss him back there. His one failed ABS bid was such an obvious YOLO challenge to try to avoid Eisert falling behind 2-0 in the ninth that it's hard to hold it against him.
"it's important to be aggressive with it," Teel said. "It is challenging with the misfire challenges, if I'm set up in [and] it's thrown away, like because my head's not behind it. So I try and just--I do the best I can with it, but being more aggressive for sure."
*Munetaka Murakami singled on the first pitch he saw, then struck out twice and was pinch-hit for in the sixth inning of his first rehab appearance.
*In a case of hard-throwing relievers demoted to low-leverage, Jordan Hicks threw nine of 14 pitches for strikes and K'd a pair in a perfect seventh, while Seranthony Domínguez allowed a fly out to the wall, a walk and a single before snapping into form for a pair of Ks to escape the sixth.
