ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- On paper, Nick Martinez presented a tricky matchup for the best scoring offense in the American League.
For one, he's good; having allowed five runs in his last five starts and coming off his first career All-Star appearance. But moreover, the Sox thrive off patience and pop, reeling wayward pitchers into their honeyhole, and Martinez is the brand of relentless strike-throwing and soft contact machine that has flummoxed them when taking the form of Keider Montero, or Ryan Weathers in Thursday's Yankees series finale.
Well, ignore those first two grafs, because in lieu of stringing together rallies against Martinez, the Sox' biggest boppers simply teamed up to hit four massive tanks off the right-hander to key a relaxing and restorative 6-1 series opening victory. Martinez only allowed seven baserunners in six innings; all but one of them scored.
Miguel Vargas blitzed the first pitch he saw all evening 433-feet out to left to put the Sox up two batters into the game. Andrew Benintendi struck the following inning on a front hip cutter that resembled the pitch he hit out of Yankee Stadium in June both in starting and ending location, another solo shot. When Sam Antonacci flared an 0-2 high sinker for a one-out single in the third, Munetaka Murakami rewarded his efforts by staying on an outer half offspeed pitch for an opposite field blast for seemingly the third time in a week.
"It shows that I’m getting a good approach at-bat and having good timing on the breaking balls," Murakami said via interpreter. "Having three guys who can hit the ball really well is always a threat to the opposing team. So we just want to continue that and contribute to the team win and keep going."
No one in the lineup needed a get-right blast as clearly as Colson Montgomery did, and no one took a more satisfying swing than his cut on a 2-0 middle-middle slider that sent a ball clanking off the catwalk in right, putting the Sox comfortably out in front 6-1 in the sixth.
"It felt like another homer, to me," Montgomery said. "You can get caught up in the whole emotions of wanting to get hits and home runs and stuff. But like I keep saying, I've got guys around me, telling me to stick with my process. I know that if I do commit, fully commit and trust my process and stuff, I get results like that."
With Will Venable's love of openers and his own platoon splits, every Erick Fedde start for the White Sox has a non-zero chance to be his last. Yet he came out like there was something to prove regardless, while staked to consistent run support. Fedde struck out Junior Caminero with an idyllic sweeper to end the first, struck out the side outright in the third, and reveled in his battery mate Drew Romo stealing him a call on a backdoor sinker against leadoff man Yandy Díaz to end five innings of one-run ball with no further encounters with a third trip through the order.
"They make my job easy when they give me big leads and I know if I can put up quality innings and keep it close, they are probably going to add on," Fedde said. "The power on this team is unbelievable. It’s fun to be on our side of it."
In between, there were some travails against the best team in the AL, as any time a pitcher matches a season-high six strikes despite only getting four swing-and-misses, it's not all just blowing doors off.
Fedde pitched around a well-placed Cedric Mullins leadoff double in the second, thanks in part to Victor Mesa Jr. getting underneath a grooved 3-1 sweeper just enough for his fly to die on the track in right. A full-count letter-high fastball to Caminero got whacked to the catwalk in center field to put the Rays on the board in the fourth. And later that inning, Tristan Peters running down a two-out Mesa liner to center stranded a Chandler Simpson sequence that saw the speedster reached on an infield chopper, steal second and advanced to third when Drew Romo's throw bounced past Colson Montgomery.
All told, it was pretty sweet timing for Fedde to complete five innings for the third time in his last nine appearances, since Venable acknowledged the beleaguered state of the bullpen before the game. Then he sort of acknowledged in-game, as the first reliever to take a pass at the heart of the Rays order was swingman Tyler Schweitzer.
Extolling the merits of just pitching around Caminero (he walked him twice) and attacking the rest of the Rays lineup, Schweitzer put together three scoreless innings largely composed of at-'em balls. Put it another way, the rookie lefty threw strikes and got outs.
"We were really limited tonight with our availability, and to come through like that with the coverage, but also really good performance and getting some big outs there was awesome," Venable said.
Colson Montgomery made a beautiful backhand-and-peg from deep in the hole to retire Taylor Walls to end the seventh. And when Montgomery couldn't corral the feed on a potential Jonathan Aranda lineout double play to end the eighth (Chase Meidroth got charged for an error), Schweitzer picked them up--after walking Caminero--by striking out pinch-hitter Ryan Vilade to end the last serious Rays threat.
*Bullet points:
*Per Elias: Montgomery, Murakami and Vargas homered in the same game for the fifth time this year, tying the MLB (10th time) and franchise records (second time). Joe Crede, Paul Konerko and José Valentín in 2004 were the first White Sox trio to do this. It hasn't been accomplished in MLB since the Year of the Dinger in 2019, when Cody Bellinger, Corey Seager and Joc Pederson pulled it off.
*Romo went on an ABS binge early; he successfully got a call overturned for a strike three against Chandler Simpson in the second, helping to strand a Cedric Mullins leadoff double. Then at the plate in the third, he successfully overturned a strike call on a low 1-1 changeup.
That just made it all the more painful when Romo burnt all the Sox challenges on successive attempts to flip calls on quite plainly low cutters to Díaz in the fifth. Fedde recovered from the 3-1 count to strike out Díaz two pitches later. Maybe he was heartened by the show of faith.
*Jordan Hicks will open for Noah Schultz on Saturday.
*As hinted pregame, the auction toward relief efforts for the Kumamoto earthquake is something the White Sox have set up. Murakami said he'll be announcing some efforts of his own in a few days.
"For the charity for the White Sox, I’m donating my gear I use in the game so it can be auctioned off and given back to the community and for Kumamoto itself," Murakami said via interpreter. "Personally, I will do the charity myself as well, so I think in an upcoming days I’ll be able to present that in some way."
