For the second straight night, the tone of a White Sox-Rangers game was effectively set in the first inning.
This tone happened to be "drunken bar fight," which rolled into a second location at Rate Field at 6:40 p.m. But because the White Sox were able to torment Jacob deGrom with a barrage of weird contact that produced a six-run first inning, they managed to hold onto the high ground no matter how sloppy it got.
It just should've been easier. The White Sox held leads like 6-0 and 8-1, but still needed Grant Taylor to record the final out with the guy at home plate representing the tying run, so everybody's going to wake up wondering exactly what happened.
Anthony Kay should've been out of the first inning on 11 pitches, but he bailed (as pitchers are taught to do) on a Wyatt Langford popup in front of home plate, only for nobody to arrive in time to take his place. Munetaka Murakami was the closest to it, but it fell for a "single," and Kay needed six more pitches to finish the inning.
On the other hand, Kay also should've been scored upon in the first inning, but Langford stopped at second on Brandon Nimmo's double over first base for reasons only known to him, and only made it to third. Ezequiel Durán then tried a two-out bunt with Miguel Vargas playing back, but he merely tapped into an easy 1-3, and Kay returned to the dugout with the scoreless inning he should've had all along.
"That's a weird inning," said Rangers color analyst Mike Baczik.
Little did he know what awaited his side in the bottom of the first. Sam Antonacci blooped a double inside the left-field line and hustled it into a double, and Munetaka Murakami followed with a walk. Miguel Vargas then flipped a slider to left field for a single in front of Langford, who saw an opportunity to get Antonacci at third because he had to hold...
...only to airmail the rather simple throw and bounce it into the White Sox dugout. All the runners were awarded an extra base, and Antonacci scored for the 1-0 lead.
The BABIP gods spent the entire inning smiling on the White Sox. Braden Montgomery followed Antonacci's 69-mph double and Vargas' 71.5 mph single with a 78.1 mph opposite-field shank that scored Murakami for a 2-0 lead, and Colson Montgomery worked a walk to load the bases. Chase Meidroth couldn't lay off the high heat and popped out, but Tristan Peters' 71.3-mph broken-bat flare died in shallow right field for a two-run double that gave the Sox a 4-0 lead. Brenton Doyle's bat also died a hero, as his 74.3-mph grounder skipped through the middle of a drawn-in infield, and the Sox cracked open a six-pack of runs before deGrom could return to the dugout for the first time.
Unlike other nights where an early outburst was followed by relative silence, the Sox kept scoring. In the fourth, Colson Montgomery cashed in a pair of walks, cracking an elevated splitter through the infield for a two-run single. In the fifth, Antonacci followed a Drew Romo walk by feathering a 74.7 floater that hit the right field chalk and rolled all the way into the corner for an RBI triple, and a Vargas single eventually brought him home, which got the Sox to double digits.
Tristan Peters then became the third White Sox player to homer in four consecutive games this season when he whipped a 1-0 Peyton Gray changeup inside the right field foul pole for a solo shot.
The White Sox needed to keep scoring, because the Rangers offense tried its damndest to save face. Considering the Sox led by as many as seven runs, tonight should've been an occasion for using Jonathan Cannon, not Taylor.
The Rangers wouldn't let that happen. They made Kay work -- or maybe they let Kay work, because he threw 36 of his 99 pitches with two strikes, as so many were non-competitive -- and although a Jake Burger solo shot was their only run through four, they eventually compromised Chicago's pitching plans in the fifth. Danny Jansen hit a two-run no-doubter over the White Sox bullpen in left, and then Kay issued a walk and his 22nd HBP before giving up a two-out single to Durán that made it an 8-4 game and prompted Will Venable to go to the bullpen at the game's halfway point.
Although Venable tried to make the late innings low-leverage ones by bringing in Jordan Hicks to get through six, the Rangers didn't allow it.
Hicks accomplished the first task at hand by striking out Jake Burger to strand a pair of runners and preserve an 8-4 lead through five, but although the White Sox scored a pair in the bottom of the fifth to pad the margin, Hicks still left the game in worse shape than he found it. On a rare off night, the Rangers clobbered him for a single, RBI double and two-run Justin Foscue homer to make it a 10-7 game. After a two-out single, Bryan Hudson was required to finish the inning.
Hudson did his part by stranding his inherited runner to end the sixth, then posting the second and final 1-2-3 inning by White Sox pitchers in the seventh. Hagen Smith took over for the eighth and worked around a two-out double with little issue.
But the flip side of Smith's control reared its head in the ninth. Pitching with an 11-7 margin, he walked Langford to start the inning, then issued a pair of two-out free passes to Burger and Elias Díaz to load the bases. That brought the tying run to the plate, and that brought Venable to the mound to summon Taylor, who recorded the final out on a chopper to second to bring a long evening to a merciful end.
Bullet points:
*Hudson was credited with the win, which he deserved for retiring all four batters he faced without issue.
*The White Sox endured their first game without Andrew Benintendi. Antonacci reached base three times from the leadoff spot and scored three runs as a DH, and Doyle contributed two hits, two RBIs and a stolen base from the eighth spot.
*Every White Sox reached base once, and every White Sox either scored or drove in a run.
*The Sox went 8-for-18 with runners in scoring position, which made up for the Rangers outhomering them 3-1.
*Miguel Vargas made a nice sliding stop to retire Logan O'Hoppe in the fourth.
*Braden Montgomery and Doyle almost collided in right center field, with Doyle giving way and slipping behind Montgomery just in time.
