In his last start against the Astros, Sean Burke needed 31 pitches, but he was able to pitch around a pair of leadoff walks and somehow last long enough to throw 5 ⅔ scoreless innings.
Tonight, the Pirates offered Burke no quarter. Burke threw 37 pitches in the first, but they were delivered over the course of 10 batters who piled on five runs before the White Sox could grab bats for themselves.
If Burke ever had a chance, it was three pitches into his night. He had Konnor Griffin down 0-2, but his attempt at a high putaway fastball ended up thigh-high and outer half, and Griffin swatted it into the left-center gap for the first of many hard-hit balls, most of them doubles.
After a Brandon Lowe walked, Bryan Reynolds knocked both runners in with a double (99.5 mph exit velocity) on a rolling slider. Oneil Cruz then scored Reynolds by denting the center field wall (112.mph) with a double on a rolling curve, and Esmerlyn Valdez made it three in a row by splitting the right center gap with a 100.7 mph double that bounced over the wall.
Spencer Horwitz then buzzed Burke with a 104.4 mph comebacker that bounded into center field for an RBI single, which at least ended the streak of doubles, but still made it 5-0 with still nobody out. Rafael Flores Jr. singled to maintain the pressure, but Jacob Gonzalez struck out, and Burke used the footing to get out of the inning with no further damage.
But when the second inning started and Burke gave up a hard-hit single and double on his first two pitches, there would be no second wind. Those runners ended up coming around with Tyler Schweitzer on the mound to make it 7-0, and that dug way too deep of a hole for a White Sox offense that needed a full turn through the order to start figuring out Bubba Chandler.
Chandler retired the first 12 he faced, but Andrew Benintendi got on top of a high fastball for a double to lead off the fifth, and that marked the start of adjustments to that particular pitch. Braden Montgomery foiled an 0-2 attempt at the top of the zone and slapped a grounder through an open left side to score Benintendi. Chase Meidroth made a bid for a two-run shot, but it died on the warning track to end the inning.
The White Sox had to settle for single tallies instead. Kyle Teel turned on a 2-0 sinker crushed it over the visiting bullpen to start the sixth, and another Benintendi double in the seventh turned into a run after a wild pitch and a Colson Montgomery broken-bat flare over the mound that Gameday that was scored as a groundout, even though that wouldn't be the first term that comes to mind.
The only benefit of the enormous deficit: Will Venable's decision-making became a whole lot simpler. He had a rested bullpen, and he only had to deploy the front of it. He used Schweitzer to get through the fourth, José Urquidy absorbed his usual amount of contact to throw four innings of two-run ball, and Tyler Davis handled the ninth.
Bullet points:
*Burke's final line: 1.1 IP, 8 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 2 BB, 2 K, with an average exit velocity of 100.1 mph. The regularity of the high-quality contact might invite questions about pitch-tipping, but the stuff also looked flat, and the mistakes were juicy.
*The Pirates outhit the White Sox 18-6 after totaling just 16 hits over three against against the Angels over the weekend.
*Munetaka Murakami had four of the White Sox's 10 strikeouts at the plate.
*At least Teel had a nice night, going 2-for-3 at the plate, cutting down Cruz on a stolen-base attempt, and succeeding on three of four challenges behind the plate.
