Freed from any pressure of postseason implications for a day, the White Sox seized the stress-free day to bring a most surprising of regular seasons to a straightforward, crowd-pleasing finish.
Randal Grichuk and Brenton Doyle hit two-run homers against their former team as Anthony Kay completed five innings for the first time in seven starts as the White Sox put a bow on the 162-game schedule with an 84-78 record.
Now they'll head to Houston to face the Astros in the Wild Card Series, as the Twins beat the Rangers to seal the AL West even before the Astros put the finishing touches on a presumptive victory in West Sacramento.
The White Sox beat Kyle Freeland for the first time in five career starts, doing all their damage in the third inning. Grichuk crushed a sweeper 111.5 mph out to left for a two-run homer that gave the White Sox a 2-1 lead, and after Munetaka Murakami kept the inning open with a two-out double, Brenton Doyle yanked a drive just inside the left-field foul pole to make it a 4-1 margin.
From there, Kay finished the elusive fifth inning to get in line for his 10th win of the season, Sean Newcomb reached 90 innings and a $100,000 bonus during his two-thirds of a sixth inning, and Trevor Richards authored the most heroic of his 27 games finished for the White Sox this season with a 3⅓ inning save, yielding only a Kyle Karros solo shot over the remainder of the game.
Bullet points:
*In other notable numbers, Sam Antonacci went 2-for-3 with his 20th stolen base and his 29th HBP, so that's the official single-season record he'll try to top next year. He also made a great diving stop and throw to steal a single from Jake McCarthy.
*Speaking of which, Kay plunked one more batter, cementing his White Sox HBP record at 26. His final line: 10-9 with a 4.44 ERA over 158 innings.
*Colson Montgomery struck out twice more, so the new MLB single-season strikeout record is 227.
*The White Sox drew 29,767 in the finale, putting their home attendance at 1,986,419 for the season. It's their highest total since 2022, and the hope is they'll be able to cross 2 million for the season with at least one home postseason game.
