White Sox 5, Astros 1: Timely hitting supports Sean Burke’s gutsy outing

Two major qualms people have about the Chicago White Sox lately: Starting pitchers needing to find a way to go deeper into games and the offense needing to capitalize with runners in scoring position. Last night’s loss was a mix of both when Anthony Kay was knocked out in the fifth inning, and the offense left 14 runners on base. 

Tonight, thanks to two-out base hits from Andrew Benintendi, Colson Montgomery, and Randal Grichuk, the White Sox offense found a way to score five runs. That was more than enough for starter Sean Burke, who overcame a difficult first inning to gut out 5⅔ innings of scoreless baseball. The combination resulted in a 5-1 win, which allowed the White Sox maintain their three-game lead over Cleveland. 

It was a scoreless game entering the fifth inning. The White Sox two-out rally started with Miguel Vargas drawing a walk with Sam Antonacci already on base after being hit by a pitch. Next was Andrew Benintendi, who pulled a lower sweeper from Astros reliever Kai-Wei Teng down the right field line. Antonacci easily scored to give the White Sox a 1-0 lead. 

Next was Colson Montgomery, and he hit a similar line drive that hit the chalk. Both Vargas and Benintendi scored, and Montgomery’s big two-run double extended the lead to 3-0. 

In the seventh inning, Munetaka Murakami and Colson Montgomery both walked. With two outs, it was Randal Grichuk who smoked a line drive to right field with an exit velocity of 104.6 MPH. That hard knock allowed both Murakami and Montgomery to score, and the White Sox had themselves a five-run cushion. 

While the offense found its way with two outs, Burke’s gutsy performance can’t be overlooked. After throwing 31 pitches in the first inning, Burke started to mix in more cutters and knuckle curves for first pitches as his four-seam fastball didn’t consistently have the juice. 

An 18-pitch second inning gave the feeling this was going to be another outing in which a White Sox starting pitcher didn’t push through five innings. But in the third and fourth innings, Burke only threw nine pitches in each frame. That made his pitch count far more manageable. Funny enough, with the attention on how many pitches Burke was throwing, it was the number of hits Houston had against him, which was zero through four innings. 

A Taylor Trammell double that flew over Tristan Peters’ head in center field was the only hit allowed by Burke. He showed emotion after Jeremy Pena chased a slider out of the zone to end the inning. With a three-run cushion, White Sox manager was fine with Burke starting the sixth inning despite Yordan Alvarez leading off. While Burke walked Alvarez, he got Isaac Paredes to foul out to Murakami, and then struck out Jose Altuve. 

At 104 pitches, Venable felt that was enough as he pulled Burke for Bryan Hudson. It’s a unique final line of 5.2 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 4 BB, 6 K, but Burke showed terrific resolve to make in-game adjustments to just survive, but thrive in tonight’s outing. 

Hudson received some defensive help when Antonacci made a fabulous diving catch to rob Nelson Velazquez for a base hit. 

The Astros did manage to score when Paredes hit his 18th home run of the season off Jordan Hicks in the eighth inning. In a non-save situation, Grant Taylor made quick work of the Astros lineup, going 1-2-3 with two strikeouts to cap off a nice win that combined gutsy starting pitching and clutch hits with runners in scoring position. 

Game Notes

• Is Colson Montgomery heating up? It's back-to-back multi-hit games as he finished 2-for-4 with a walk.
• Chase Meidroth went 2-for-4
• Miguel Vargas also went 2-for-4 with a walk.
• White Sox had a couple of TOOTBLANs in this game. First was Tristan Peters, who tried reaching third base off Meidroth's single to left field. Peters' awkward slide, in which his heel didn't meet the side of third base but was on top of it, is why he didn't beat the throw. Venable appreciates that level of base-running aggression, so Peters won't be at fault.Meidroth received his TOOTBLAN after taking advantage of an outfield bobble and picked up a double. But when Drew Romo hit a come-backer to the pitcher, Meidroth was way off second base and caught in a rundown.
• Speaking of Peters, he was robbed of a home run by Astros right fielder Cam Smith.

Record: 73-65 | Box Score | StatCast