Red Sox 15, White Sox 2: Some kind of implosion

In hindsight, maybe Leury García shouldn’t have pulled up on Andrew Benintendi’s soft line drive to center in the third inning.

The conservative play made sense at the time. There was a runner on first and two outs and the White Sox led 1-0. Perhaps laying out for the catch ends the inning, but if the ball got by him, it might’ve turned into an inside-the-park homer and a Red Sox lead.

But had García known Benintendi’s single was merely the second of 10 consecutive two-out hits off Manny Bañuelos, leading to the first nine of 15 unanswered runs … maybe García would’ve given diving a shot.

Bañuelos’ evening turned on a dime and plummeted off a cliff, going from retiring the first eight he faced to failing to retire the last 10. The hits started quiet, but once Mookie Betts tomahawked a good high fastball into the left-field corner, all bets were off. Bañuelos had 10 chances to get the third out and couldn’t convert on any of them.

The official sequence:

  1. Christian Vazquez single
  2. Benintendi single
  3. Betts double
  4. J.D. Martinez double
  5. Xander Bogaerts homer
  6. Michael Chavis homer
  7. Rafael Devers double
  8. Steve Pearce single
  9. Eduardo Nunez single
  10. Christian Vazquez single

And here’s what that looked like:

Carson Fulmer eventually took over, and while he got the third out, he might’ve had a worse night than Bañuelos.

Rick Renteria could’ve used multiple innings from him, but Fulmer only got that one out. Granted, a pair of Jose Abreu errors contributed to his problems — one a line drive that handcuffed him, one a bad throw — but Fulmer issued a pair of walks and a single before the defense officially got involved, giving him three free passes over his first five batters.

Fulmer ended up allowing five runs on two hits and those three walks over one-third of an inning. He threw just 16 of 32 pitches for strikes, and if he can’t get the ball over a plate when there are no real ramifications for any damage, it’s hard to know what purpose he serves.

(Update: The White Sox don’t know, either. They optioned Fulmer and Jose Ruiz to Charlotte after the game.)

Bullet points:

*Abreu committed two of the Sox’ three errors, but he drove in both Sox runs — an RBI single in the first, and a solo shot in the eighth bookending those 15 Red Sox runs.

*Jose Rondón committed the other error on a bad throw in the eighth, although Evan Marshall pitched around it.

*Ruiz and Josh Osich stepped up with two respectable innings to save the better part of the bullpen for what figures to be another long day behind Dylan Covey on Sunday.

*Putting the futility another way:

*More than 30,000 fans saw this garbage.

Record: 14-17 | Box score | “Highlights”

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Greg Nix

I thought for sure the headline would be “Jose Rondon. Again.”

ImmortalTimeTravelMan

This team’s record was so sheltered by multiple games against the Royals, Tigers, and Orioles for the first month it’s not even funny. How any team could be okay with the all around garbage pitching is amazing. But then again, how a moron like Rick Hahn could still have a job is probably the biggest mystery.

I love how Chavis was ranked as the 75th best prospect and can come in and hit everything out of the park and Eloy was a can’t miss prospect and can’t hit a god damned slider or field a ball without hurting himself. Our talent evaluators are just out of this world…

As Cirensica

Shit…. I have coffee all over my laptop.

Yolmer

I stopped watching after the 3rd inning and glad I did. Whatevs, Boston is a great team. The Sox just need to shake it off and go for the split tomorrow.

Patrick Nolan

I guess this game failed to meet the standards for using a position player.

As Cirensica

I wonder how many of those 30M were Redsox fans.

131 games left on the season. At 9 innings per game, that is 1,179 innings to cover. With Rodon on his annual IL visit, I just can’t see the White Sox having the pitching staff to cover that inning mileage. Hahn will need to be creative (scary thought), and he will need to pull off a trade for an inning eater.

As Cirensica

And Hahn already getting creative with pitching options

White Sox Sign Justin Nicolino https://t.co/zUP4flhXW0

— Tim Dierkes (@mlbtrwhitesox) May 5, 2019

roke1960

This is all on Rick Hahn. He really did nothing to upgrade the starting pitching. He replaced Shields with Nova, took a stupid gamble hoping Santana would return to his 2017 form, and counted on Rodon to be completely healthy. As usual none of those things have panned out. Now we are left with counting on Lopez and Giolito to be the aces of the staff. They have the talent to be that, but should not be forced to carry that burden this early in their careers. But I’m sure Jerry is applauding his great work this winter and preparing a nice extension. If Gar/Pax weren’t still around, Hahn/Kenny would be the worst GM/President in sports. And what do those two have in common? Oh yeah, the owner of those two teams is MR. Loyalty himself. Nice job Jerry.