White Sox 6, Mariners 4: Seizing mist opportunities

White Sox win

Were the White Sox playing a divisional opponent or simply another team within a time zone’s reach, tonight’s game might’ve been pushed back into a doubleheader. Instead, the two teams absorbed a 47-minute delay to start the game, then soldiered through persistent precipitation ranging from “mist” to “downpour.”

And despite the fact that Dallas Keuchel’s first start of the season involved the reigning Cy Young winner, he came away with his 100th career victory as the White Sox won their fourth straight.

The White Sox pummeled Robbie Ray early and late, taking him deep three times out of their 10 hits, including back-to-back homers by Tim Anderson and Luis Robert that ended his night after 6⅓ innings. Keuchel absorbed a no-doubt homer in the first inning while three softer hits turned into two runs in the fourth, but he avoided creating his own trouble, and that was good enough for three runs over five innings.

The milestone victory required a team effort. After the White Sox notched four runs in the second to build a 4-1 lead, the Mariners whittled it to one run, and almost tied it on Jesse Winker’s skyscraping drive to right in the sixth. The wind — and maybe a few extra raindrops — kept it from sailing over the Kraft Kave, and Adam Engel had ample time to park on the warning track and time his leap to preserve Kyle Crick’s inning.

José Ruiz followed with a dominant seventh, Kendall Graveman did his thing in the eighth, and while Liam Hendriks gave up a wall ball that eventually came around to score, the cushion supplied by the back-to-back blasts in the seventh allowed him to record his second save in as many days.

Based on the quality of contact, it wouldn’t have been surprising if the White Sox won by more. They had nine of the 10 hardest-hit balls of the game, with 11 batted balls topping 100 mph off Ray alone (and one by Engel rounding up to that number).

In the second, Eloy Jiménez tied the game with a screamer into the rain-vacated bleachers that had enough steam to bounce all the way back onto the field. Andrew Vaughn followed up with a single, followed by an Engel walk. After a fielder’s choice, Jake Burger’s sizzling shot deflected off J.P. Crawford and into shallow left to give the Sox the lead. Then Anderson split the left-center gap with a double that scored two for a 4-1 game.

Ray settled down to stay in the game into the seventh, but when Anderson got a fourth time to face him, he capitalized with an opposite-field shot, followed by Luis Robert’s second of the season that chased Ray from the game.

The White Sox did suffer a couple of losses on the field. Jiménez had to leave the game not long after fouling a ball off his left ankle, while Josh Harrison tweaked his back hitting a double-play ball to the left side. Danny Mendick and Leury García finished the game in their spots.

Bullet points:

*Harrison made an impressive ranging play to his right, covering the second base area from the shortstop position.

*The White Sox again won the strike zone, drawing four walks against six strikeouts while the Mariners had one BB and 12 K’s.

Record: 4-1 | Box score | Statcast

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a-t

This team somehow feels more mature than last year, I think particularly in how the hitters are taking their PAs. Feels less like the swagger-based (over?)confidence of an up-and-coming team, and more of the professional, focused confidence of a team that knows it’s one of the very best in the league.

metasox

post-season embarrassment can do that

LoveLittleLouie

Defense looks better too. Harrison making nice plays at 2nd and 3rd (although, easy to see how he could have twisted his back on the flip to Anderson), Abreu continuing upwards climb in the field, Anderson making good throws after routine grounders, pitchers fielding their positions, catchers contributing, and Jimenez even has me holding my breath less often.

Qubort

Best record in the American League.

vince

The White Sox are good at baseball.

ParisSox

This is a great thing

soxfan4life

Dallas pitched well going 5 with 0 walks . Nice to see the bats cam with some thunder tonight with 3 HRS. Engel already with catch of the yeat the BP getting better not worried about Liam but if this continues going into may then we have something to be concerned about and with the way the lineup is right now, Sox could be the most dangerous lineups in the league 4-1 is the best start since 2005. Hmmm interesting or is it a coincidence??? Hope they get the sweep tomorrow GO SOX!!!

shaggy65

3 runs is a decent outcome, but honestly Keuchel looked even better. Some of his pitches/locations were downright nasty. If he averages a strikeout per inning for the whole year I think we’re gonna be very happy with the results.

texag10

It looked like he was actually hitting his spots with his cutter compared to last year when he was all over the place.

jhomeslice

Last year was the only year out of the past 5 that he has not had an ERA under 4. He isn’t old, or a power pitcher who needs to learn how to pitch with diminished velo. Pitchers have bad years and come back. Hopefully last night was a sign of good things to come from him.

jorgefabregas

xwOBA leaderboard, minimum 15 PA
1. Andrew Vaughn
2. Luis Robert
3. Vladimir Guerrero, Jr.
4. Nolan Arenado
5. Joey Gallo

LamarHoyt_oncrack

How can Gallo be on any positive list? I have a friend who is a Yankees fan, says he is just god awful, like epic bad. I’m sure there’s subjectivity in that, but since he got to the Yanks he has been about as bad as Dunn was.

jorgefabregas

This is only for this season. So far he has a career-high walk rate and a career-low strikeout rate. And his average exit velocity so far has been 100.1 MPH, 8.5 MPH higher than last year and tied for highest in the league. The Baseball Savant website has since seemed to make some sort of update or correction and has Steve Kwan third, Matt Olson fourth, Arenado fifth, and Gallo sixth.

Last edited 1 year ago by jorgefabregas
BenwithVen

If Jose Ruiz can keep this up until Kelly comes back, that would be massive.

As Cirensica

I had forgotten we have Joe Kelly. Honest.

jhomeslice

I hope we are not saying that months from now. Bonkers to sign a guy for that much coming off an injury who won’t be ready until a month into the season.

I hope he’s as good as he is supposed to be and not questionable due to health issues. Graveman looks good so far, hopefully Kelly follows suit. He’d better be good for what they paid him.

lifelongjd

Agree with Ben above. Ruiz looked nasty. If he can be counted on for higher leverage situations, it would be a nice surprise.

Hendriks isn’t make our 9th innings easy. Stone said it best when he commented he needs his secondary pitches to be more consistent. No need to panic as of yet, but nice 1-2-3 save would be a welcome change.

texag10

Through 3 appearances
2021: 3.1 IP, 4 Hits, 3 ERs, 2 HRs, 5 Ks, 1 BB
2022: 3 IP, 9 hits, 3 ERs, 1 HR, 7 Ks, 1 BB

The increase in hits is the only thing that’s possibly concerning but SSS.

texag10

For any fans of SSS fun facts: according to Baseball Savant, Luis Robert is currently in the 100th percentile for xBA, xSLG, and xwOBA as well as 98th percentile for K%. His 1.081 OPS is actually significantly unlucky. I don’t know guys, I’m thinking he might be kinda good.