Covey story: Dylan outduels Sale

From the Department of Improbable Improbabilities in Glendale, Calif.:

• Dylan Covey outduels Chris Sale in a 1-0 series-opening, road win for the Chicago White Sox.
• Covey nearly tossed more strikeouts per inning (1.17 to 1.25), less pitches per out (4.61 to 4.54) and a better strike percentage (67% to 72%) than Sale — on a night when Sale was mowing through the White Sox “batting” order and hurled the fastest pitch of his career.
• Covey is the ace of the White Sox staff.

Holy moly, even fans riding shotgun on the Dylan Covey bandwagon did not see this coming.

The relatively late-blooming (shaysus, Ballantini, dude hasn’t even turned 27) Covey took his time — 14 starts and 20 total games, spread over two seasons, to notch his first win, this past May. Since then, he can’t lose: Two wins, two no-decisions (the Chisox are 3-1 in Covey starts), and an average game score of 61, which, if you have been living in a van down by the river, would pretty easily register as the top mark in the rotation.

The biggest hole Covey had to overcome came before the big fella recorded a single out. The bottom of the first began with a leadoff two-bagger and a walk — to which Covey sniffed, rosin-bagged, adjusted his cup, and chased a Xander Bogaerts whiff with a Mitch Moreland 3-6-1 double play.

Photo by Adam Glanzman/Getty Images

After that tightrope act, Covey dug in and extinguished the next 12 Carmines in a row, and 17 of 18, pushing the scoreless pitcher’s duel to six innings. At that point, only three of the four Bosox baserunners in the game were on the righthander (two hits and a walk), and if anyone was deserving of even a token run in the top half to be put in position to win, it was Covey.

And in the top of the seventh, long live Jambi, that’s just what the White Sox did.

The newly fortified-with-12-essential-vitamins-and-minerals Kevan Smith took one of those ease-up Sale two-seamers (merely 94 mph) dotted masterfully low and away, and poked it out to right field for a sidewinder ground-rule double. Yoán Moncada followed, and in one of those plays that tend to get lost in a three-strikeout night but pile up over the PAs to make him the most valuable player on the team at a mere 21 years of age, he inside-outed a 99 mph heater to the right side to move Smith to third.

And then, on a 2-2 count after having seen nothing from Sale as fast as 90 mph in the at-bat, Trayce Thompson was served a 99 mph scorcher with the infield pulled in and turned on it, with malice:

Moreso than Smith, Moncada or Thompson, tonight’s mini-MVP has to go to the deservedly maligned White Sox bullpen, which sipped from the same Gatorade cup as Covey and duplicated his magic:

• Jace Fry, scoreless seventh having inherited Covey’s leadoff single to Bogaerts, two Ks.
• Nate Jones, scoreless eighth, one K, 11 pitches/eight for strikes.
• Joakim Soria, scorless ninth, 12 pitches/eight for strikes.

The big-boy MVP, of course, was Covey. In his postgame hostage video for White Sox Twitter, manager Ricky Renteria was suitably succinct: “Just a spectacular job.”

Brevity, thy name is Covey. Bravo, for a badass outing for the ages.

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*hed H/T (Covey story): WIN05