Miserable baseball day. And the weather was lousy, too.
Today’s game was delayed almost two hours by a sleet storm, which, unfortunately, had to end. The bitter cold and wind never stopped.
White Sox starter Reynaldo López began the game with an ERA of 10.00, and saw it go up. Rays starter Tyler Glasnow began the game with an ERA of 0.82 and saw it go down.
It didn’t take long. López served up a single to Austin Meadows (who the Sox had turned into Roy Hobbs throughout the series) and a homer to Tommy Pham, and the tone was set. After an out came a double by Brad Lowe and and RBI single for Avi García, whose career has been given a tremendous resuscitation by his old team this week.
After a few hundred pitches, López got through the first, then cruised until with two outs and no one on in the fourth Meadows and Pham hit back-to-back dingers, Ji-Man Choi got a Daniel Palka-enhanced double, and Avi drove him in with a single.
López lasted three batters into the fifth, leaving two on base for Ryan Burr ... to let in. That closed López with a line of 4 1⁄3 innings, 10 hits, eight earned, four walks and five Ks on 104 pitches, hoisting his ERA to 12.15. Even those who thought his weak peripherals in 2018 would catch up to him could hardly have imagined they’d bludgeon him like this.
Once Burr let the bases clear, he, Nate Jones, and Kelvin Herrera tossed scoreless innings, with Alex Colomé giving up a run in the ninth. All told, the staff gave up 14 hits and six walks to go with the nine runs, making sure no one can catch their MLB-worst ERA, which should now be about 6.94. (Today’s game managed to raise what had been a 13.05 starter ERA on the homestand to 13.70.) Good thing we have a pitching coach who’s a genius, or things could have gotten out of hand.
Oh, yeah — offense. The Sox had one big opportunity, way back in the third when it was still a ballgame. Palka walked, Yolmer Sánchez lined out hard, and Leury García singled Palka to third, with the alleged big bats coming up. But Yoán Moncada and José Abreu both struck out on pitches outside the zone, part of Glasnow’s career-high 11 Ks in six innings of work. Come to think of it, the Rays starters alone whiffed 29 White Sox this series.
There wasn’t another offensive threat until garbage time in the ninth, when Moncada hit a wind-aided double and scored on a couple of ground outs. The Sox ended up with six hits, one walk, and 14 Ks. Guess we have a hitting coach who’s a genius, too.
This is about where we break up the verbiage with a nice video highlight, but there were no highlights except Tim Anderson getting two hits to raise his average to .514 and Eloy getting his first extra-base hit, a double. The fielding was terrible, too, though that’s excused by the weather.
So instead, here’s a nicer memory:
The fifth loss in a row brings the South Siders’ record to 3-8 — a 44-118 pace, for those projectioners out there. But the White Sox are not in the cellar, thanks to the Kansas City Royals, who only have two wins. Guess who those were against?
After the game, the White Sox optioned pitcher Caleb Frare to Charlotte, as they were apparently lacking sufficient supplemental travel budget to send the whole staff.
But hey, at least we had a gamethread pushing 400 comments, proving there’s still extraordinary interest in the franchi ... oh.
A very welcome day off tomorrow precedes a likely very unwelcoming visit to the Bronx for a three-game series against the New York Yankees that opens Friday night.