White Sox shut out by Cardinals, 4-0

When you get shut out by a team like the St. Louis Cardinals, who are only in first in the NL Central because the NL Central is a high school division, there aren’t a whole lot of highlights.

Unfortunately, this game did come with a lowlight. That came when Michael Kopech got Lane Thomas to pop up to end the seventh, but didn’t know where the ball went and took a really bad step trying to avoid it.

Kopech reportedly has a hamstring strain, but he did limp off pretty gingerly. His was the second Sox hammie injury of the game, Adam Eaton having left an inning earlier with hamstring soreness.

They’re both day-to-day (as are we all).

No such problems for Carlos Rodón, who gave up one hit, struck out 10 and technically walked none, though he did hit two batters on 3-2 counts, so if he had missed them he would have had a couple of walks. Rodón had pretty much everything working, so he got to do this a lot:

The one hit was the first of two Tommy Edman homers, both prodigious blasts, the first at 112.5 mph EV and 436 feet and the second, off Aaron Bummer in the eighth, just six feet shorter. Given the Sox lack of offense, that stuck Carlos with a loss he didn’t deserve.

It’s not like the Cardinals didn’t try to help. The Sox only managed six singles (three by Nick Madrigal, giving him seven hits in the series), but five walks, a hit batter, and two more bad Cardinals errors put 13 men on base, where they all got to stay, thanks in large part to going 0-for-10 with RISP. The mysteriously effective John Gant and three relievers proved too much.

If you’d like to blame our Hall-of-Famer Baseball Person, at least in part, you could cite the three sacrifice bunts. My preference would be to wonder why, down two in the ninth with men on second and third, he didn’t have José Ruiz intentionally walk the red-hot Edmundo Sosa, given that the next four Cardinal batters couldn’t hit .150 in a slow-pitch league. Sosa drove both runners in, and that was that, despite getting two on in the ninth.

The HOFBP did outlast his mentee on the other bench though. Mike Schildt got the heave-ho from Joe West (who else?) for arguing about West’s fascination with the brim of reliever Giovanny Gallegos’ hat.

So, no sweep, but two-out-of-three over what is technically a division leader. It’s on to birds of a different feather, as the MLB-worst Orioles fly into town for a four-game series, three of which will feature starters whose ERAs wouldn’t even be good in the aforementioned slow-pitch league.

Don’t toss out those brooms just yet.