Things just keep getting better for Dallas Keuchel.
Well, to be fair, there wasn’t really anywhere else to go but up. On April 20, Keuchel had a 15.00 ERA strapped to his back. Even though he improved his next two starts, he walked away with two more losses.
Today, Kid Kuechey had his first quality start of the season, securing the win and helping the Chicago White Sox complete a three-game sweep of the Boston Red Sox.
It probably helped that he was facing a floundering Red Sox team, who have lost six of their last seven games, but a quality start is a quality start. Keuchel gave the White Sox six innings of solid work, allowing two runs and striking out five. He and his battery mate Reese McGuire even thrilled us with a very pretty strike ‘em out/throw ‘em out.
Keuchel improves his record to 2-3 and lowered his ERA to a 6.86.
In other encouraging news, José Abreu continues to climb out of his cold-weather shell. Abreu has slashed .304/.370/.478 in the past seven days and seems to be seeing the ball much better than he was to begin the season. Pito had a great day at the dish, including this two-out double in the third inning which plated two runs.
Ryan Burr and Matt Foster each had a great inning of work, and manager Tony La Russa called on José Ruiz to close things out in the ninth. (Wait a second. That doesn’t seem right. Ruiz? With a one-run lead? Not Kendall Graveman? Not Liam Hendriks? No? Ruiz. Got it.)
Perhaps predictably, Ruiz got into some hot water before he was forced to hand things over to Bennett Sousa, who earned the save.
With today’s win, the White Sox improved their record to 14-13 and will head into a very tough week of play. Next up are three games against the Cleveland Guardians, who are nipping at the South Siders’ toes in the divisional standings. After that, the White Sox will have to prove themselves against a very tough New York Yankee team.
Today’s scorebook highlights:
- After allowing a deep drive to center field, I tried to give Keuchel some advice:
- The double that Ruiz allowed in the ninth inning nearly went out of the park, and I wanted to make sure my scorecard reflected how long and loud that double was:
- According to our own Sox Optimist:
Just a casual 4th inning where our booth runs out of things to talk about with the opposing leftfielder so they kick it to professional wrestlers sitting in the stands. Oh and an umpire died.
— SoxOptimist (@OptimistSox) May 8, 2022
And so:
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