Orioles 6, White Sox 3: It was going well, until it wasn’t

The White Sox issued A LOT of walks this evening. Eventually, your luck runs out. That is exactly what happened to the South Siders this evening at Guaranteed Rate Field.

That said, things started in fairly sunny fashion for the South Siders. Jake Burger opened scoring in the top of the second inning with a home run that was scorched to left field. So far this season, Burger has four hits — all of them for extra bases, and all of them with an exit velocity of more than 100 mph.

Also, highest-paid free-agent signing in White Sox history, Andrew Benintendi, had himself a spectacular sixth inning. He saved a run by making a diving play down the left-field line in the top of the inning, and singled home the second run of the night in the bottom half.

Still in the bottom of the sixth, Eloy Jiménez put the White Sox up, 3-0, with a single to left field. The bases then became with one out, and guess what happened? Yasmani Grandal and Oscar Colás both struck out to end the inning.

It was then that Pedro Grifol made a big mistake. The skipper brought in Jake Diekman to start the top of the seventh. Diekman tried his best — his best being walking two and striking out one before being replaced by Reynaldo López.

If the wheels were wobbling with Diekman, two of them fell clear off with López. The righthander got the second out quickly with a fly out. But Elvis Andrus could not make the do-or-die barehand play to get the last ground out, and the bases were loaded with Birds. After walking in a run, López learned that you can’t live right over the plate — even chucking it 100 mph — and get away with it. Adley Rutschman took an 0-2 pitch into the left-center gap and cleared the bases to make it 4-3.

The silver lining in all of this is that the starting pitcher did not get a decision. The not-so-great part was that after two wheels fell off, the whole car broke down. Jimmy Lambert gave up back-to-back-to-back, two-out doubles in the eighth to put the Orioles up, 6-3. To add insult to injury, there was a throwing error by Lambert and a misplayed ball by Benintendi. It was not pretty to watch.

That would in fact be all she wrote for the game. Pitching continues to be a glaring weak spot.

Did the 2022 season ever really end?