Call it a winning streak!
Not for the White Sox. Taking two of three from an AL Central rival in what wound up being emphatic 10-1 fashion is always satisfying, but it wasn’t two in a row. No, folks, I’m celebrating me and my absolute heater of 10 wins in 11 recap tries. Put me in every day, Brett!
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The box score does betray the tension that underlined the majority of this one. Hosting their first Sunday Night Baseball broadcast as a first place team since 2008, the tone of the game was lively early, though the bulk of the early action was a straightforward redux of the frustrating offensive play the Sox have produced since the All-Star break. They rank near the bottom of the league with a .240 batting average with RISP since then, and it feels like that average should be a lot lower, because getting runners in from the basepaths without the longball has been like pulling teeth lately.
Munetaka Murakami is showing signs of life at the plate again. | Getty Images
The theme continued with verve for what I’d call the majority of the game — though ultimately, and fortunately, not the entirety of it. Sam Antonacci led off the first and fifth innings with a double, sandwiching back-to-back free bases from the non-brothers Montgomery to open the second frame and preceding Tristan Peters’ own leadoff double an inning later. They even queued up a rally in the third inning, when Miguel Vargas and Andrew Benintendi reached base before Colson Montgomery’s second punchout of the game ended the threat. Colson finished with a golden sombrero, bringing him to 197 on the season. When he presumably reaches the ignominious 200-K milestone, he’ll make the White Sox the only team to have three separate players break the 200 strikeout threshold in a season. Yoán Moncada did it most recently, and I don’t think I need to type the name of the one who did it first.
If you’ve been following the team as of late, it won’t be surprising that almost none of those White Sox rallies resulted in any runs, as Twins starter Bailey Ober labored through 4 1/3 innings with highly-diminished stuff. Still, when the Minnesota pen got the call, only one Sox run had been stuck on the board, as Antonacci did make his way around in the fifth, after Murakami shot a single through the right side:
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Remarkably, and I should say unfortunately, it’s the first time since August 9 that Murakami has knocked in a run with a hit that didn’t leave the yard. That day was also the last time until this evening that he had driven in runs on back-to-back days. Ideally, a September recharge will be in the books when the team needs it the most.
On the White Sox pitching side, a motley crew of bullpen arms strung together a masterpiece, seemingly without the use of a premeditated bulk man. Bryan Hudson opened with aplomb, his sixth scoreless outing in eight first-inning tries. But the star of the effort was once again rookie Hagen Smith, who delivered three brilliant innings that bought the offense just enough time for the BABIP gods to begin taking mercy.
After the Peters double in the sixth and subsequent Chase Meidroth walk, Kyle Teel’s fielder’s choice in the infield made it, effectively, a whopping 1-for-13 with runners in scoring position before the two-thirds point of the action. Perhaps Smith’s electricity on the hill gave the offense the jolt they needed. Smith is now up to nine scoreless outings out of his first 10 tries in the majors. With the way he filled up the strike zone and made hitters look silly, ultimately going nine-up nine-down with four outs via punchie, you would truly have no feel for the roiling roller coaster that Smith’s prospectdom took us on for a two-year run.
The jolt finally exploded into a lightning blast after that Teel sixth-inning chopper. Antonacci solidified his charge at Smith for player of the game honors with his third double, tripling the South Siders lead to 3-0.
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Some things in baseball remain simple. Tonight, much of it came down to the fact that Twins relievers just couldn’t throw any strikes. Seven walks in 2 2/3 innings from any combination of pitchers isn’t going to cut it, and it eventually led to an additional run in the seventh. A five-run cascade in the eighth put the game away, courtesy of Randal Grichuk’s 12th blast of his comeback summer, Peters’ second double of the game (and 30th of the season) and a comeback blast of his own for Kyle Teel (whose 406 foot blast to dead center was probably the best batted ball we’ve seen from him all season).
Peters is now four extra-base hits shy of 50 on the year, which would make him the 11th Sox rookie to ever reach that plateau, most recently Eloy Jiménez in 2019. It also seems likely that Peters will finish with handily the least home runs of that group (the modern group at least, with all due respect to Willie Kamm’s stellar 1923 effort).
The platoon of Benintendi and Grichuk, who went 2-for-2 with that aforementioned homer after pinch-hitting for the former in the fifth inning, continues to be comically effective. Through roughly a full-season’s worth of 566 at-bats, they’ve reverse-osmosised into a .261 batting average with 68 extra-base hits and 106 driven in.
Rick Hahn: Vindicated? More tonight at 6 p.m.
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The Twins did manage to dent the scoreboard on Grant Taylor for a second straight outing, as Brooks Lee became the sixth hitter to go ding-dong-johnson on the Sox relief ace. Taylor looked sharp as ever otherwise, striking out three over what I was happy to find was another two-inning outing. If you want to be a little dishonest and include the 8 2/3 Spring Training innings Taylor posted, he’s now on the precipice of 85 innings in total on the season. Somewhere in the realm of 82-85 regular season innings seems like a reasonable late guesstimate, and if you can pencil in a few more postseason reps, we find ourselves right on the edge of the 100-inning goal that Brian Bannister set out for the LSU product at the season’s outset.
Taylor’s three punchouts tonight also brought him to 97 on the season, putting him on the edge of being the fifth pure reliever in team history to break the century mark. It was most recently accomplished by Liam Hendriks and Michael Kopech in 2021, following Keith Foulke’s legendary (in the SSS slack) 1999 campaign and Terry Forster’s 1972.
The Sox finish their season series against the Twins with an 8-5 record, a repeat of 2025. With Cleveland’s voodoo magic having struck yet again in Detroit this afternoon, that’ll only be good enough to keep pace at 2 ½ games ahead in the Central. But the magic number is 17, and continues steadily dropping.
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The squad gets to enjoy a breather at home tomorrow, getting a rest day before the Pirates come to town. Sean Burke is lined up to take the ball on Tuesday opposite flamethrowing rookie Bubba Chandler, and while Wednesday’s Bucco of the day has yet to be announced, it seems like the Sox will be fortunate enough to miss Paul Skenes this time around. One can never be sad about this, even accounting for his recent troubles. First pitch on Tuesday is at 7:10 p.m. CT, and we’ll see you there!
MVP
Sam Antonacci: 3-for-4, 3 2B, 2 R, 2 RBI
Runners-Up
Hagen Smith: 3 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 4 K
Tristan Peters: 3-for-5, 2 2B, 3 R, RBI
Cold Cat
Colson Montgomery: 0-for-4, BB, R, 4 K
Runners-Up
Brenton Doyle: 0-for-1, K
Braden Montgomery: 0-for-3, R, 2 BB, K
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