With Yoan Moncada on the shelf due to a combination of back tightness and a string of left-handed starters, Leury Garcia is backed up by Tim Anderson for the time being.
That 1-2 punch stunned the Yankees tonight. Garcia and Anderson came up with the three biggest hits of the game to help the White Sox rally from down 4-0 to take the opener of this four-game series.
First, Anderson followed a García RBI double with a three-run homer that tied the game at 4 in the fifth inning. Two innings later, García greeted Adam Ottavino with a 11-pitch battle that ended with a solo shot over the wall in right-center, and that turned out to be the game-winner.
Through 4½ innings, it looked like the White Sox would have to save their better half of the bullpen for another day. Iván Nova alternated surviving hard contact with getting burned by it, allowing two runs apiece in the second and fourth innings, while the White Sox offense struggled to string together quality at-bats against JA Happ.
The Sox did threaten in the fourth, loading the bases after Eloy Jiménez and Yonder Alonso walked on a combined nine pitches. Jose Rondón came to the plate and worked a 2-0 count, but Happ got an inside pitch called for some reason to get him back in the game, and he ended up getting a weak popout to keep the Sox off the board.
But the good at-bats carried into the following inning. Yolmer Sánchez led off with a walk, and Ryan Cordell shot a single through the right side on 0-2. García then got an edge on Happ, lining a 2-1 slider into the left-center gap to score Sánchez and make it a 4-1 game.
That brought Anderson to the plate, and after seeing a changeup out of the zone and a two-seamer he fouled off, he got a four-seamer that split the plate at the knees. Anderson got the barrel underneath it and socked it out to center to tie the game at 4.
Sox pitching kept the Yankees there, but Yankees pitching couldn't keep the Sox there. Ottavino threw everything he had at García to start the seventh. He went ahead 0-2 on a pair of called strikes, followed by a foul, foul, ball, foul, ball, ball, foul and one more foul.
On the 11th pitch, Ottavino went back to his slider, but it wasn't the one that made Anderson chase a foot off the plate a batter later. It was a floater over the middle, and García sent it over the wall in right to give the Sox a 5-4 lead.
The Sox bullpen kept it there, even without Alex Colomé. Kelvin Herrera pitched around a two-out single to strike out the side in the eighth, and Aaron Bummer pitched around a one-out infield single for his first career save.
The White Sox are once again one game under .500. We'll see if that means anything different Friday.
Bullet points:
*García, Anderson and Jose Abreu each had two hits at the top of the order, while the rest of the lineup went 1-for-17.
*Anderson committed his 14th error when he didn't quite commit on a sinking liner and it ate him up.
*Nova brought a 6.28 ERA into the game, and he leaves with a 6.28 ERA game after allowing four runs over 5⅔ innings.
*James McCann helped Nova limit the damage from a two-run second by cutting down Clint Frazier at second on a SHOTHO.
Record: 33-34 | Box score | Highlights
