If the White Sox want to make history with consecutive homers every day, they'll probably be in good shape the rest of the season.
They didn't tie or break the record they matched on Sunday, when they stacked together back-to-back-to-back-to-back homers. Tim Anderson and Yoán Moncada got halfway there, however, and that turned out to be enough for a different mark.
For the second time this season, the White Sox greeted Matthew Boyd with two homers from their first two batters, and that made its own kind of MLB history.
The White Sox had four more homers in them, and one of them actually came with a runner on base. That was plenty for Gio González and four White Sox relievers, who held down the Detroit offense to hand the Tigers their sixth straight loss.
Every dinger was beautiful in its own way:
- Anderson started the game by working a 3-1 count before launching one over the wall in center to start the game.
- Moncada didn't even wait a pitch to join him, shoving a fastball a couple rows deep into the right-center seats from the right-handed batter's box.
- Anderson, reenacting his homer off Boyd from the last time they saw each other, fell behind 1-2, then extended the at-bat nine pitches before flipping an outer-half slider out to right field.
- Luis Robert missed one Rony Garcia hanging slider, but the second one ended up a couple rows deep in left center via a 37-degree launch angle.
- Danny Mendick took the low road after Robert opted for the skyway, finding the White Sox bullpen on a line drive that needed every bit of its 20 degrees and 107.7 mph to clear the wall.
- Robert then one-upped Mendick with a 115.5 mph laser to left that cleared the bullpen.
Those six homers aside, it wasn't exactly a beautiful brand of baseball. "Those six homers aside" is a qualifier I wouldn't mind using more often, at least assuming the White Sox hit them.
González struck out 10 Tigers on the evening, but he again came up one out short of qualifying for the win thanks to deteriorating control. The counts grew deeper as the night drew longer, and while he was able to escape one jam with a pickoff at second, he ended up issuing a walk to Miguel Cabrera with his 99th pitch of the night, and out came Rick Renteria to lift him, because Jonathan Schoop already had two good swings on him.
Schoop put another good swing on Steve Cishek for a single to center, but he jammed Jeimer Candelario for a soft lineout that ended the threat.
González's line -- 4.2 IP, 6 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 2 BB, 10 K -- will work. His curveball had more power than previous starts, and he used his changeup effectively early as well. It'd just look a lot better if he could start his games against the bottom of the order, rather than the top of it. His last two outings would get the game to the seventh instead of the fifth if he came after an opener.
Fortunately, Boyd had an even more extreme form of his recent run. He struck out nine over four innings, but three of the four hits he allowed left the yard, and he walked two batters on top of it. The start lowered his ERA to 9.64, but it dropped his record to 0-3.
In perhaps the game's most unsightly moment, Yasmani Grandal came up to field a swinging bunt in front of the plate, made a flip to first for the out, then headed to the trainer's room. The White Sox called it lower back stiffness and said he was day-to-day, but given the team's injury luck, it's natural to brace for worse.
Bullet points:
*Codi Heuer picked up his first major-league win for pitching a scoreless sixth around Grandal's injury.
*Zack Burdi topped him with the best appearance of his pro career. He threw a 1-2-3 seventh on 13 pitches, including five swinging strikes. The Downers Grove South Mustang generated two strikeouts and a weak tapper to the right side off the bat of Miguel Cabrera, who appeared to issue warnings to the dugout about Burdi's stuff afterward.
*Eloy Jiménez has more comedic range than outfield range, and Luis Robert knows it.
Record: 12-11 | Box score | Statcast
(Photo by Zach Bolinger/Icon Sportswire)
