It's nice to know the White Sox can win a game like this. Now here's hoping they won't have to go to this well all that often.
On a night when Tony La Russa used six pitchers and effectiveness was fleeting for all of them, the White Sox offense had enough juice to hold off the Rangers' charges. They scored nine runs by pounding out a season-high 16 hits, and now they're a season-high one game over .500, after failing to climb over that mark in their first seven tries this season.
At the center of the assault was Yermín Mercedes, whose four-hit game wasn't a season high because he's already gone 5-for-5. He's now up to five games with at least three hits, and he's only had 18 chances.
La Russa batted Mercedes in the bottom third of the lineup, but Mercedes still found himself in the center of the action. He contributed a two-run single during the White Sox's five-run outburst that knocked out Dane Dunning in the third, and when the Sox pitching staff bled away that five-run lead, Mercedes put them back ahead with an RBI double in the seventh. Mercedes then scored the necessary insurance run on Nick Madrigal's grounder to first base, breaking for home decisively enough on Nick Madrigal's grounder that diving first baseman Nick Lowe had no chance to get him at home.
Mercedes had plenty of company in keeping the line moving. Yoán Moncada joined him with three RBIs, as he went 3-for-4 with a solo shot in the eighth inning. Tim Anderson struck out three times, but he singled twice and scored both times. Andrew Vaughn and Nick Madrigal helped turn over the lineup card with a pair of 2-for-4 performances. Combine it with Mercedes' perfect night, and the last three spots combined to go 8-for-12 with zero strikeouts.
The steady stream of offense emerged as the main story as the headlining act fizzled. The Dylan-Dane duel wasn't much of one. Dunning struck out the first two batters he faced and nobody else. His 90-mph sinker seemed like it was ripe for figuring out after one time through, and sure enough the floodgates opened in the third, as the White Sox sent 10 batters to the plate and collected seven hits.
But then Dylan Cease, who stranded the bases loaded on 33 pitches in the first before settling down for more conventional zeroes in the second and third, promptly walked the first batter he faced after getting the five-run lead, setting up Nick Solak for a two-run homer to get the Rangers on the board. Cease then gave up a single to Brock Holt before La Russa came out of the dugout. He lasted only 3⅓ innings, making his first three starts of 4⅔ innings apiece look aspirational.
The bullpen didn't look much better. Evan Marshall made easy work of the rest of the fourth, but found trouble immediately in the fifth. He started the inning with a walk and a single, and before he could Houdini his way out of the frame, Adolis Garcia hit a three-run shot to make it a 6-5 game.
Matt Foster struck out two of the three batters he faced in the sixth, but the guy he walked in between the K's came around to score on Aaron Bummer's watch, as his struggles continued in the form of a pair of singles. Bummer then opened the seventh with a throwing error, a mess Codi Heuer cleaned up with a grounder to second, and a liner to second that Madrigal converted into a 4-3 double play.
But then Heuer allowed two of the first three batters of the eighth inning to reach, so La Russa called for Liam Hendriks for the extended save. Yasmani Grandal complicated matters by letting a fastball sail past him to the backstop, but Hendriks responded with a pair of strikeouts to strand the runners.
It would've been too easy for Hendriks to go five-up, five-down, so he gave up a second homer to Garcia on a hanging slider with two outs in the ninth. At least he avoided bringing the tying run to the plate.
Bullet points:
*Grandal recovered from his passed ball to steal a couple of low strike threes for Hendriks in the ninth, so there's that.
*Grandal went hitless at the plate, but he drew a walk and flied out to the warning track. José Abreu was the only Sox to not reach base safely, going 0-for-5.
*Billy Hamilton returned to the action in the form best suited for him -- as a defensive replacement for Vaughn with a lead.
*Vaughn did his job. Along with the singles, he inelegantly caught a fly in shallowish left field and made an on-target throw home to freeze a runner. Give him another start no matter what.
*Luis Robert turned a single into a triple (corrected) by letting it clank off his glove in the first inning for his second error of the season.
*Shallow positioning by the Rangers outfield burned them twice, as Adam Eaton and Mercedes split both gaps with doubles that deeper center fielders might have flagged down.
