The White Sox made winning convincingly a pretty simple proposition tonight.
On one side of the ball, the White Sox hit four homers, and had some fun trying to go for a fifth. On the other, Reynaldo López forced the Reds to make trouble, and they never did. The result was their 90th victory of the season, after eight years of failing to even win 80.
The Sox struck for three solo shots over the first four innings. Luis Robert went deep in the first, Yoán Moncada in the second, both off rookie Riley O'Brien. After Leury García was thrown out at the plate trying for a leadoff inside-the-parker off Luis Cessa in the fourth, Gavin Sheets swatted one out to right to make it a 3-0 game.
That represented all the runs the White Sox needed, because López only gave up a solo shot of his own. Eugenio Suarez took advantage of a second life after his chopper down the third-base line barely bounced foul by hitting one out to center to make it a 3-1 game. Otherwise, López didn't entertain threats. He didn't walk anybody, he only generated seven swinging strikes on 91 pitches, and he only came away with four K's over a season-long six innings, but it didn't matter tonight. While he allowed six hard-hit balls over six innings, only two of them turned into hits, and so the Reds never could build rallies.
This reinforces the notion that López has rediscovered his 2018 form, and we have a 2021 notion of what that entails. We've seen from 2019 and 2020 that he's not somebody whose success is sustainable enough to anchor a rotation, but he's breathing new life into the concept that he can fill one out.
The White Sox didn't really build innings themselves until late, when they had fun generating insurance. In the sixth, Eloy Jiménez reached on a single and error by TJ Friedl, who had a miserable night in center field. Yoán Moncada backfilled first with a walk, after which García bunted both runners over. Those two runners scored, as Sheets slashed an opposite-field single to score one, and César Hernánez beat out a double-play attempt for an RBI fielder's choice, albeit after a review.
Two innings later, Hernández turned over the lineup with a one-out double, then trotted home when Robert unloaded for a two-run homer that nearly reached the concourse behind the White Sox bullpen, landing some 445 feet away. Robert also drew a walk, so he had a well-rounded evening.
Bullet points:
*Friedl did not. He slipped on García's sinking liner, turning a flyout into a triple, and almost an inside-the-park homer. He also broke late on Jiménez's single in the sixth and let the hop get over his head for an error in the sixth, then dropped Jiménez's routine liner in the seventh.
*Moncada committed an error himself on a potential double-play ball with Aaron Bummer on the mound (of course), but two more grounders got the job done without a run scoring, with Hernández and Tim Anderson combining for the 4-6-3.
*José Abreu is still struggling to find his power stroke, going 0-for-5 with a strikeout.
*López lowered his ERA to 2.98 on the season.
*The Reds were officially eliminated from postseason contention during the game because the Cardinals won their 17th straight.
