It's no secret that the White Sox have had their struggles against right-handed pitchers this season. Still, with the unremarkable James Kaprielian starting for Oakland tonight, it seemed like a strong opportunity to flip the script. After all, Kaprielian struggles to miss bats, limit walks, and keep the ball in the park. Instead, the Sox couldn't get out of their own way, and their awful plate discipline doomed them in a quiet night for the offense.
All of the damage against Kaprielian was done in the first inning. With two outs, AJ Pollock slapped a ground ball down the line past Jonah Bride's dive at third base for a double, and Jose Abreu followed it up with a weird sidespin grounder under Seth Brown's glove at first to score Pollock and give the White Sox a 1-0 lead.
On the other side of the ball, Lance Lynn struck out eight against zero walks, but didn't have the best of nights himself, and it wasn't all his fault. In the second, Yoan Moncada made a nice play on Ramon Laureano's dribbler, but it inexplicably popped out of Abreu's glove at first base. A blooper to left-center by Elvis Andrus put runners on the corners with no one out. That set the table for Stephen Piscotty, who had the best track record against Lynn of anyone in Oakland's lineup. A seven-pitch battle ended with Piscotty powering an inside-corner sinker out to left field to give the A's a 3-1 lead.
Lynn pitched pretty well through the rest of the first five innings, but the A's struck again in the sixth, when Brown absolutely clobbered a floating changeup out to right for a solo home run. Lynn bounced back to strike out Laureano, but Andrus followed by blasting a no-doubter to left to give the A's a 5-1 lead. It's fair to question why Lynn was allowed to throw his third home run on his 104th pitch, but the bats weren't exactly giving Tony La Russa a reason to show a sense of urgency.
Indeed, the bottom of the sixth brought even more frustration. Either Kaprielian's control deserted him in his sixth inning of work or he realized that there was no reason to throw strikes to the White Sox lineup. Tim Anderson led things off with a laced double down the left field line, but Yoan Moncada followed by getting rung up on a 3-2 pitch that didn't have any of the plate. Pollock worked the walk Moncada deserved to keep the threat going, but that was the end of the plate discipline. Abreu saw only three pitches, all sliders off the plate, and swung at all three, dribbling the third for a groundout. Then, Yasmani Grandal got to a 2-1 count before chasing two more sliders for an inning-ending strikeout.
The Sox struck back in the seventh against reliever Domingo Acevedo, but it wouldn't be enough. Eloy Jimenez led off by smoking a double to the right-center gap. After a popout by Sheets, Josh Harrison reached out and pulled a changeup on the outer half that just barely cleared the wall (and Tony Kemp's glove) in left for a homer. It didn't look like Harrison got all that much of it, but he caught it on the right part of the bat.
That was it for the Sox offense, as the next seven hitters went down in order to end the game.
Bullet points:
*Tim Anderson was thrown out of the game for arguing a borderline pitch close to the top of the zone, and may have made matters worse for himself by making contact with home plate umpire Nick Mahrley with his helmet. Tony La Russa intervened and got himself tossed in the process. We'll stay tuned to see if there's a suspension coming for Anderson.
*Davis Martin took over for Lynn in the sixth and handled the rest of the game. He allowed another solo home run to Brown in the eighth, and the A's got a run on a squeeze bunt in the 9th after Gavin Sheets failed to come up with a makeable play in right field.
*The top batting average in the Oakland lineup heading into the game was Sean Murphy's .244. Per Jason Benetti, since 1990, there have only been three games in which a team has started a lineup with no player having a higher batting average than .244 this late into the season. Lynn at least understood that part of the assignment. By walking nobody, he made the A's have to hit the ball. Unfortunately, they did.
*Yasmani Grandal had a particularly tough night at the plate, going 0-4 with two strikeouts and two batted balls that had a hit probability of 6% or lower.
