A win's a win when the White Sox have lost five straight and have six games of ground to make up with 32 games remaining. It's especially winsome when it's paired with losses from the two teams they're trailing.
Lance Lynn pitched seven strong innings, buying time for the White Sox offense to finally produce against a pair of struggling lefties who would've been red meat in the more fearsome days. Elvis Andrus homered to tie the game in the fourth inning, AJ Pollock homered in the fifth to put the Sox ahead, and they gracelessly grunted out a pair of runs from a bases-loaded-nobody-out situation to put the game away.
You'd like to see them do more, but everybody had grown accustomed to them doing less, so it's easy to settle for enough.
Lynn earned the game's first star, holding the Royals to four hits and an HBP over seven innings. He struck out eight, yet needed just 91 pitches to leave the last two innings in the hands of the Sox's two most proven relievers.
The start almost went off the rails in the third. After he retired the Royals in order the first three innings, Bobby Witt Jr. broke up the perfect game bid with a no-doubt solo shot for the game's first run. Nick Pratto and Michael A. Taylor followed with line-drive singles that put runners on the corners, and Lynn then loaded the bases by plunking Michael Massey.
Up came Hunter Dozier, who went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts. In the one at-bat that didn't end in a K, he grounded into a 5-4-3 double play to prevent further damage. Over his last three innings, Lynn only allowed a two-out single to Nicky Lopez.
During that time, the Sox offense woke up. It botched a bases-loaded situation in the first inning when AJ Pollock popped into the infield fly rule and Yasmani Grandal (back from the IL) lined out. They did nothing with a leadoff walk in the third inning, and Andrew Vaughn was gunned down trying to stretch a single into a double in the fourth.
Pollock atoned for his first-inning pop-up by giving the Sox the kind of cheap opposite-field homer they'd lacked all season. It sounded less than solid off the bat, and he didn't even reach triple-digit exit velocity, but it carried over the right-field wall nevertheless, tying the game.
An inning later, Andrus left far less doubt. When Bubic threw a 1-1 fastball that leaked on the inner half of the plate, Andrus uncoiled and launched the ball 105 mph out to left, some 430 feet away, for a lead the Sox wouldn't relinquish.
Andrus added the first of two insurance runs in the seventh, although it probably should've been a fielder's choice at home. With the bases loaded and nobody out, Andrus hit a hot smash right at a drawn-in Michael Massey, but his first instinct was to second base, which a drawn-in infield is not designed to do. By the time he regrouped and tried to throw home, he didn't have a shot at getting Gavin Sheets, and he had to settle for the out at first.
Nicky Lopez didn't make the same mistake on Andrew Vaughn's grounder, getting the out at home on an ill-fated contact play. It took José Abreu to get the ball in the air, and even thoguh he threw his bat at a slider well off the plate, he still managed to poke it into shallow center field for a sorely needed RBI single.
The insurance was welcome, because Liam Hendriks wasn't fooling anybody. He gave up batted balls of 100.8, 93.8, 99.2 and 99.5 mph. The first two turned into outs, but Michael A. Taylor tripled and scored on a Massey single to bring the tying run to the plate. Fortunately, that tying run was Dozier, and he was saddled with his third and final strikeout of the game.
Bullet points:
*Romy González had a nice night, delivering a pair of singles (one a bunt) from the ninth spot, making a quick turn on that crucial 5-4-3 double play in the fourth, and capping it off with a leaping catch on what looked like a Kansas City Special in the eighth. The lone blemish was a CS in front of Andrus' homer.
*Grandal caught in his first game back from the IL, going 0-for-2 with two walks.
*Lynn induced 17 swinging strikes on 91 pitches, and the curveball once again proved especially useful, getting whiffs on five of six swings.
*The White Sox now trail the Guardians and Twins by five and 1½ games, respectively.
