This should have been a slugfest.
Yes, the White Sox pitching staff finally broke the longest streak of games without 10 hits in Oakland history, but the Tanner Banks-Jesse Scholtens tandem ran the inherent risk of meeting the Athletics at their fringe-majors level. This is the bullpen game the White Sox couldn't avoid this weekend.
The White Sox offense had a chance to motivate Pedro Grifol to be a little more proactive on the pitching side, but they loaded the bases in the first two innings with only one run to show for it, and they couldn't figure out how to add to that total until the eighth inning, at which point they trailed 5-1.
And even that inning was painful. Andrew Benintendi kept the Sox from leaving them loaded for a third time with a double off the right-center wall, but Elvis Andrus didn't approach third in time for the usually aggressive Eddie Rodríguez to wave him home, perhaps because he was glancing over his shoulder even after rounding second.
That brought Tim Anderson to the plate with runners on second and third and the Sox trailing 5-3, instead of 5-4 with a runner on third. He started the at-bat 0-for-4 with three strikeouts, and he left it 0-for-5 with four strikeouts.
By the time Luis Robert Jr. got a chance to make an impact, the A's tacked on two more against Scholtens, who might not have been pressed into finishing a fourth full inning of work if the Sox cut it down to one. And then Robert homered with nobody on, a tidy summary of how he finished June with 11 homers and 16 RBIs.
Even if the Sox would've allowed seven no matter the scenario, they still should've been able to score seven. Alas, the Sox could only score one run off Luis Medina, even though they drew an uncharacteristic five walks off him in five innings. The problem was the very characteristic nine groundouts that made extra-base hits hard to come by.
Banks gave the Sox what they hoped for with four innings, but he had one bad inning that ruined his night. His only walk, which led off the second, was followed by a double, a single, and a sac fly that put Oakland up 2-1. That sac fly temporarily alleviated the constant press of a runner in scoring position, but Tony Kemp ended up scoring Shea Langeliers from first on a triple, and another sac fly made it 4-1.
The Sox chased from that point on. Their only hits between the third and seventh innings were two-out doubles, and the Sox couldn't capitalize with their one remaining bullet, and Zach Remillard drew the only walk after Medina's early control problems. They couldn't muster multiple baserunners in the eighth, when Vaughn led off with a single, followed by one-out singles by a pinch-hitting Jake Burger and Andrus hitting for himself. Benintendi doubled to make a game of it before Grifol's stubbornness came back to bite him.
Bullet points:
*José Castro was ejected in the fifth inning, not long after Anderson was rung up for his third strikeout of the game on a pitch off the plate.
*Anderson, however, watched three pitches down the middle for a strikeout in his second at-bat, which adds that element of "What is going on?"
*Remillard started at third base to give Burger a breather, then moved to right field after Burger hit for Gavin Sheets.
*Carlos Pérez homered off Scholtens in the fifth, and almost left the yard again in the seventh. Perhaps he's motivated because his brother, Carlos Pérez, is in the other dugout. The White Sox called up their Carlos Pérez before the game, with Adam Haseley heading to Charlotte.
*The White Sox finished June at 13-13. April continues to be the problem.
