Pedro Grifol had two fresh choices to soak up innings after he cut off Michael Kopech's night at four, and he probably wishes he chose the other order.
Touki Touissant threw four scoreless, hitless innings on just 49 pitches in his White Sox debut. Unfortunately, those four innings started after Jimmy Lambert gave up three runs in his first game back from the injured list in the fifth.
Jonah Heim avenged the miscarriage of justice from the night before with the game's biggest blow. He fell behind Lambert 0-2, worked the count even, and then turned on a misplaced fastball for a three-run shot that gave the Rangers a 6-1 lead. Seby Zavala set up high and away for the lefty, but Lambert missed thigh-high on the inner third, and that kicked the game out of reach.
In a world where Toussaint keeps the game at 3-1, the offense might've been able to make a game of it. Andrew Vaughn hit a towering homer off Martín Pérez to lead off the sixth, and Clint Frazier scored after reaching on a leadoff double in the seventh.
Then again, Bruce Bochy might've gone to his bullpen a little earlier with a narrow margin, rather than leave in Pérez to trade an inning for a run. The Sox managed only four hits and three walks, and the Frazier run was facilitated by a Corey Seager throwing error that allowed Frazier to advance to third. He ended up scoring on a Seby Zavala sac fly, so the run didn't damage Pérez's ERA.
The night looked more promising when the Sox took a quick lead in the first inning on a two-out single by Luis Robert Jr., and an Eloy Jiménez double sliced into the right-field corner. Kopech only allowed a walk over the first two innings.
But Kopech didn't have his liveliest stuff, and he threw a bunch of noncompetitive pitches, and that took its toll as the Rangers lineup saw him a second time with two outs in the third inning.
Marcus Semien kept that frame alive with a two-out single, and that's when Kopech's night turned for the worse. He walked Corey Seager on four pitches, and then gave up a deep drive to Nathaniel Lowe. Perhaps Kopech's night looks different if Andrew Benintendi takes a clean route to the ball, rather than getting turned around initially. He couldn't close the last foot, as the ball deflected off his glove and against the fence for a game-tying double, rather than the third out. Kopech had to throw eight more pitches to close out the inning.
The counterpoint: Inning No. 4. He gave up a one-out single to Heim on a changeup off the plate, but then he rolled a slider to Ezequiel Duran, who put it just out of Robert's reach over the left-center wall to make it a 3-1 game, putting the Sox on track for their fourth consecutive series loss.
Bullet points:
*Yasmani Grandal was scratched from the lineup after slipping during warmups and tweaking his knee, suggesting his body is at least twice its listed age.
*Zavala double-hit a bunt attempt for a foul ball -- first down into the plate, and then off his bat into fair territory. He seemed mad about it, like the umpire called him out instead of a foul ball.
*The White Sox only struck out four times, but a fat lot of good that did them.
