White Sox 8, Dodgers 4: Six unanswered after sixth goes sideways

1:05 AM CDT on June 15, 2023

The White Sox lost Mike Clevinger to a scary-looking arm injury they're describing as biceps soreness for the time being, and then they melted down in a sixth inning where more than half of the positions on the field made a defensive mistake.

And yet they won going away. Such is the power of the White Sox offense when Jake Burger and Luis Robert Jr. are getting things done.

Burger took Clayton Kershaw deep, then tacked on a game-tying two-run shot for his first career multi-homer game, while Luis Robert Jr. homered, doubled and scored a pair of runs.

They eventually received plenty of help against a struggling Dodgers bullpen, while the White Sox run-prevention unit cleaned up its act and kept the Los Angeles offense scoreless the rest of the way.

Still, you can't overstate the depths the White Sox sank to in that sixth inning. Gregory Santos, who completed a strikeout Clevinger started to strand a pair of runners in the fifth, allowed a pair of singles to start the sixth, which happens.

The following sequence of stuff doesn't just "happen", and I've emphasized the names of the players who did something wrong:

No. 1: Jayson Heyward singling to load the bases, but a run crossing the plate because Yasmani Grandal couldn't block Clint Frazier's throw, and Santos was not backing up home plate.

No. 2: With the bases re-loaded and one out, Tim Anderson flipping to second on a chopper instead of taking the sure out at first. There was no real value in getting the force at second for the second out as the tying run crossed the plate, and Elvis Andrus wasn't even standing on second base.

(Pedro Grifol then got thrown out to be thrown out, under the guise that the umpire should've asked for help on a call he got right?)

No. 3: Mookie Betts singled past a diving Andrew Vaughn to score two more, and Frazier made an unsuccessful throw home instead of stopping the runner from advancing to third.

Granted, that last one was the least egregious, but his first throw home wasn't that good, so Frazier gets two half-demerits that equal one whole one.

The Dodgers led 4-2, and it wouldn't have been surprising if it stayed there.

Burger had other ideas. After Eloy Jiménez doubled off old friend Yency Almonte to lead off the eighth, Burger took one sweeper out of the zone, and then swept an elevated one off the left-field foul pole to knot the game at 4.

Lefty Alex Vesia then relieved Almonte and promptly hit Andrew Benintendi on the hand. Benintendi remained in the game after a lengthy visit from the trainer, took second on a wild pitch, then scored when Frazier shot a grounder through the middle to put the Sox ahead.

The Sox then added three more in the ninth. Vaughn walked, moved to third on Robert's double, and scored on Jimenez's single. Burger then struck out, but Benintendi kept the inning alive with a one-handed swing that shoved a grounder between the third baseman and third base for the game's final two runs.

The White Sox won the game, but now they have to take account for who they may have lost. Benintendi's swings did not look convincing, but he's probably in better shape than Clevinger, who had to depart his best start of the season with two outs and two strikes in the fifth.

Clevinger executed his nibbling game about as well as he possibly could against a good lineup. He walked a pair of batters and hit Freddie Freeman over his 4⅔ innings, but he allowed just three hits and struck out five by expanding the top and glove-side edge of the strike zone.

He gave up two of those hits to start the fifth inning, which put runners on the corners for the top of the Dodger lineup. Two pitches later, he had two outs after popouts by Mookie Betts and Freeman. Up came J.D. Martinez, who took the first pitch beore swinging over a slider.

Clevinger then missed with a fastball and tried another one, and after Martinez fouled it away, Clevinger spun around, shaking out his arm, and then expressing his frustration toward the ground as Grandal and various personnel from the White Sox dugout came out to attend to him. Grifol immediately signaled for the bullpen, and now we'll wait to see if Jesse Scholtens will be needed, and for how long.

Clevinger had outpitched Kershaw, who limited the damage to Burger and Robert solo shots in the second and third innings, but otherwise survived an unfamiliar amount of baserunners. He allowed six hits and two walks, but he escaped unscathed in other innings. His two walks were to Andrus, which turned the lineup over to Anderson, who went 0-for-5 with five stranded.

Bullet points:

*Clevinger spoke after the game and said the initial tests were encouraging.