Since Cleveland was in the eclipse totality path, today's White Sox game was pushed back a few hours, which meant that it overlapped with my Monday night curling league. I watched the first half, but had to catch up with the second half of the game afterward.
It wasn't worth it. Bullet-point recap:
*The White Sox have now been shut out four times in just 10 games this season, with Triston McKenzie and four Cleveland relievers limiting the White Sox to four hits.
*Uncharacteristically, the White Sox drew six walks, but they couldn't do anything with them. They only managed one extra-base hit, went 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position, and grounded into a double play.
*Andrés Giménez played a big part in this one. He thwarted a potential run for the White Sox with a tricky grab in the right-center triangle behind second base, foiling the Sox's main method of attack against Kansas City. He then scored the game's first run when he doubled off Tanner Banks in the third and scored when Braden Shewmake booted a Brayan Rocchio grounder to his left. His next time up, he took a Tim Hill pitch off his elbow with the bases loaded to drive in a run.
*Hill allowed a lefty-lefty single to Steven Kwan, who came around to score when José Ramírez took former teammate Bryan Shaw deep for the other two runs.
*Yoán Moncada had a lousy day defensively, failing to beat Korey Lee to a David Fry pop-up by the dugout that Lee couldn't catch, only to have a Fry grounder go through Moncada for a two-base error. In the eighth, he threw a ball away, but White Sox pitching kept the errors from leading to more runs.
*Jared Shuster made his White Sox debut and pitched three scoreless innings, even working around the latter Moncada error. John Schriffen and Steve Stone seemed to think it was Shuster's MLB debut, when Shuster pitched 11 games for the Braves last season.
*Banks opened the game by striking out five batters through two innings. He took the loss because of the run he allowed in the third, but he and Shuster bookended the game with 5⅓ effective innings. The veterans in the middle -- Dominic Leone, Hill and Shaw -- did most of the bleeding.
*Even then, Sox pitching allowed just four runs. That should be good enough to win a ballgame at some point. Right?
