The White Sox are off the schneid, and just the way they drew it up -- at least since the second half of spring training.
Garrett Crochet went seven strong innings against one of the best lineups in baseball, while Michael Kopech closed it out. The offense made enough contact to get a little lucky, the defense didn't create extra opportunities, and a one-run victory counts just as much as a nine-run rout.
That's underselling the simplicity a little bit, at least at the end of the game. Kopech recorded a five-out save involving five baserunners, inducing a bases-loaded double play to end the eighth, then working around Marcell Ozuna's second solo shot, a walk and a single to end the ninth before Ronald Acuña Jr. came to the plate for a fifth time.
But a win's a win, and it's especially rewarding when Crochet's the individual getting the W.
Facing a far tougher opponent, Crochet built upon his dynamic debut by throwing seven innings of one-run ball, which is one inning longer than he lasted against the Tigers. He dictated the terms of a cold evening with his fastball, but he threw a wrinkle in the scouting report by using the cutter nearly as often as the slider, which gave him a much bigger velocity band on his horizontal-moving pitches.
He limited the Braves to a random four-pitch walk to Matt Olson through four, and kept the Braves off the board through six.
You can question whether he should've been able to finish the seventh. It made baseball sense to let him start the inning against lefty Matt Olson because the White Sox didn't have anybody better to use for a three-batter minimum, and he got the strikeout.
It wasn't necessarily the smartest call to let him face Marcell Ozuna, because Ozuna timed him up well the last at-bat, and the contact Crochet allowed grew in authority over the previous two innings. Sure enough, Ozuna swatted a first-pitch slider out to left to tie the game at 1, but hard-hit balls by Adam Duvall and Michael Harris II found White Sox gloves. However it happened, Crochet was able to finish on a high note, and maybe learn a little bit more about enduring past the 80-pitch mark as well. He allowed just three hits and that Olson walk while striking out eight, and he racked up 18 whiffs on 93 pitches.
He also ended up finishing with the win, because Paul DeJong, pinch-hitting for Braden Shewmake to face lefty A.J. Minter, followed Ozuna's lead in the bottom of the seventh by hitting a high fly ball to left and letting the wind do the rest:
- Ozuna: 98.9 mph EV, 42 degree LA, home run in 8/30 parks
- DeJong: 99.8 mph, 43 degree LA, home run in 11/30 parks
The rebuttal restored the White Sox's one-run lead and put Crochet back in the position to get the win. The Sox sandwiched DeJong's JeDong with a pair of bloop singles -- one by Gavin Sheets to the triangle in right the inning before, and one by Andrew Vaughn in the same spot on the other side of the diamond the inning after. Vaughn's eighth-inning single followed an Andrew Benintendi bunt single, a Yoán Moncada walk, and a productive flyout by Luis Robert Jr., which is the kind of disciplined sequence the White Sox wanted to see in lieu of stacking transcendental hitters.
The White Sox also played errorless ball, although they had to overcome a five-out eighth. John Brebbia walked Jarred Kelenic to flip the lineup to Acuña, but he appeared to lock up Acuña with a perfect 3-2 sinker, and Martín Maldonado followed with a perfect throw to cut down Kelenic at second for what should've been an inning-ending SHOTHO...
... except home plate umpire Tom Hanahan called it a ball, putting runners on first and second with one out. That's when Kopech came in, and although he walked Ozzie Albies to load the bases, he managed to get Austin Riley to hit a routine grounder to third, where Moncada took it to the bag and fired across the diamond for a 5-3 double play.
Bullet points:
*Reynaldo López matched Crochet through five innings, facing the minimum through four. He looked different, in the sense that he was using a slow curveball that he'd never thrown for the White Sox. He also looked the same, in that he gave Moncada a free base by throwing over to first three times. He gave up the Sheets blooper, but six innings of one-run ball proved a fine first impression in his return to the rotation.
*Sheets reached base three times, with the RBI single and two walks. He was also close to walking in his first at-bat, but couldn't quite check his swing on a 3-2 slider out of the zone.
*Vaughn's blooper atoned for an inning-ending double play in the sixth inning, which deprived White Sox fans of a chance to see Aaron Bummer enter with inherited runners to face a righty.
