When the White Sox were shutout eight times in their first 25 games, and flirted with being a footnote to history on back-to-back nights in Philadelphia, it at least allowed everyone to emotionally prepare for the idea that this offense--still safely the worst in baseball by any meaningful measure--would get no-hit.
No-hitters are more frequent these days, and the Sox entered the game batting .216 as a team. There's no reason to feel safe. But despite seven hitless innings from Orioles starter Kyle Bradish, those emotional preparations remain in vain.
Reliever Danny Coloumbe came in to continue the chase for history in the eighth, and his grooved 3-1 cutter was greeted by a Danny Mendick pinch hit solo shot over the left field bullpen. Historical infamy and the 11th shutout loss of the season was avoided, with only the sting of a four-game home sweep and a waste of six strong Garrett Crochet innings left in its wake.
For Pedro Grifol, that sting was plenty.
"Crochet pitched his ass off," Grifol said. "We got no-hit through [seven innings]. We had a pinch-hitter break it up. The rest of the guys--not the rest of the guys--most of the guys were fucking flat today. Unacceptable."
Benefitting from a wide strike zone from home plate umpire Junior Valentine (creeping toward local name recognition after this weekend) and degraded competition, Bradish glided through seven innings. Korey Lee's fourth inning lineout to deep right was the furthest and hardest hit ball by a White Sox batter against Bradish (345 feet, 96 mph), and the one of the few moments where it felt like something had a chance off the bat.
"No adjustments, we didn’t make any adjustments to this guy," Grifol said when asked what made Sunday stand out from other poor offensive efforts.
With little left-handed resistance on hand, Bradish's high-powered sinker-slider combination ran rampant, but not with precision. He issued four walks alongside his 11 strikeouts, running his pitch count to 103 by the seventh inning stretch. Bradish clenched his fists in celebration after Bryan Ramos swung through a 2-2 slider to end the seventh like a man who knew he had thrown his last.
Bradish's quality, which prompted Crochet to mention that he finished fourth in American League Cy Young voting, was the central note as Sox players quietly pushed back on Grifol's pointed criticism, which included his comments to media and addressing players postgame in the clubhouse.
"He’s going to feel that way and obviously we have a different feeling," Korey Lee said. "He is entitled to his own opinion also. I think that’s a valid reason. It’s nothing to hide about that. He has his opinions and everyone is going to have their own opinions."
"We just played a stretch against some really good teams," Crochet said. "I don't think it's necessarily fair to harp on the losses and beat ourselves up too much. We've just got to put together a full nine innings of good baseball."
Orioles pitching can't be accused of gilding the lily against a last place club, because for much of the afternoon, Crochet had the more show-stopping pitching performance. The Sox lefty matched his career-high with 11 strikeouts of his own, and also kept Baltimore hitless until the second Ryan Mountcastle weak contact double down the first base line of the series, with two outs in the fourth.
Adley Rutschman's two-run sixth inning blast off a plate-splitting fastball wasn't enough to spoil a strong Crochet outing, but immediately felt like a surplus of run support for Bradish & Co. A Colton Cowser solo shot and James McCann sacrifice fly plated a pair of runs in Michael Soroka's three innings of relief.
"Everything in here between the guys is great," said Mendick, reiterating a common player assessment of the Sox clubhouse. "They threw some good arms at us and sometimes it doesn’t go our way. Struggles happen and I think we’re just going to have to keep grinding, keep a positive mindset and then go out there and give it our all, see what happens."
On a normal day, with a normal team, there would be an obligation to write about how Crochet's cutter has so swiftly matured into a pitch that could hold down the Orioles offense. He threw it 32 times and induced nine swinging strikes. That's nice. The rest wasn't.
Bullet points:
*Ramos is hitless in two games since returning from the injured list, after striking out thrice on Sunday.
*Rain delayed the first pitch by one hour and 40 minutes, but gave way to a game played in clear conditions.
*The Sox have lost nine of their last 10, erasing the good feelings of an 11-8 stretch that preceded this.
*McCann was denied what would have been the third no-hitter caught in his career, and the second in this ballpark. In both cases, Lucas Giolito's 2020 no-no against the Pirates was his first.
