The worst team in baseball can't be choosers, but at some point the White Sox should develop higher standards for a victory.
For now, a 10-inning win in which Michael Kopech blew a save and the White Sox pushed the Manfred Man home on a not particularly impressive deployment of a 3-0 swing counts as the best performance of the week.
The White Sox clung to a 2-1 lead entering the ninth behind a sterling start from Garrett Crochet, but Kopech, who walked Julio Rodríguez the night before, pitched to him and paid dearly, as Rodríguez launched a 3-1 fastball well out to right to tie the game at 2.
In another departure from Wednesday night, the White Sox were able to score in the 10th. Zach DeLoach struck out against Andrés Muñoz, but Nicky Lopez punched a single through the left side that advanced Korey Lee to third. Andrew Vaughn followed by working a 3-0 count, and his third-inning solo shot gave him the green light if the zone was right.
Muñoz gave him 97 mph on the inner half, and while Vaughn only topped it to third, it worked out to his advantage. The play developed slowly enough for Lee to score on the contact play, and Josh Rojas didn't even consider attempting a 5-4-3 double play, which looked more likely than the out at home he first considered.
Perhaps he believed in the Mariners' ability to tie it up in the bottom of the 10th, but Tanner Banks had other ideas. He struck out Locklear and Rojas on four pitches apiece before coaxing Luke Raley into a harmless fly to center that ended the game, and the White Sox's four-game losing streak.
In a more just world, Crochet would've gotten the win to show for a career night. He allowed just a run on two hits and two walks while striking out a personal best 13, and perhaps a different left fielder erases the run and a hit. Tyler Locklear's fifth-inning solo shot eluded Andrew Benintendi's glove as it bounced off the top of the padding, kicked right, bounced off the padding again, and finally fell behind the fence for his first career homer.
Otherwise, Crochet was unbeatable. The Mariners swung at 48 of his 102 pitches and whiffed on 24 of them. He worked almost exclusively fastball-cutter, probably because the one changeup he threw left the yard after two bounces on the top of the fence. His pitch chart is a master class in effective velocity. He had exceptional glove-side command of both pitches, and he only strayed from that course to work up and away.
Any wobbles were brief. Locklear's homer came in the fifth, and then Crochet started the sixth with back-to-back walks. He recovered by striking out Dylan Moore and Rodríguez before getting Mitch Garver to fly out to deep center, and the inning was stressful enough to consider ending Crochet's night there.
Instead, he returned for the seventh, set a career high with his 12th strikeout, extended it with No. 13, and Victor Robles lined out to Benintendi to remove one inning from the bullpen's plate. Or so he thought.
The White Sox scored both of their regulation runs on back-to-back homers in the third. Vaughn, continuing his pattern of early-count success, reversed a first-pitch Emerson Hancock sinker over the center field wall, and Luis Robert Jr. took a similar pitch to a similar place on a 1-1 count for an abrupt 2-0 lead.
But the Sox only had one scoring opportunity that wasn't provided by the rulebook afterward. They opened the sixth with a walk and a single, but couldn't advance the runners any further. The Mariners' similar failure in the bottom of the inning softened the blow. The White Sox were 1-for-8 with runners in scoring position, and that hit didn't actually score a run, but the Mariners were 0-for-9, so there.
Bullet points:
*John Brebbia handled the eighth inning without incident. Like Banks, he struck out two in a perfect frame.
*White Sox pitchers combined for 19 strikeouts, the most by any team this season, and one shy of the franchise record set in 2019.
*Oscar Colás went 3-for-4, but the guy ahead of him went 0-for-4, the two hitters behind him went 0-for-8, and he was caught stealing after his third single.
