This doomed White Sox team that has matched a franchise-worst 106 losses by Aug. 31 tends to give quotes about raging against the dying of the light. The beleaguered players support each other, their interim manager preaches being a tough out.
But you don't pile up losses at this rate without them taking on a sort of perfunctory manner, and the thing about good major league players is how effortless they can make it look when they're beating you.
Especially after Tommy John surgery, Davis Martin's fastball shape demands judicious usage. So it's just my amateur pet theory that the absence of challenge fastballs from his game means hitters are less likely to be too sped up to jump on offspeed mistakes like the hanging slider he offered up to Pete Alonso in the first inning, or the middle-middle 2-1 changeup he threw to Jesse Winker in the following at-bat. A seemingly harmless two-out broken bat single by Mark Vientos prior to those two meatballs meant the Sox offense faced a 3-0 deficit before coming to bat.
After five months of watching a White Sox offense that averages 3.07 runs per game, it's well-understood just how steep and muddy of an uphill climb a 3-0 deficit can be.
With old friend José Quintana laboring through 90 pitches in the first four innings, there were the requisite number of opportunities to make it feel like there's a parallel universe somewhere out there where the 2024 White Sox win this game. The Colombian southpaw froze Gavin Sheets with a down-and-away sinker to strand two runners in the first, and blitzed Luis Robert Jr. with changeups to strand another pair in scoring position an inning later.
Those moments stung hard because the White Sox lack of power challenges them to string an unbroken chain of singles or productive outs. Korey Lee and Lenyn Sosa led off the second with sharp singles, but that only led to eeking out a run on Miguel Vargas beating out a double play ball. Andrew Benintendi and Sheets perfectly sequenced soft singles to right for another run in the third, but the at-bats around them confirmed that was the maximum output for that inning. The weather's warm and the balls are flying farther. But the Sox still entered the night slugging .331 in August, and getting on base a ton ain't exactly their game either.
Vargas pulled a fastball for one-out double in the ninth for the only White Sox extra-base hit on the night, leading to a run and a small false hope rally that brought Benintendi up with the tying runs aboard and two outs. Benintendi fell a few points short of slugging .600 in the month of August, but he tapped back to the pitcher to close it out Saturday.
If Martin were playing some version of the sport where percentages of pitches executed determined the winner--sounds like something Dylan Cease would concoct--he would have finished with a tidier line than four earned over five innings. He returned to sliders early and often to largely great effect, besides the one Alonso hit 404 feet. Two soft third inning singles (both were sub-80 mph) sandwiched around a walk to Brandon Nimmo made for the only other run against Martin, and he even was thoughtful enough to erase his own fielding error in the fifth by getting Nimmo to pound a kick change into the dirt.
This might be too many word dedicated to a decidedly below average outing, but how much outside Davis Martin do we really have to appreciate?
Bullet points:
*Quintana lowered his career ERA against the White Sox to 4.24 with one earned run over five innings, so maybe he doesn't still love the Sox. Despite being at 90 pitches through four, an eight-pitch fifth put him in line for the win, which he surely never takes for granted in this ballpark.
*Francisco Alvarez, or more specifically his backhand, had a miserable night behind the plate for the Mets with two wild pitches and a passed ball. His inability to corral Quintana's arm side misses kept the illusion that the Sox offense really could build a three-run comeback out of singles. Sheets' fourth inning RBI single was an unearned run because Andrew Benintendi would have never been on second without Alvarez's help.
*Vargas reached base three times, though he might have just as soon declined the experienced of getting drilled in the back with a 96 mph sinker in the sixth. Turning and pulling a 97 mph inside fastball for a ninth inning double was legitimately encouraging.
*Gus Varland's scoreless run with the White Sox ended with three line drive singles, the last of which by Starling Marte in the sixth. Just when we thought we had it made.
*Mets fans conquered the upper half of three sections in right field.
