Despite ESPN's best efforts, it's hard to see enough of young Red Sox infielder/outfielder Ceddanne Rafaela to have a good feel of how the 23-year-old's game progressing.
Do Bostonians see his tools flash enough to know he's better than his below-average offensive line? Do his shaky defensive ratings belie the athleticism he has at two distinctly different up the middle position? All I can offer is that Rafaela flashed the range and arm strength to flick a dart across his body and the infield to retire Chuckie Robinson on a chopper to the 5-6 hole in the top of the seventh, before golfing a hanging Matt Foster slider for a decisive two-run blast in the bottom half of the same inning.
And man, remember when the White Sox had one of those?
But Tim Anderson isn't that guy anymore nor do the White Sox employ him, and after a three-homer outburst in Baltimore on Wednesday, their league-worst offense returned to the type of play where one big extra-base hit with a runner on for the opposition is more than they can be expected to match. Of their six hits, one was for extra bases, and many Sox Machine commenters would count a Lenyn Sosa double and run scored being the offensive highlight while Bryan Ramos sits on the bench to be a pyrrhic victory.
Usually in a pyrrhic victory, some actual winning is involved.
For the umpteenth year in a row, Red Sox starter Nick Pivetta is posting legitimately good strikeout-to-walk numbers undercut by relentlessly serving up pumps. He's in the bottom-fifth of the league for opposing hitters' barrel rate for the third-straight season. With such a profile, the main accomplishment of a power-starved White Sox lineup was being kind of annoying throughout. Pivetta's six frames of one-run ball didn't include a 1-2-3 inning, but his continued annoyance didn't show up on the scoreboard.
The first-pitch fastball Sosa chose to jump on was...interesting, but nevertheless he led off the second by splitting the left-center gap with a line drive to The Green Monster. Two dispiriting at-bats later, Jacob Amaya collected his first White Sox RBI by parachuting a long single into a similar spot. No one though a 1-0 lead would last, but those 25 minutes it stood up belonged to all of us as a community.
Largely, the Sox struggled to have their best plate appearances of the night at the same time. Gavin Sheets chased a curve in the dirt after back-to-back two out walks in the first. When Sheets led off the sixth with an 11-pitch walk, Sosa chased a 2-1 sweeper low and away for a deflating double play. Robert and newly power-hungry Dominic Fletcher both had fly outs to the warning track in right. Five at-bats with runner in scoring position is too few. One hit in those five at-bats is an even bigger problem.
As I tried to argue to my mother and sister before he gave up two first inning home runs while they were in attendance, Davis Martin might be offering the best chances to win from the Sox starting rotation these days. His fastball usage and strikeout numbers are such that it never feels right to say he's overpowering, but he bedeviled Red Sox hitters for six innings on just 86 pitches of a reliably wide variety. He made liberal use of the deep fly out to center on a night where the ball didn't seem to be carrying, but for every one of those there were two kick changes chopped lifelessly into the infield grass. Unlike Pivetta, at least Rafael Devers' annoyance showed up in the box score.
It's been a shambolic season for the White Sox, so the one mark against Martin came in shambolic fashion. He hit back-to-back batters with backfoot breaking balls to lead off the fourth, and while Triston Casas didn't get on plane with Martin's letter-high heater, he chopped it away from a shifted infield enough for a game-tying single.
Martin remains winless on the season, despite a 3.29 ERA.
Bullet points:
*Korey Lee was scratched from the lineup pregame for what Daryl Van Schouwen reported as back tightness. Lee has started 82 games behind the plate this year, which isn't a professional career-high. But he's appeared in 99 games behind the plate this season, which is.
After a 1-2-3 third inning, Martin gave Robinson a big ol' kiss on the helmet. That would've been Korey's kiss. It should've been.
*Robert returned to the lineup after leaving Wednesday's game with right hamstring tightness. That means that Wednesday was essentially a singular perfect day in the White Sox season. But on Friday, Robert went 1-for-4 with a strikeout.
*Amaya just barely stopped himself from throwing to first to complete what would have been the first effort two-out double play in the seventh. It was an inning after John Schriffen also forgot there were two outs already before announcing a potential double play ball, so it was going around. In each case, erring on the side of getting four outs is the side you'd prefer to be on. So there's that.
