Josh Hader entered tonight having converted all 17 of his save opportunities.
The White Sox came within a couple feet of ruining his perfect season.
"A little sad it [didn't] go over," said Miguel Vargas. "At the end of the day, we don’t get the result and that’s all that matters."
After Mike Tauchman opened the ninth with an improbable lefty-on-lefty homer to make it a one-run game, Vargas' bid for a second solo shot, one that would've tied the game with two outs, hit the top of the left field wall, about a foot or two short of the yellow stripe running atop the Crawford Boxes. He had to settle for a double, and while Austin Slater had the chance to atone for a rough night, he instead swung through two fastballs and looked at borderline third strike for a platinum sombrero to end the game.
"Slater is one of those guys that continues to have quality at-bats, has this whole year and unfortunately, ended today in five strikeouts," said Will Venable. "But good at-bats. Feel really good about where he’s at, just kind of a tough day."
The White Sox missed out on chances to win a road series and the season series, instead settling for the kind of 1-for-3 performance you'd expect from a battle of last-place team versus a division leader. The White Sox played sturdily enough in all aspects to win a close game in the opener, had the doors blown off them in Game 2, and then just didn't execute well enough to avoid falling to 4-17 in one-run games to close it out.
"Last year, it was like, man if those things would have fallen we would have won this game," said starter Davis Martin. "All of us were looking at a bunch of different areas of the game that we slipped up, we did something wrong, we made a mistake here or there that we could have put the game away earlier. It’s a young team, it’s a learning team that isn’t satisfied. We want to win these games, we want to win these series."
Vargas had an outstanding day at the plate -- and we'll get to that in a bit -- but he left some to be desired in the field, and it added to Martin's stress. He overran Isaac Paredes' pop foul near the wall and had it clank off his wrist, which cost him at least five extra pitches. He ended up striking out Paredes, but a two-out walk to José Altuve and a Yainer Diaz single posted a late threat that Martin ultimately suppressed.
He wasn't so lucky in the third. With one out, Jeremy Peña hit a chopper to the left side. Vargas tried to cut in front of the shortstop, but he doubted his initial angle and ended up getting caught in between, and Peña reached on an infield single. Paredes followed with a walk, and then Altuve shot a double into the left-field corner to put the Astros ahead 2-1. Diaz then lined a double to the right-center gap to make it 3-1, and Houston led the rest of the way.
"Obviously the third inning kind of got sped up a little bit," Martin said. "You’ve just got to stay ahead of them. And when they adjust, you’ve got to adjust a little bit faster. Took me three or four batters to do that in the third."
Vargas did what he could on the other side of the ball to make up for it. He teamed up with Edgar Quero to score the White Sox's first two runs, both on similar sequences. He doubled on the first pitch of the third inning, stole second after a Slater strikeout, then scored when Edgar Quero poked a ball through the open right side. Two innings later, Vargas sliced a drive into the right field corner and took advantage of Cam Smith's cautious pursuit to make it to third by himself, and after a Slater strikeout, came home when Quero poked a ball through the open right side.
"I was focused on it, especially with guys on third base, infield in," Quero said of his singles to the right side. "Most of the time Framber, I know everything is moving away, so I was trying to put the ball in play and we got hits."
Just like the third inning, the Astros had an answer for that run as well, as Paredes crushed a 1-1 fastball out to a left-center balcony to restore Houston's two-run lead, and provide the necessary insurance run in the ninth. That said, Paredes didn't quite get the last laugh. In the seventh inning, he grounded into a 5-4-3 double play that was beautifully turned by Chase Meidroth, but Paredes shortened his stride before the bag, looking like he tweaked a hamstring before getting to the 90th foot. White Sox fans have seen that before.
Bullet points:
*Martin pitched at least six innings for the sixth consecutive start (final line: 6 IP, 7 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 2 BB, 5 K). His changeup wasn't much of a factor and he had a hard time against the top half of the lineup, but he served a purpose.
*Martin closed out the sixth on his 100th pitch, and that was one of three cues that his evening was over. The others: It was to the ninth hitter that he faced a third time, and it was caught on the left field warning track.
*Vargas and Quero were about the only ones who could pick up Framber Valdez, who struck out eight batters over three innings and finished with 12 over five. Tim Elko joined Slater in looking lost, striking out in all three plate appearances on 12 total pitches, including with the bases loaded in the first.
*Quero had three hits, and only a leaping catch in right field by Smith in the ninth inning stopped him from a perfect night at the plate.
"So-so, 50-50," Quero said when asked if he thought he'd gotten his first homer. "Because I don't think it was the height that I want, but I hit it on the barrel. It was a good swing."
*Smith also robbed Meidroth of an RBI single in the fourth inning by picking the ball off the turf with a slide. Venable said a replay review was considered but ultimately their belief was that Smith made the catch.
*Dan Altavilla pitched a scoreless seventh, and Grant Taylor worked around two singles to pitch a scoreless eighth. He recorded his first strikeout by fanning Victor Caratini with a fastball after setting him up with two curves.
"Caratini two nights ago got really good contact on a fastball that was like five balls above the zone, so really wanted to establish the offspeed," Taylor said. "Got two of them in there to him and was able to have the option for the heater a little bit better than I did two nights ago."
