In Colson Montgomery's MLB debut, another White Sox rookie ended up making the difference.
After the Rockies took advantage of a couple extra lives to tie the game at 2 in the bottom of the fifth, Edgar Quero untied it in the sixth by dropping his bat head on a down-and-in curve from Antonio Senzatela and lofting it over the right field wall for his first career homer, putting the Sox back on top, 3-2.
From there, Adrian Houser completed eight innings to get the game to Grant Taylor, who pitched around a two-out single for his team-leading third save, in a lively bounce-back from the blown save he suffered at Dodger Stadium Wednesday. That's how the White Sox snapped their three-game losing streak, taking the opener of the lowly anticipated battle of the league's worst teams.
Montgomery had a quieter game at the plate in comparison to Quero, but he made his own impact with the glove. The Rockies threatened to score first in the second by posting runners on the corners with two outs against Houser. Ryan Ritter then hit a flare to shallow left field that had all the makings of a duck-snort single until Montgomery unspooled his 6-foot-5-inch frame and hauled in the ball with an over-the-shoulder catch to end the inning.
Instead, the only inning in which Houser figuratively bled is the one that involved Mike Tauchman literally bleeding. In the fifth, Michael Toglia reached with a one-out double, but appeared frozen there when Ritter hit a routine grounder to third. Josh Rojas looked him back, and then he fired across the diamond to Miguel Vargas.
However, for a span of three innings, there didn't seem to be such a thing as an ordinary throw from that angle, as Vargas visibly battled the low sun that blasts the first-base side of Coors Field starting around 7 p.m. local time. An inning earlier, he barely caught a high Rojas throw and stumbled after succeeding, so Rojas planned a bouncer with his next throw, which Vargas appreciated with a post-catch point.
This time, Rojas kept the throw low, but Vargas didn't seem to pick it up, because he wasn't close to getting the meat of the mitt on it. It bounded past him in foul territory as Toglio came home, and Ritter advanced to second with just one out. (Rojas was charged with the error, but it's hard to say he was at fault.)
Houser responded by getiting Yanquiel Fernández to pop out, and nearly got Tyler Freeman to do the same down the right field line. Tauchman gave it a valiant effort, and actually sno-coned the ball as he hit the netting, but as he went to show the catch, he tumbled through the netting, and the ball flipped out, so Tauchman couldn't complete the play.
Freeman then took advantage of the inning's second second life with a double that tied the game at 2, and Houser finally closed the inning with Hunter Goodman's lineout to Brooks Baldwin in center.
Fortunately for Houser, the runs were unearned, and even with the two extra outs (although Tauchman's catch would've been tremendous), he still managed to complete eight innings on just 96 pitches. He faced the minimum over his remaining three innings, eliminating the lone walk with a double-play ball. His ERA now sits at 1.60.
The White Sox provided Houser the first of two leads in the fourth inning. Andrew Benintendi and Vargas started the inning with singles, and Baldwin bunted them both over. Quero then drew a walk to load the bases for Montgomery, but Senzatela jammed him into a broken-bat lineout to first. Fortunately, none of the runners strayed too far from the bag, because Michael A. Taylor followed by lining an outer-half fastball to the right-center gap to give the White Sox a 2-0 lead.
Montgomery finished his first day in the majors 0-for-2. He starting off with the typical outcome for so many rookies in their first plate appearance: catcher interference. He then lined out with the bases loaded, struck out on four pitches, then drew a seven-pitch walk to close out his evening. He saw 20 pitches over his four plate appearances, mostly because Rockies pitchers did a pretty good job of staying out of the middle of the zone.
Bullet points:
*Taylor recovered the velocity he lost in his second inning of his appearance against the Dodgers, topping out at 101.3 mph. He also had better control of everything.
*Vargas snapped his 0-for-19 skid with double to center in the second inning, and then a line-drive single in his second trip.
*The White Sox could've won this one by more, but they went just 1-for-10 with runners in scoring position, compared to Colorado's 1-for-5. That said, they're now 6-21 in one-run games.
*José Abreu also hit his first career homer at Coors Field, for those wondering where Quero goes from here.
