Twice tonight, the White Sox's backs were against the wall. Both times, the Angels' baserunning bailed them out.
When Los Angeles loaded the bases with nobody out against Shane Smith in the first, Zach Neto helped him find footing when he got caught in another Edgar Quero-Josh Rojas pickoff at third base. Though they double-stole and walked their way back into the bases loaded around a strikeout of Jo Adell, and a Logan O'Hoppe groundout ended the inning with no runs despite 35 pitches to six hitters.
And when the Angels looked like they were about to tie the game at 4 on a two-out single by Nolan Schanuel in the seventh, Mike Tauchman saw another way to prevent Travis d'Arnaud from scoring from second.
The Angels had just cut the Chicago lead to 4-3 on a bases-loaded Neto sac fly when Schanuel shot a single to right field. Tauchman might've had a chance to get a catcher at home if everything lined up for him, but he couldn't figure out a way to charge the ball aggressively, so he waited back for a friendlier second hop.
That allowed d'Arnaud to make it home with no contest, but perhaps that was part of Tauchman's plan, because d'Arnaud eased up with his final steps upon seeing Taylor Ward hold up his arms to signal no slide needed.
Meanwhile, Tauchman instead came up toward third, hitting Colson Montgomery, who fired to third, where Rojas slapped the tag on Gustavo Campero. Third-base umpire Chris Conroy had the easy out call, but home plate umpire John Tumpane had the more unusual signal, coming out from behind the plate to indicate no run had scored. d'Arnaud couldn't believe it, but when the Angels called for a replay, the video showed that Rojas' tag touched Campero before d'Arnaud's foot touched home.
The White Sox escaped the inning with the one-run lead, and spent the last two innings extending the margin to avoid further close calls. Josh Rojas capped off the scoring with the team's fourth solo shot of the evening as the White Sox improved to 9-4 in the second half, on the strength of a league-leading 27 homers after the break.
Thanks to the Angels' issues navigating the basepaths, the White Sox never trailed. They took a 2-0 lead on a pair of homers, as Andrew Benintendi turned on a full-count Tyler Anderson cutter and hoisted it just inside the right field foul pole for the game's first run, and Lenyn Sosa hammered a high fastball out to left two batters later.
Both teams found scoring runs without the long ball more complicated. In the fourth, the White Sox opened the inning with runners on second and third after a Miguel Vargas single and Benintendi double, but while Luis Robert Jr. brought home Vargas on a sacrifice fly, the Sox couldn't get a second run home, and a fifth inning that started with two on and nobody out ended in no runs after a popout, flyout and popout.
Likewise, the Angels only damaged Shane Smith on his last pitch of the evening, a Campero two-run shot with one out in the fifth that drew the Angels within one run for the first time. Smith's biggest pitch of the game was his 50th, which came with one out in the second inning. It resulted in a 4-6-3 double play, which brought the inning to a sudden close, and allowed him to get a handle on his pitch count. He needed only 11 pitches in a 1-2-3 third, and then threw just five pitches in the fourth.
Campero's homer denied Smith the win, but Jordan Leasure did more than vulture it. He struck out Neto and Schanuel to end the fifth that Smith started, then struck out two more in a 1-2-3 sixth. With Colson Montgomery answering Campero's homer with a lefty-lefty solo shot in the top of the inning, the Sox might've been in position to cruise.
Alas, Dan Altavilla didn't have it. He suffered a little bit of bad luck when O'Hoppe's hopper off the mound took Sosa to the other side of second and beat the off-balanced throw for an infield single, but then complicated matters with a walk and HBP that loaded the bases. Grant Taylor didn't exactly calm matters, either, giving up a line drive to Neto that Michael A. Taylor caught for a sac fly, and then the single that somehow ended the inning.
All runs were scored by homers and sac flies until the eighth, when Robert made his more noteworthy contribution to the evening. In his first game since the trade deadline that kept him on the White Sox, Robert opened the eighth with a single off Luis García, stole second, then scored on Sosa's opposite-field single to make it a 5-3 game. It was the only hit in eight at-bats with runners in scoring position, but four homers helps take the stress off those sorts of outcomes.
Bullet points:
*Steven Wilson recorded the two-inning save on 23 pitches, striking out three. He's now the sixth White Sox reliever with at least two saves; Taylor still leads the team with three.
*The White Sox outhit the Angels 11-4, although the Angels made up some of the difference in free bases (a 7-2 edge when counting the two HBPs).
*The White Sox only need to go 1-51 the rest of the way to improve upon their record from last year.
