After last night’s clunker of a loss, the White Sox and Carlos Rodon looked to right the ship in game two against Houston. Rodon was excellent through seven innings, allowing just one run in the effort, but the White Sox’ offense couldn’t give him any support in this eventual 2-1 loss.
After three straight hits led to a first inning run, the White Sox would go scoreless across the next eight innings of baseball. This turned out to cost the South Siders, especially when only two runs were enough to win the game.
The winning run scored in the bottom of the ninth with Garrett Crochet on the mound. He hung a slider to Yordan Alvarez, who banged the pitch into the right field corner for a game-winning RBI double.
With the loss, the White Sox fall to 43-27.
W: Ryan Pressly (4-1) | L: Garrett Crochet (2-3)
Savant Leaders
Notable Performances
Carlos Rodon: 7 IP, 3 H, 1 ER, 3 BB, 8 K, 14 Swinging Strikes
Rodon continued his reign of dominance in the AL this season, allowing just one run across seven innings of work. He lost his command a bit in the fifth inning, which led to the run-scoring walk of Martin Maldonado. Other than that, Rodon was characteristically excellent on his way to a hopeful all-start game appearance.
Jose Abreu: 1-for-3, 1B, RBI, BB, K
In a pretty lifeless offensive day for the White Sox, the other notable performance of the day came from Jose Abreu and his first inning RBI single. Abreu has had a rough month of June, but hopefully some of his recent performances can help break him out of his mid-season slump.
Matchup of the Game
Garrett Crochet was brought in for the White Sox in the bottom of the ninth in hopes of pushing the game into the tenth. With reliever Liam Hendriks left looming in the bullpen, Yuli Gurriel and Yordan Alvarez hammered out back-to-back hits to score the winning run in the bottom of the ninth.
In what has become a popular debate among White Sox fans, many would have rather seen Liam Hendriks in the game in the ninth, arguing that there is no guarantee the game gets pushed to the tenth and Hendriks is afforded a save opportunity. Others will argue that Liam Hendriks is the closer and only should be used to get the last three outs of the game.
No matter which side of the argument you fall on, it’s clear that on multiple opportunities, Hendriks was saved for an inning and situation that never developed. That’s definitely in part on the bullpen performance – that being said, if I’m going to lose a game, I’d like to do it knowing I gave my best reliever a shot to get some important outs, especially when he hasn’t pitched since Tuesday.
If your immediate response to that is “Well who would have pitched in the tenth?”, the reality is that if we don’t get to the tenth, that question doesn’t really matter.
Next Game
The White Sox will look to fight towards a split of the Astros’ series tomorrow evening, as Lance Lynn will take the bump against Framber Valdez beginning at 6:15 PM CT.
This game will be televised on FOX.
