With neither team scoring through nine innings on Thursday afternoon, the White Sox lineup had a little more juice in extra innings to outlast the Yankees in a 2-1 walk-off win. The decisive plate appearance was a bases-loaded free pass from Tristan Peters against a clearly gassed Fernando Cruz. In a game in which neither team hit well, it was fitting that the winning run would score without a bat being swung.
Wasted opportunities in the first are not something a team normally dwells on for too long, but in this matchup, both clubs had reasons to lament not opening the scoring right from the get-go. Sean Burke saw the first two hitters reach safely with a catcher’s interference and a walk, only for the Yankees offense to go 0-for-3 with a runner in scoring position. In Ryan Weathers’ turn, the left-hander had a dose of luck as Colson Montgomery swung at a middle-middle 3-0 fastball but couldn’t square it, rolling over to second with runners at second and third.
The lament stems from a lack of scoring on both sides that lasted until the ninth inning. Assessing the big picture, one cannot praise Weathers enough for the job he did today. Despite needing 27 pitches to complete that tumultuous first, Weathers recalibrated to complete seven scoreless innings efficiently. Perhaps not as overpowering as Burke with four strikeouts to Burke’s eventual 10, Weathers succeeded by relentlessly keeping the ball on the ground, recording over half of his 21 outs on the ground. The value of this lengthy outing for a tired bullpen in the middle of 13 games on 13 days is immense and could very well mean an extra win or two when all is said and done.
On the other side, having created his own mess in the first, Burke went on to dominate the Yankees with an outing even more impressive than his win at Yankee Stadium—at one point, the right-hander had a stretch of nine strikeouts in 11 at-bats.
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Still, the Yankees manufactured run-scoring chances, only to squander them, one in particular in excruciating fashion.
The only Yankee batter to record a hit and not be struck out by Burke, Spencer Jones got that two-out single in the fourth and put himself in scoring position by stealing a bag—Jazz Chisholm Jr. didn’t get a pitch to drive him in, but earned the walk for two on and two out ahead of Anthony Volpe. Probably seeking a fastball, Volpe looked through two breaking balls in the zone for the punchout on just three pitches, a letdown at-bat if there ever was one. Then in the sixth, Jasson Domínguez hit what was by all accounts a leadoff triple but was tagged out sliding through the bag in pretty inconsequential fashion—the frustrating thing is that the way Domínguez slid, he didn’t have a prayer at keeping contact with the bag.
A traditional silver lining of so many strikeouts induced by Burke is that an elevated pitch count led the White Sox to pull the plug after six innings on 91 pitches. While more aggressive in his managerial style, Aaron Boone left Weathers to return for the seventh inning despite being over 90 pitches as well, seeing his trust rewarded with a 1-2-3 inning. Boone even came out for a talk with two outs and a pitch count over 100 but backed his starter to end the frame.
For the Yankees offense, while Burke left the game, their propensity to waste opportunities remained intact; the seventh inning ended with Chisholm picked off at first, and in the eighth, Domínguez and Paul Goldschmidt stranded a pair after Trent Grisham and Ben Rice reached base safely. It seems Weathers was the only one who got the memo about the bullpen needing rest. You can’t win if you don’t score, and extras are inevitable if no one does.
The tenth inning nearly carried on the theme of previous ones, with Ali Sánchez originally grounding into a double play on a failed bunt following a leadoff walk. However, the Yankees challenged the call, and he was safe at first. Grisham then broke through with an RBI single for the game’s first run. New York aimed for more than one with their best hitter up, but Rice and Domínguez lifted uneventful fly outs.
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You know what they say about one run just holding serve hitting first in extras. Angel Chivilli did his best, but not only couldn’t he strand that runner at second in the 10th, but he left the game with two on and just one out.
Luckily for him and the Yankees, Fernando Cruz put out the fire by inducing a double play, begging the question of why he wasn’t out there to start the inning if he had any chance of pitching in this game—certainly it would’ve been the preferred choice over pushing Chivilli for a second inning. Then again, as the game goes, you accept more and more compromises.
On a concerning note, it looked like Chisholm felt something on a groundout in the ninth. He stayed in there until an intentional walk in the 11th that led to Boone pinch-running for him with José Caballero, who stole second. Unfortunately, Volpe stranded two base runners with the Yankees putting up a zero in the frame, setting the stage for a walk-off loss.
Munetaka Murakami got the intentional walk to open the 11th, Cruz punched out Miguel Vargas, and then Sam Antonacci loaded the bases with just one out with an infield single smothered by Rice. Cruz wasn’t about to go down without a fight, though, bouncing back in a 3-0 count to strike out Montgomery with the bases loaded. Against Tristan Peters, he also went down 3-0 in the count, and you can’t play with fire like that for so long without getting burned. Peters exercised the patience that Montgomery didn’t have, earning the walk to win the game.
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It’s an extremely rare sequence of back-to-back matinees away from home against different teams in the same city, as the Yankees head north in the streets of Chicago ready to face the Cubs on Friday at 2:20pm at Wrigley Field. The pitching matchup of Will Warren against Shota Imanaga presents its challenges for New York, which will bring in an exhausted pitching staff and a lineup that currently looks dead on arrival. Any Trade Deadline or minor-league reinforcements can’t come soon enough.
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