I have to be honest with you, reader, the players on the field in this one were about as tired of Spring Training as I am. Sean Burke was solid in his final tuneup before adding “Day After Opening Day Starter” to his CV, allowing just a pair of runs over five innings. Unfortunately, he wound up the hard-luck loser when his lineup failed to make a dent in the formidable pitching operation of the defending AL West champs.
Burke registered six strikeouts in those five innings of work despite severely diminished fastball velocity, averaging a hair faster than 92 mph on his heater tonight after sitting in the 94-95 mph range all spring. Given that it’s his last outing before the games actually count, it could be that the sophomore righthander just wasn’t trying to fully air it out and risk being fatigued for his scheduled regular season start on Saturday. Still, it’s something to keep an eye on.
And the diminished velo was directly responsible for one of the two runs he allowed, when he placed a fastball on a tee up in the zone to Mitch Garver, who is not an impossible hitter to get a high fastball by if it’s not 91 mph.
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One pitcher who wasn’t working with diminished stuff? Bryan Woo, who gave up a double to Andrew Benintendi to lead off the game and then proceeded to sit down the next 16 Sox hitters, four of them by strikeout. He brushed 97 mph on a buzzing heater and allowed just an 84 mph average exit velocity, with no one topping 100 mph between Benintendi’s double and a 107 mph line out from Munetaka Murakami in the fifth.
Burke gave way to lefty Chris Murphy, who threw a scoreless sixth inning in what will presumably be his last appearance before opening the season on a major league roster for the first time. In the Chicago half of the inning, it was the newest member of the club who finally got to Woo, as Reese McGuire’s one-out double snapped the Sox out of it. Woo nonetheless looked to be on the verge of escaping the jam before a fantastic piece of hitting from Chase Meidroth shot the ball into the corner and brought home a run.
Woo departed after that inning, but he was followed by Andrés Muñoz, and you just know that late-spring depth Sox bats had a fruit fly’s chance against him, so that was that. The rest of the game was played as if both teams were ready to board a plane back to their respective cities. The seventh and eighth for the Sox were handled by non-roster players Lucas Sims (who pitched ably) and Chase Plymell (who did not, allowing the Mariners to tack on two more). Big righty Riley Gowens capped things off with a scoreless ninth for the Pale Hose, his last work before potentially heading down to Charlotte for the first regular bullpen work of his career.
The White Sox did claw one back in the eighth courtesy of a solo jack from, you guessed it, McGuire again. The guy must have missed being in pinstripes.
The ninth was handled for Seattle by erstwhile Red Sox starter Cooper Criswell, who allowed an extremely on-brand bloop single to Rikuu Nishida to nearly spark a comeback. The Sox loaded the bases with one out against Criswell before the crafty righty shut things down, and that was all she wrote for the this one. The Sox drop back to .500 for the spring, with one more chance to finish on a positive note before finalizing the roster and cranking things up for good.
That one chance will happen tomorrow afternoon, as this edition of Spring Training concludes for the Sox in Mesa against the Athletics. First pitch is at 2 p.m. CT, with Anthony Kay taking the ball with one more chance to prepare before his return to the big leagues. Leigh Allan — 5-0 on coverage this spring — has the game, and we’ll see you there!
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