For a year-and-a-half starting in 2024, the White Sox ran out one of the worst offenses in modern history. Due to a combination of dumb luck and an influx of young bats, the club climbed out of its hitting tomb and started haunting MLB pitching in the second half last year.
Unfortunately, this coming summer could begin the era of morbid arms, or creepy control, or hiccuping velocity. Based on Saturday night’s split-squad of sorts, starting in 101° weather despite a move of both games from afternoon to night, any one of those ugly options are in play. And given that one of the split squads tonight was the Spring Breakout, featuring the best of the best arms in the system, help might not be on the way.
It was just two games, true, so let’s not lose our heads over the combined 24 walks in the two games. OK, maybe lose your head over 17 walks from the Spring Breakout game.
Before tonight, have you ever heard of five straight bases-loaded walks (and six in a row total) as the endcap of a seven-run second inning against the defending world champions? Me neither.
For a time, like, maybe 90 minutes into the never-ending Breakout Game, this was the headline I was running with:
Lucas wepf; five straight sacks-packed passes fuels White Sox Breakout rout
If you glance above, you’ll see that hed did not hold up.
For a hot minute, it seemed the White Sox prospects were going to run away with this one, simply by taking what was given by L.A. Perhaps it was a famous case of “Spring Breakout” jitters, but Dodgers reliever Lucas Wepf allowed four of those bases-loaded walks, all consecutive; the Double-A reliever managed just two strikes in his 17 pitches on Saturday, surely the very worst performance of his career under the very brightest lights.
BEFORE the walk parade, it was William Bergolla Jr. who gave the White Sox back a lead with a bases-loaded ground-rule double:
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The seven runs scored in the second inning, which flipped the game from 2-1, Dodgers, to 8-2, White Sox, all came with two outs.
With such a massive lead early, it would take an awful lot of offense from the Dodgers to get back in the game, right?
Right?
Er, well, the young White Sox arms decided to give the game right back to Los Angeles, issuing walk after walk — no, not five straight with the bases full, but still — and turning the game completely around. The White Sox lead was shaved down to 8-6 by the end of the second, the game was tied 8-8 after three, and the lead lost 11-8 through just four innings. The White Sox staff walk total at that point? TWELVE (and with the Dodgers chipping in, 20 total in the game).
The Chisox youngsters rallied a bit, adding single runs on a Billy Carlson GIDP in the seventh and a solo blast from George Wolkow in the eighth:
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In the ninth, Samuel Zavala led off with an infield single back to the pitcher and advanced to second on a throwing error. One out later, it was Kyle Lodise ripping a single so hard to center that Zavala could only hop to third. But with runners on the corners and one out, José Mendoza tapped into a 6-4-3 double play to end it, mercifully, after three hours and 45 minutes.
Over in Goodyear, it was another case of an early White Sox lead, lost.
The “Opening Day lineup” for the White Sox put up some big numbers early, leading 5-1 at the game’s halfway point. But the pitching staff walked it all away, and in particular swingman Sean Newcomb was atrocious. Coming on to finish the third and pitching into the fifth, Newcomb allowed five earned runs on four hits, adding an error into the mix. But the staff as a whole ginned up seven walks against just eight Ks, keeping traffic on the paths and insisting on a Reds comeback.
Cincinnati had rallied for a 7-5 lead by the fifth, and two innings later a two-run single from Everson Pereira (who’d already clocked a two-run homer earlier in the game) knotted the game back up, 7-7.
The score remained the same until the bottom of the ninth, when Cincy turned a single, walk and HBP into a two-out, bases-loaded situation for reliever Frankeli Arias. Arias battled with P.J. Higgins to a full count, and the deciding pitch was going to end the game, swing or no:
Yes, it appears that Higgins could have taken a sayonara base on balls, but instead he swung at a juicy fastball at his eyes and drove it out to right for an oppo slam. Case closed, Reds win, 11-7.
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