Good Enough

Dylan Cease blinked first, then Dusty Baker, then Justin Verlander, giving the White Sox an eyes-wide-shut 4-3 win over the Astros last night at Guaranteed Rate Whatever. In case he was wondering, Cease found out what happens when batters don’t chase his pitches; they can get on base, as in six hits and three walks in five innings of work. Here’s the thing, though. If Andrew Vaughn makes a nice play in right field—not to be confused with left, per my daughter’s ninth-inning phone call last, a whole different animal, the one the converted first baseman is more accustomed to—Cease gives up one run, tops. As it was, he exited with the score 3-1, bad guys. It stayed that way until one out in the bottom of the seventh, two runners on. Me, I’d give serious thought to lifting my starter after Seby Zavala battles back from a 1-2 count to walk. Baker thought otherwise and let his veteran righthander face pinch hitter Gavin Sheets, who in turn lined a 1-2 pitch for a game-tying double into the right field corner. An inning later, we were back to that rising-to-the-occasion vs. broken-clock debate with Yasmani Grandal and Yoan Moncada. This time the Sox had two runners on and nobody out with Grandal up. Running with not one but two pianos perched on his back, Grandal hit a slow-enough roller to first baseman Yuli Gurriel, who turned the double play. Anyone else woud’ve beaten the relay to the pitcher covering first. Two outs, Moncada up. Lo and behold, the enigmatic one got his second eighth-inning, run-scoring single in two nights, and the Sox win. Again, rising or broken clock? I’d like to think the former. We’ll see. That Liam Hendriks even got the chance for a save is fairly miraculous given his manager’s penchant for playing with fire. First, Tony La Russa goes with Jose Ruiz in the sixth inning. Not only did Ruiz yield a two-out double, he threw the ball away on an attempted pickoff at second base. Somehow, the Sox got out of the inning without a run scoring. In the seventh, La Russa doubled down with Vince Velasquez, who last pitched on July 5th. Velasquez did pretty much what I expected, giving up a one-out single and walk. Then, just for fun, he went to a full count on the next two batters, Alex Bregman and Kyle Tucker, who have 143 RBIs between them, by the way. Talk about miracles. Bregman flied out, and Tucker grounded out, no runs scoring. The scoreless outing lowers Velasquez’s ERA to 5.10. No doubt, Matt Foster is wondering why he was sent down to make room for Velasquez off the IL. Foster has a 4.50 ERA, and 1.29 over his last seven appearances. Oh, well. Ours is not to reason why, only to cheer our Sox on the fly.