Southpaws take South Siders to series split with 7-6 nailbiter

The Sox needed length from Erick Fedde today, and he delivered. The Sox needed a lot of big outs from their bullpen, and it delivered. The Sox needed their defense to buckle up and make plays when it counted, and they did. If it felt like they rather deserved to lose last Thursday and Friday’s heartbreakers, today’s 7-6 squeaker of a win over the Cleveland Guardians felt like a game they squarely deserved to have, despite a number of miscues that nearly cost them the series.

It could have barely been possible for this series to be any closer. Three of the four games were decided by a single run, with yesterday’s two-run margin being the exception. It feels likelier by the day that it’ll continue to be a season-long dynamic. The next time the two teams meet, on August 7 in Chicago, it feels more likely than not the two teams won’t be much farther apart in the standings than their current one-game margin.

Though a bizarre start-and-stop series of rain delays seemed to significantly impede Cleveland starter Tanner Bibee’s warmup routine, Fedde’s usage as a bulk reliever today meant that his planned entrance to the game was more or less unaffected by Cleveland’s warning track. Drainage issues before the game led to an additional delay of nearly an hour after the rest of the field seemed to have recovered from the afternoon’s heavy rain.

With first pitch announced as coming at 1:30 p.m. CT, Bibee re-started his pregame throwing routine only to shut it down again for an additional hour. He never found a groove once the game started, lasting just four innings and departing with six earned runs on his line, the third time this year he’s been tagged for at least that many.

It didn’t take long for the Sox to jump on him, with Kyle Teel’s opposite-field blast giving the Pale Hose a 2-0 lead within three batters of the game’s belated start.

Two innings later, Bibee fell victim to Tristan Peters’ burgeoning power surge. The Sox center fielder scooped a low cutter out to the pull side for his fifth longball of the year. Since his first roundtripper on May 17, Peters is slugging better than .550, and his 15 doubles in that span are tops in the AL. He went 2-for-4 on the afternoon.

Bibee couldn’t get his other fastball by Sox lefties, either. Just an inning later, Colson Montgomery broke the game open with his team-best 23rd homer of the season, driving in Andrew Benintendi and giving the Sox a 6-0 lead with a 110 mph laser on an outside fastball. Montgomery joined Peters as Sox hitters with multi-hit efforts today.

Miguel Vargas had the final big day in the Sox lineup, reaching base four times thanks to three walks. He scored two of the team’s seven runs.

The offensive surge didn’t make this any less tense of a game than its predecessors. After those nail-biters to open this series, the Sox bullpen was in bad need of a respite, and they got one — sort of. When Sox opener Chris Murphy failed to make it through the first inning, forcing Fedde into the game earlier than expected, the veteran righthander nonetheless got them through the sixth with a lead somehow intact. A breathtakingly clutch multi-inning outing from Sean Newcomb dragged the White Sox across the finish line without having to entrust a one-run lead to one of their more erratic relievers.

The “somehow intact” comes courtesy of the Sox defense, which had an uncharacteristically hard time this afternoon even accounting for the difficult field conditions. The tone was set early on when left fielder Sam Antonacci slipped on the outfield grass in pursuit of Cleveland leadoff hitter Steven Kwan’s shallow fly ball, allowing a baserunner that would come around to score. A few hitters later, freshly-minted All-Star Miguel Vargas’s failure to wrangle a soft ground ball — on an admittedly tough play — kept Cleveland’s inning alive long enough to plate another run.

Even as the Sox offense continued to pile on runs, the defense gave them right back. Fedde’s solid performance was nearly undone when Colson Montgomery’s double-play-turned-error was instantly punished with a game-tying moonshot from Gabriel Arías:

After eight precarious innings of navigating shoddy defense and a combination of timely and untimely hitting, the only question was who would take the ball in the ninth. Today gave us confirmation of just how far Seranthony Domínguez has fallen down the closer depth chart, as Newcomb was allowed to take the hill again in the ninth inning, with Jordan Hicks waiting in the wings if things got hairy. It seemed little thought was given to putting the game in Newcomb’s hands.

After a frazzling eighth-inning appearance, Newcomb was nails in the ninth inning, aggressively hitting his spots and taking just nine pitches to retire the side with two strikeouts and guarantee the White Sox sole possession of first place entering the first half’s home stretch.

Brutal losses on Thursday and Friday could have been crushing to a young and inexperienced team with no prior history of being in a high-pressure playoff race. Instead, the lack of quit we’ve seen all season showed that it still has life. Wins and losses count the same all year round, but from a psychological standpoint, leaving Cleveland with a split and their position in first place intact should be a massive boost to a continuously-growing belief that this Cinderella first half by the Chisox hasn’t been a simple mirage.

Steve Stone said it best in the top of the ninth inning: Both of these teams are going to be quite happy for tomorrow’s off-day. The Sox have a short flight home tonight to enter the final six games of the first half, and they’ll be back on the field Tuesday against the Red Sox. It’ll be an intriguing battle of rookie lefties at Rate Field, with Noah Schultz set to square off against Payton Tolle at 6:40 p.m. CT. We’ll see you there!