And yet, Viciedo reached out and hammered a hanging slider off the outside corner past the diving reach of Astros center fielder Brandon Barnes. As Viciedo’s handiwork slowly rolled up Tal’s Hill in center, Adam Dunn, Paul Konerko and Conor Gillaspie all lumbered home to seal the White Sox offense’s biggest inning a week. The four-run sixth and 4-2 victory over the hapless Asstros snapped yet another four-game losing streak for the Sox, who avoided the preposterous shame of a four-game sweep in Houston.

If I were Joe McEwing, I would have tried to break Viciedo’s hand with a high-five too.

The decisive blow from the maligned and tailspinning left fielder was only the climax of a series of improbable events. Earlier in the inning, a 27-bouncer off the bat of Paul Konerko rumbled under the glove of Astros starter Bud Norris, through the grasp of shortstop Ronny Cedeno and dribbled out of the infield for an RBI single. It was the second of what would be four-straight two-out hits to steal a win and quality from Norris, who entered the sixth with only 69 pitches.

His counterpart, Jose Quintana, was far less efficient. He labored through 104 pitches (four of those coming on an intentional walk to Chris Carter for whatever reason) without getting out of the fifth inning. The combination of an out-of-rhythm Quintana and a Carlton Fisk-aping Hector Gimenez behind the plate led to a game that ran over three-and-a-half hours despite only featuring six runs.

Nate Jones stepped in and blew away Chris Carter–who Robin Ventura really didn’t want to face Quintana–to clean up the fifth, but allowed two-straight leadoff singles when he came out for the seventh. A platooned combination of Matt Thornton and Jesse Crain modeled for the train shows, struck out the side and snuffed out the last Astros’ scoring threat.

Thornton striking out Jason Castro might have been the most impressive element, since the Astros catcher continued his four-game rampage with two more booming RBI doubles. Castro went 7-16 in the series with four doubles, two home runs and seven runs batted in. Good God, the humanity.

Team Record: 29-38

Box Score

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But it wasn’t until now, with Dayan Viciedo, that I got to really dive into the experience of giddily monitoring a prospect’s progress from signing, to Double-A, to angrily campaigning for his call-up from Triple-A, to watching him not…quite…get it…in the bigs.

Viciedo’s entering a weird middle ground in his career, especially for someone who vacillates between torrid hot streaks and discouraging slumps like late-White Sox career-era Carlos Quentin. When he’s running hot, he’s a still 24 year-old raw slugger with plenty of untapped potential. When he’s flailing at sliders out of the zone, he’s someone with 878 career MLB plate appearances and a .310 on-base percentage.

While we can almost assuredly count on another stretch of wild contact and power to come along this summer (though, I don’t know, Alexei Ramirez just stopped doing that all together), he was doing some stuff after returning from his oblique injury that suggested something about his process has changed entirely for the better.

May 10-20

Eight walks, only five strikeouts and only swinging at 48% of the pitches he saw. 2011 levels of discipline, without 2011-levels of wrist pain-addled power loss.

May 21-27

Now we’re in a stretch of zero walks in the last week, while swinging at 63% of the pitches he’s seen, which doesn’t really have correlation to anything he’s done previously, thankfully. It’s not a new trend as much as its just another bouncy trip to the opposite pole that he makes so often. There’s our old friend again, chasing fastballs up the ladder and off-speed pitches down and away.

Again, this isn’t a death knell, but more of a regression so intense that it renders previous enthusiasm foolish. The reason for the rushed enthusiasm was more or less discussed yesterday. Dayan Viciedo was tabbed to be the next middle-of-the-order masher in this lineup when he came up, and every indication from Konerko and Dunn is that the time for Viciedo to work through his growing pains smoothly and without pressure is up. He needs to be a significant contributor now, but he’s just not there yet, and his path to becoming fully realized is as murky as ever.

Chris Sale’s extended break

Fresh off an 11-day break, Chris Sale’s velocity was plenty crisp Tuesday night. He maxed out at 96.92 mph on his fastball according to BrooksBaseball.net, which is his highest-mark in over a month. Because of Tuesday’s rainout, he’ll be bouncing back from only 37 pitches of work the next time out, which could be as soon as Saturday if the Sox choose to accelerate his timetable. On the topic of such, what’s the rush? It’s May and maintaining Sale still seems like the only pressing priority.

Hector Santiago helping out again

Though he never wound up getting into the game Tuesday night, Santiago hit the news again for scrambling in response to a national disaster and offering his help. That’s become typical for him at this point, but what’s also become typical for him is the surprising degree to which he makes himself personally available to fans and outsiders. Listen to the activities described in the video linked to above, or check out his Twitter account and tell me it’s possible for Hector to live peacefully without a separate phone.

Want to watch a gross video of John Danks’ shoulder surgery?!

I don’t!

Follow James Fegan on Twitter @JRFegan