The Chicago White Sox started a series against the Boston Red Sox on Friday night. The Red Sox are in last place in the AL East and they still have a significantly better record than the White Sox.
In fact, despite being in last place in that division, they'd be in first place in this AL Central with that record. You know that a team like this is always going to present a challenge.
Of course, they did. The Red Sox ended up winning this game by a final score of 3-1. The White Sox scored one measly run which means that their offense let down their pitching staff who was great.
The bad part is that the defense also let down their pitchers because they were horrible. Three runs were given up by Lucas Giolito but only one of them was earned. He was fantastic in his 6.0 innings pitched as he gave up the one earned and had a remarkable 10 strikeouts.
The Chicago White Sox got good pitching but couldn't hit or play defense.
Two of the three runs scored came from a Rafael Devers home run. He is a game-breaking type of player that will make anyone pay for their mistakes. The baserunner for the Devers blast was a White Sox mistake (an Elvis Andrus error).
The other run scored because of a pickoff error by Tim Anderson earlier in the game. Giolito had to pay the price for both errors. As mentioned before, Devers crossing the plate on his home run was the only earned run allowed by Giolito.
Following him, Gregory Santos, Reynaldo Lopez, and Keynan Middleton were all brilliant. They combined for seven strikeouts out of the pen so the White Sox struck out a total of 17 Red Sox hitters. Not bad at all.
Untimely errors by the defense and an unproductive offense are totally to blame for yet another loss. The White Sox had eight hits and couldn't find a way to muster up more than one run. Timely hitting can be the difference in baseball and it was in this game.
That is just another loss in a game that the Sox could have easily won if they played just a tad better. It is the story of this 2023 season.
On Saturday, the White Sox will resume this series in the afternoon. It is a 3:10 local start at Guaranteed Rate Field. Lance Lynn will face off against James Paxton. Hopefully, Lynn follows up his big 16 strikeout game with another solid performance and the offense backs him up.