A crowd of 38,113 showed up at Rate Field for the Pope Hat giveaway and watched the White Sox take a 4-1 lead into the late innings. They left with a 5-4, 10-inning loss instead, after Cincinnati chipped away, tied it, and then finished the job against Sean Newcomb.
The game turned in the eighth. Will Venable had multiple relief options for the final six outs, but Bryan Hudson couldn’t hold the line. Matt McLain opened the inning with a broken-bat infield single, Sam Antonacci followed with a bloop over the head of Antonacci in shallow right center, and Elly De La Cruz then drove in a run with a solid single through the right side to make it 4-2.
“That's baseball,” said Will Venable. “Infield single there, then a bloop, and then De La Cruz gets one on the back side there and just weren't able to stop the bleeding after that.”
Grant Taylor inherited runners on first and second with nobody out and couldn’t shut it down. Both runners advanced on Sal Stewart’s fly to right, JJ Bleday walked to load the bases, and Tyler Stephenson punched an elevated curveball to right field to tie the game at 4. The White Sox did get a break when Munetaka Murakami cut Braden Montgomery’s throw and redirected it at second to get Bleday, allowing Taylor to escape with the score still level.
The Sox never found a fifth run after that. Andrew Benintendi and Edgar Quero finished the final two innings of regulation with warning-track flyouts, and although Murakami doubled with one out in the ninth, Cincinnati kept him there.
Sean Burke had put together the kind of start that should have been enough. He worked seven innings on 94 pitches, struck out eight, walked none and piled up a season-high 20 swinging strikes.
His only real mistake came in the fifth, when Eugenio Suárez jumped a fastball above the zone for a solo homer. Suárez also ripped a one-hop double off the wall in the seventh, and aside from that and a two-out single by Sal Stewart in the sixth, the Reds did little against him.
“It’s a one-run game,” Burke said. “That mistake to Suárez will eat at me a little bit.
I shook off Q there and went with the fastball and [he put] a pretty good swing on it. That one’s going to eat at me.”
Burke’s mix was straightforward but effective: fastballs and sliders to right-handers, fastballs and curveballs to left-handers, with first-pitch strikes across the board. The slider did much of the damage, getting whiffs on nine of the 15 he threw.
Chicago’s offense came out swinging early and built the lead fast. Brenton Doyle opened the scoring by taking Nick Lodolo’s first pitch over the wall just left of center.
Quero followed with a 1-1 changeup to left for a second solo homer, and Miguel Vargas added another solo shot to start the fourth. Randal Grichuk doubled, moved to third on Braden Montgomery’s groundout, and Sam Antonacci dropped a single just beyond a diving Dane Myers to bring him in.
“In this league you have to be ready to go 0-0,” Venable said. “You have to be ready to go up there ready to attack. Obviously the early attack for us really didn't pay dividends after Lodolo came out of the game and just weren't able to get any guys on and push any across.”
Once Lodolo exited, the bats quieted down. Luis Mey threw two perfect innings to start a dominant night from the Cincinnati bullpen, which retired 18 of the 19 hitters it faced. Murakami’s eighth-inning double was the only blemish.
The 10th ended with another long battle from Antonacci, who fought Emilio Pagán for 14 pitches before striking out on a well-located fastball on the hands. Luisangel Acuña and Tristan Peters then popped out to end it.
“They pitched really good, the bullpen,” Quero said. “Their bullpen was really tough today.
It’s part of the game. Tomorrow we are going to try to win the game and next day we are going to try to win the series.”
The loss came with a few other rough edges for Chicago. Chase Meidroth sat with a sore wrist, and the short bench showed up late, with Grichuk and Acuña forced to hit for themselves in the eighth and 10th against a right-hander with a runner on second. Hudson’s rough stretch also continued, as his second-half ERA sits at 8.31 after he’s allowed 12 hits in 8⅔ innings.
The Montgomerii went 0-for-8 with five strikeouts, including Colson Montgomery’s non-pope hat trick, and the White Sox fell to 0-5 when their first batter homers this season.
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