CHICAGO — The White Sox have apparently had enough of losing to the Astros this season.
After starting the season with five straight losses against the American League West leaders, the AL Central’s top squad exorcised those bad memories with a 10-1 victory Saturday night before 34,304 in attendance at Guaranteed Rate Field.
“We just needed to get more runs than they did. We could have won a one-run game,” White Sox manager Tony La Russa said. “We just had to beat them.”
Lucas Giolito (8-6) was masterful, turning in his fifth career complete game and first since no-hitting the Pirates on Aug. 25 last season. He allowed Michael Brantley’s one-out double in the first, then retired the next 22 batters before Abraham Toro’s two-out homer in the eighth ended the shutout.
Giolito struck out eight without issuing a walk over 107 pitches, while recording 17 swings and misses, per Statcast. He was not satisfied with his first-half performance, so he took a step away from baseball during the All-Star break and took a trip to Lake Tahoe with his wife. Giolito then came back with a vengeance to start the second half.
Yet the White Sox right-hander, who lowered his ERA to 3.90, actually was a bit overshadowed by the five home runs hit in support by his teammates.
“I love our team, because we’ll pick each other up,” Giolito said. “Today was the night where everything was going. We were able to get that momentum going early, some early runs and [kept] riding through it for nine innings.”
Jake Burger capped the stream of homers in the seventh, when the rookie connected for his first career home run off Austin Pruitt in his home debut. The ball traveled 456 feet to left field at an exit velocity of 115.2 mph, and a clear smile crossed Burger’s face shortly after he connected and began his trot around the bases.
After missing three years due to a pair of left Achilles ruptures and the COVID-19 pandemic, Burger has earned that smile and then some by connecting in front of his family and a number of friends who made the drive from St. Louis.
“I was floating around those bases for sure,” said Burger, who traded a signed bat and ball to retrieve the home run ball. “Right when I hit it, I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s gone’ in my head. That’s when I cracked a smile. You think about that growing up and when you are little, hitting a big league home run and stuff. Nothing is like it. That experience is awesome.”
“It’s absolutely wonderful to see what he’s doing,” said Giolito of Burger, who is hitting .400 with three RBIs. “First home run of many. Glad to have him here.”
José Abreu’s three-run homer in the sixth was the 214th of his career, tying him with Hall of Famer Carlton Fisk for fourth on the franchise’s all-time list. Harold Baines is next at 221 for Abreu. His three RBIs gave him 69 on the season and 740 for his career, tying Nellie Fox for ninth all time on the White Sox list of run producers.
Tim Anderson, Zack Collins and Gavin Sheets also homered, with Anderson extending his hitting streak to 14 games and his runs-scored streak to 10 games. Anderson fell a triple short of hitting for the cycle, admitting he was thinking triple all the way in his last at-bat in the seventh and trying to put the ball down the right-field line.
“But it didn’t happen,” said a smiling Anderson. “So what? We keep going.”
That same attitude shines through for the White Sox (55-36) in this particular series against the Astros. Overall, they have won six of their last seven and maintained an 8-game lead over the Indians, and even after having been outscored by a 37-9 margin in those five losses to the Astros, this talented team was not going to be shut down.
“They beat us [five] games. You think we’re going to let them beat us [six] games? No,” Anderson said. “We’re definitely going to go out and at least try to stop the bleeding and win one. That’s what we did tonight.
“We’ve got a [chance] to do something real special. For us to beat a ballclub like that, that’s a pretty good ballclub. For us to come here and be able to blow them out, definitely a positive on our end. Now we know what we can do, and now we just need to keep pushing and be able to have that same focus moving forward.”
