White Sox Offense Thwarted By Some Dude
/The White Sox's offense against the Diamondbacks' pitching staff seemed, on paper, like a recipe for a series victory. But for the second straight day that offense flailed away to no avail, this time against a 26-year-old rookie making his Major League debut in Chase Anderson.
Anderson held the Sox to one run on two hits in 5.1 innings as Arizona beat the White Sox 5-1 to take 2-of-3 in the series.
The White Sox showed little patience against Anderson, who featured a nice changeup that Sox hitters were continuously out in front of. He threw just 74 pitches and had faced the minimum until the sixth when Moises Sierra hit his first home run of the season on the 12th pitch. That at-bat consisted of 16 percent of the pitches Anderson threw on the afternoon, so, yeah.
The Diamondbacks got Anderson help early when Gerardo Parra led off the game with a triple off of Hector Noesi and came home on an RBI single by Martin Prado. Noesi settled down for the most part from that point forward, pitching around a leadoff double by Cliff Pennington in the third and a leadoff walk to Miguel Montero in the fourth — one of three walks on the day.
Parra got to Noesi again in the fifth, however, blasting a two-run homer to right after A.J. Pollock led off the inning with a single. He finished the day with a quality start in the books, but was far from remarkable. His final line was 6 IP, 8 H, 3 ER, 3 BB, 4 K. Still, it might be just enough to stay in the rotation for the time being.
Frank Francisco made his debut with the team and looked fine for the better part of two innings. He primarily used his four-seamer and sat around 92-93 mph throughout, while occasionally flashing his splitter at 83-84 mph. That success, unfortunately, meant Robin Ventura opted to let him toss 40-plus pitches, and he was eventually burned in the eighth inning when he left a splitter up and Montero hit a two-run homer following an Adam Dunn error to give the Diamondbacks a two-run lead.
Team Record: 19-20
Next game is Monday at 9:05 p.m. CT vs. the Oakland Athletics on WCIU.
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