White Sox streak of 1-run losses ends!

As they get crushed by the Braves, 9-0, in a game mercifully ended by rain after eight

Nine-zip is the way a forfeit officially is scored in baseball, and the White Sox could have saved everybody a lot of time and wetness by making the forfeit de jure instead of de facto.

Not that this was never a ballgame. Charlie Morton had a rough start for the Braves, as can happen to even the best pitchers, as he gave up a single to Yoán Moncada, walked Andrew Vaughn and clipped Gavin Sheets to load the bases in the first, but Paul DeJong struck out and that was basically that. Then Morton walked Nicky Lopez, but he was erased in a strike-’em-out-throw-’em-out, so a Dominic Fletcher single didn’t matter.

It was still 0-0 when Moncada doubled to lead off the third, but at that point Morton decided he’d fooled around enough and retired 11 Sox in a row before exiting in the sixth. Atlanta relievers extended the home team’s futility until Moncada walked in the eighth, only to be stranded again.

While Morton was doing what good pitchers do — recover from a shaky start and cruise thereafter — Sox starter Chris Flexen did the opposite, starting strong by erasing the first seven batters in a very un-Soxlike efficiency of 25 pitches, only to need 60 pitches to get through two more official innings, giving up four runs in the process.

The Braves made it 6-0 with two runs off of Bryan Shaw in the sixth, then after a 44-minute rain delay after the seventh, Austin Riley hit a three-run shot off Dominic Leone in the eighth to make the score truly embarrassing. Every Braves player had a hit, and Riley ended up with four RBIs.

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Sox relief pitching was generally miserable, except for a clean inning from rookie Jordan Leasure. And the team’s usual best hitter suffered the worst embarrassment, Luis Robert Jr. striking out four times, always by swinging at bad pitches.

The series is supposed to continue tomorrow night with Garrett Crochet facing old buddy Reynaldo López, whom the Braves have converted back to a starter. But maybe with luck the expected snowfall will become a blizzard.

And, yes, off the field we can only hope that reports that the White Sox have compounded last season’s incredibly stupid p.r. move that alienated a huge section of the fan base by doing the same thing again is just a nasty April Fool’s joke, but with the total ineptitude of this organization that may well not be the case.