Shane Smith shoos Dodgers, Grant Taylor sews them up
White Sox win, 5-2 behind ... Miguel Vargas and Korey Lee?
Shane Smith hit better than 98 mph and struck out five Dodgers, including Shohei Ohtani twice, as he set the tone for a staff that K’d 16 of the world champs while walking only three (OK, they hit a couple of Dodgers, but you can’t have everything). Then Grant Taylor just missed three digits and got all six of the outs in the eighth and ninth on whiffs, even though the final L.A. batter won two challenges to stave off his final strike.
Want to see Shane’s? OK.
The Sox struck out 11 times themselves, six of them against starter Tyler Glasnow, but Glasnow didn’t get through his three innings unscathed thanks to Miguel Vargas, who obeyed the baseball rule by making a nifty defensive play, then leading off the second by taking a pretty good pitch out to left-center.
The Dodgers briefly took the lead by scoring two off Nick Nastrini in the fifth, but a Korey Lee triple (aided by lousy Dodger fielding — each team’s usual defensive proficiency was swapped today) and Dominic Fletcher single (more lousy fielding) tied it up in the bottom half. In the sixth, L.A. lefty Anthony Banda had zilch, and more lousy Dodgers fielding and four Sox hits (including a two-run double by Lee) made it 5-2 — and that was that.
The “that was that” included 11 K’s by the Sox bullpen, including the six by Taylor, who only allowed a walk in his two innings of work.
As for Luis Robert Jr. auditioning for the rest of MLB, he had a broken-bat single and a walk, and needs to hope scouts didn’t stick around for when he had a typical whiff on a slider well off the plate his third time up. Mike Tauchman continued his audition for Charlotte by striking out all three trips to the plate, helping Chicago to a total of 11 in its own right.
The win brings the spring record to 4-10, with Cleveland up at 3:05 p.m. Central tomorrow (remember Daylight Savings!).