Angels 3, White Sox 2: Five-Hour Loss

Rain rain go away, or rather, have a three-hour delay

In typical spring baseball fashion, this afternoon the Chicago White Sox lost to the Angels, 3-2, after a chaotic weather day. The Angels won two in a row after a resounding defeat on Opening Day, and will leave Rate Field with a series win.

The game started out shaky for Davis Martin, as the Angels scored two runs in the top of the first. Leadoff hitter Taylor Ward reached on a fielding error by Jacob Amaya, and Nolan Schanuel and Mike Trout had back-to-back singles to load the bases. Jorge Soler hit a sacrifice fly to drive the first run in, and old friend Yoán Moncada grounded to second on a near-double play that would have ended the inning; instead, Moncada hustled down the line and was safe at first, scoring the second runner of the inning from third base.

However, Nick Maton wasted no time getting the South Siders on the board in the bottom half, as the leadoff hitter drove Jack Kochanowicz’s third pitch out of the park to cut the deficit to 2-1.

Luis Robert Jr followed that with a single, and eventually ended on second base on a fly out to center. With two outs, Matt Thaiss singled him in to get the White Sox even.

From there, neither team would score again, for hours. In fact, nearly every inning by both teams went 1-2-3, as nobody could even reach base. The only real threat came in the top of the sixth, when the Angels had runners on second and third with two outs. Luckily, Martin got out of the jam with an electric strikeout to Moncada. Martin ended up with a solid outing, going six innings with just four hits, two runs, two walks, and two strikeouts.

The weather gods saved us from these punchless offenses, however, and in typical White Sox fashion, chaos ensued. In the bottom of the seventh inning, with one out and a runner on second, the game was delayed due to weather. Not only was there hail, but high winds, tornadoes in the area, rain absolutely dumping down, you name it.

The grounds crew had a few issues, and well the tarp ended up looking like this:

All was well though, as the game resumed almost three hours later, still at a 2-2 tie. Now with runners on second and third, the South Siders threatened to take the lead, but flamethrower Ben Joyce got out of the inning after a Lenyn Sosa pinch-hit pop out.

Immediately following, the Angels regained the lead on a Kyren Paris home run off of lefty Cam Booser. Robert Jr. reached second base in the bottom of the eighth inning with two outs, after a single and a steal, but Andrew Benintendi grounded out to end the inning and the threat. There’s the White Sox we know and love!

If you didn’t know, Kenley Jansen is now an Angel, and their closer, and he came on for the second straight game to lock down a save. Also, if you didn’t know, the White Sox still stink. Andrew Vaughn started off the bottom of the ninth inning with a double and was replaced by Korey Lee at second base. Thaiss drew a walk to put runners on first and second with no outs. Then very quickly, Miguel Vargas swung at the first pitch he saw and popped out, and Brooks Baldwin grounded into a double play to end the game. Around the same time this happened, the Cubs blew a 6-2 lead in the bottom of the eighth inning, letting the Diamondbacks score eight runs in the inning. Some things never change when it comes to Chicago baseball.

The White Sox are now worse than .500 and will likely stay there, but let’s see what they can do starting tomorrow against the Minnesota Twins. Another series at Rate Field will start tomorrow afternoon at 1:10 p.m. CT. Martín Pérez will be on the mound, and let’s hope the forecast stays clean this time.

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