Today in White Sox History: June 14
Eddie Smith’s 15-game losing streak goes POOF
1942
With an 11-4 win in the nightcap of a doubleheader at Washington, Eddie Smith won his first game of the year, in 12 tries, to improve to 1-10. What’s crazy about Smith’s winless streak, which stretched back to the start of the 1942 season, is that he didn’t pitch bad at all: seven complete games, five one-run losses, two two-run losses, and an 3.83 ERA/4.16 FIP.
In the 11 games leading up to this blowout win, the White Sox scored just 21 runs total (not runs in support of Smith, but TOTAL runs in all of the losses, plus one ninth-inning win when Smith had been removed from the game).
If you stretched back to the end of 1941, Smith’s losing run heading into this game was 15 straight, having lost his final five decisions in that season.
Despite a 3.98 ERA that wasn’t that much worse than league average (90 ERA+), Smith would end up leading the AL in losses, at 7-20. While it would be easy to blame a bad White Sox team for Smith’s misfortune in 1942, by 1920-50 White Sox standards the 66-82 White Sox weren’t all that bad; applying their winning percentage to Smith’s 27 decisions, the hurler should have gone 12-15 on the season.
1953
White Sox pitchers Billy Pierce and Sandy Consuegra both fired shutouts in beating the Boston Red Sox in a doubleheader at Comiskey Park. The Sox won, 6-0 and 1-0. Pierce was brilliant in the opener, with two hits and one walk against eight Ks for a 90 game score. And although the 1-0 score in the nightcap doesn’t indicate it, Consuegra was a lot luckier with his win, spinning a shutout on an eight-hitter; Chico Carrasquel knocked in the only run of the game, with a single to center in the second inning.
With the sweep, the White Sox moved from a tie for fourth place with the Washington Senators to third place, leapfrogging the Red Sox with these head-to-head wins. Chicago would spend much of the season in second place from there, but would fall no lower than third for the remainder of the 1953 season.
2000
The White Sox trounced Cleveland, 11-4, but still managed to fail. How? Well, a club-record 17 games hitting at least one home run was snapped in the win.
The streak started on May 26, when Frank Thomas hit a solo home run off of Cleveland’s Chuck Finley in the first inning of a 5-3 win. The White Sox hit 28 home runs during the streak, but interestingly from just seven hitters: Thomas (eight), José Valentín (five), Carlos Lee (five), Ray Durham (five), Magglio Ordoñez (three), Chris Singleton (one) and Greg Norton (one). Eighteen of the homers were solo shots, seven came with one runner on, two were three-run shots, and one was a grand slam.
The streak came close to snapping only three times, with two homers coming as late as the seventh inning to keep the streak going. The homer streak came closest to snapping on June 13, when Durham’s solo shot in the 10th inning kept it going.
The White Sox went 13-4 over the 17 games of the streak, raising their record from 26-20 to 39-24 and extending their AL Central lead to five games by streak’s end. Despite snapping the longball streak, this game came toward the start of a eight-game winning streak and wins in 14 of 16 to shoot to a commanding lead in the division — one that would not be relinquished.
One of the two losses in the stretch came against the Cubs, in a June 11 game when the White Sox exploded for five home runs — all solo shots — in a 6-5 final.
2009
With American League pitchers still having to bat in any interleague game played in NL parks, White Sox pitchers had long been a hole in the batting order of such games. Mark Buehrle, coming into a start in Milwaukee as a career 3-for-36 hitter with zero extra-base hits for a -49 OPS+ and a .083/.108/.083 slash, homered to lead off the third inning against Braden Looper.
Buehrle never homered again in the major leagues, and in fact would have just five hits (two doubles) in his career after this game. In his 14 years hitting in the majors, Buerhle was 9-of-125 for a .072/.087/.112 slash for a -1.0 WAR and -47 OPS+.
The White Sox prevailed in this tight game, 5-4, when A.J. Pierzynski singled in the deciding run in the bottom of the eighth off of Hall of Fame closer Trevor Hoffman. Interestingly, pitcher Clayton Richard had pinch-run for Jim Thome in the inning and scored the eventual winning run.