Baltimore tried to give runs away, but failed
The most exciting moment of the game from a White Sox perspective was when Orioles rookie Coby Mayo, who had just driven in his first major league run with his second major league hit, got caught in a rundown. For some bizarre, bush-league reason, Mayo decided to go out of the basepath and bump Lenyn Sosa.
This set off what passes for a major confrontation in baseball:
As usual for such baseball battles, most of the players appeared to be just trying to get a better look at the action, of which there really wasn’t any.
As for confrontations on the field, Davis Martin fed Jackson Holliday his first-ever homer to lead off a game, and the Sox trailed from then on. Mayo’s pre-bump RBI made it 2-0 in the fourth. The Sox made a comeback stab when Mike Tauchman squeaked a grounder through and hustled it into a double, one of his three hits on the day, and Andrew Benintendi took a tough, 3-2 sinker from Dean Kremer to right:
That was the only score off Kremer, who came into the game with an ERA of 5.02 and left with one of 4.70.
Martin then hung a cutter to No. 9 hitter Jorge Mateo for Mateo’s first homer of the year, giving the Orioles a 4-1 lead. Vinny Capra raised his average to .081 leading off the seventh with a double and Tauchman singled him home, but three straight fly outs ended the inning.
The Orioles bullpen continued to be suspect, walking two in both the eighth and ninth, but the Sox politely declined to take advantage, including K’ing three times in the ninth, one of those by Luis Robert Jr., giving him three on the afternoon to match Sosa.
The last K was Austin Slater looking. But to end on whatever high note there was, Slater had made ninth inning comeback feasible with some nifty glove work with two Birds on in the eighth:
The loss takes the Sox to 18-40, 3 1⁄2 worse than the Orioles for last in the AL. They’ll try to avoid a sweep tomorrow afternoon, with Adrian Houser, who has tossed 12 scoreless innings since being pulled out of the dumpster. Houser faces Charlie Morton, who has found life after 40 not such a good thing, with a 7.09 ERA, though he has done better lately.
Futility Watch
White Sox 2025 Record: 18-40, the second-worst start in White Sox history and tied for the 57th-worst start in baseball history. A 18-40 record projects to 50-112 over a full season. A year ago, the record-breaking White Sox were 15-43.
All-Time White Sox Record (1901-2025, 19,264 games) 9,612-9,652 (.4990). It’s been 102 games since the White Sox had an all-time winning record.
Record Since the New Pope Was Revealed as a White Sox Fan 8-12
- Race to the Worst “Modern” 162-Game Record (2024 White Sox, 41-121)
- Race to the Worst “Modern” Record in a 162-Game Season (1962 Mets, 40-120-1, finished three percentage points worse than the 2024 White Sox)
- Race to the Most White Sox Losses (2024, 121)
- Race to the Worst White Sox Record (2024, 41-121)
Nine games better, in all cases
Race to the Worst Post-1899 Record (1916 A’s, 38-124 adjusted to 162 games) 12 games better