White Sox Minor League Update: May 4, 2023

Dongs aplenty in the Sox minors on this day, and Clint Frazier is their king

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It’s fun to score lots of runs in a baseball game, and it’s fun to pitch well, so most Knights in this game had fun! Probably. Nate Fisher walked one batter for every inning he threw (five), but danced around them while striking out seven to keep the Gwinnett Stripers off the board. JB Olson gave up a couple of runs in two innings, but nobody really cared (probably). Ben Holmes and Nicholas Padilla were scoreless in relief.

Víctor Reyes provided the first three-run inning with one swing, producing a bases-clearing double that he really wanted to be a triple, but was unsuccessful in converting. That hit scored Zach Remillard (walk), Yolbert Sánchez (single), and Oscar Colás (walk). Part of the relay nabbing Reyes at third was Old Friend Yolmer Sánchez.

The first of (spoilers) two dingers off the bat of Clint Frazier led off the second inning, making it 4-0 Knights. The second of these dingers led off the fourth, making it 5-0.

In the fifth, Carlos Pérez reached with a two-out base hit and scored when Reyes went deep, his fourth long ball of the year. Through 26 games, Reyes is batting .297/.349/.475 and Pérez is at .283/.333/.576.

Backstop Evan Skoug followed it up with a double, and after Frazier kept the inning alive with a walk, Jake Marisnick brought Skoug home with a single, 8-0 Knights.

Pérez got in on the concourse party in the sixth, his eighth bomb of the season scoring Sánchez from a single to put the score at 10-0. It was his fourth in five games; he entered tonight on a seven-game hitting streak over which he was batting .462/.500/.846, so things have only improved.

The Knights did not score in the seventh inning.

In the eighth, Pérez again drove Sánchez in from a single, this time with a mere two-base hit instead of four. For good measure, they tacked four more on in the top of the ninth, which went like this: Skoug walked, Frazier singled, Marisnick advanced them both a base with a ground ball out, Erik González also grounded out (scoring Skoug, 12-2), Remillard walked, Sánchez singled (scoring Frazier, 13-2), a passed ball bumped Sánchez and Remillard to second and third, Colás singled (scoring both, 15-2), Pérez stuck out. Whew.

This game featured Old Friend Yolmer Sánchez and Old Acquaintance Nick Solak on the Stripers.

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Cristian Mena was down 2-0 after two home runs to his first three batters faced, but the 20-year-old didn’t let it faze him and he ended up breezing through six full innings, striking out 11 as he went. He only allowed three hits total, dongs included, the only other one a third-inning bunt single. Departing with just 80 pitches after six innings (54 strikes), Mena walked zero and struck out the side in his last frame of work.

Barons bats backed him up; Tyler Osik and Ben Norman drew back-to-back walks in the second, Osik eventually coming around to score on Xavier Fernández’s sacrifice fly. Fernández knocked in Osik again in the fourth after Osik’s leadoff double, tying it up at two. Finally, José Rodríguez’s third homer of the year gave the Barons the lead, and Mena left up 3-2.

Chris Shaw hit a much-needed home run in the top of the eighth, going deep with two outs and scoring Norman from a single to put the score at 5-2 Barons. This quickly became important with Nash Walters giving up a solo home run in the bottom of the inning, but 5-3 is where the score would stay. It was Nash’s first run allowed all year, and Caleb Freeman followed it up with a scoreless ninth.

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The Dash have been doing a lot of stomping lately, owners of a 16-5 record and five-game winning streak entering today, but unfortunately, here they found themselves the stompees, at last until the bottom of the ninth. Jared Kelley made his season debut a few days ago after recovering from a fractured foot that shortened 2022 for him, putting down two innings of hitless, runless, more-than-one-walk-less ball. Tonight went worse in nearly every aspect, and he walked four and allowed four hits through just 2 ⅓ innings en route to allowing three runs, all coming in the third.

Noah Owen entered with the bases loaded and one out and faced only one batter to both escape the inning and allow an inherited run to score. This is, of course, thanks to the classic sacrifice fly double play/left field error combination.

Owen ended up with a three-run inning of his own later on; four straight singles and a wild pitch opened the third, with a sacrifice fly scorching the sixth and final Grasshoppers run across the plate. Ernesto Jaquez continued to pitch well, throwing 2 ⅓ innings without allowing a hit, and Adisyn Coffey bounced back from his first rough outing with a 1-2-3 ninth.

As a side note for those reading through the play-by-play log in the box score: players are frequently noted in Gameday as both exiting with an injury in the middle of an inning and remaining in the game, so take things like “Dash pitcher Noah Owen left the game due to an injured hip” with a grain of salt when he appears to have faced five more batters.

At the plate, the Dash found it difficult to get things going against a series of pitchers with ERAs higher than four; their only run through the first eight innings came off the bat of catcher Michael Turner in the third, his first home run as a professional. Drafted last year in the ninth round, he also walked three times today to bump his season line to .282/.391/.487. He is 8-for-19 over his last five games.

They made things interesting in the ninth, which started with both Jason Matthews and Terrell Tatum hit by pitches, followed by a Loidel Chapelli Jr. walk and a DJ-Gladney-involved catcher interference that forced in a run (6-2 Grasshoppers). Representing the tying run, Wilfred Veras stepped to the plate with the bases loaded and nobody out, and he came so close. His double scored Tatum and Chapelli no problem, but Gladney was out at home on the throw (6-4 Dash).

Wes Kath grounded out and Shawn Goosenberg struck out to end the rally.

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Ah, the Cannon Ballers, they nearly had this one. Leading 2-0 entering the seventh on the strength of a Logan Glass ground ball RBI and Brooks Baldwin manufacturing a run from a single, balk, and error, the situation deteriorated. An offseason signing last season, Connor McCullough made his fourth start and his best yet, one-hitting the August GreenJackets through six, walking none and striking out seven.

Kade Mechals relieved him in the seventh and immediately gave up a run-halving shot on the first pitch, although no further damage was done. That was saved for the eighth: Chase Krogman, who appears to be developing as a pitcher now instead of a position player, struck out his first batter, then surrendered a game-tying home run, two walks, and a single before ceding to Zach Cable with the bases loaded and one out.

With echoes of Mechals, Cable gave up a first-pitch bases-clearing double, 5-2 GreenJackets. After inducing a double play, he came back out to pitch the ninth, where he was the victim of a solo home run. It was the first run of his own that he allowed all year and made it 6-2 GreenJackets, the eventual final score. Emerson Talavera struggled with his own control, but worked past it for the second and third outs of the ninth.

Tim Elko keeps withering away at first base, hitless today but drawing a walk, meaning he’s reached safely in 20 of 22 games played. Age 24, he is batting .326/.384/.584. Brooks Baldwin, meanwhile, went 2-for-4 with two singles, the 22-year-old left fielder’s line sitting at .354/.415/.479. Please do not look at the batting average of anyone else on this team.

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