White Sox 4, Red Sox 1: Color battle ends right

Luis Robert Jr. has himself a day as the bullpen nails down the Red Sox offense

The Chicago White Sox beat the Boston Red Sox this afternoon, 4-1, to win the series at home after a wonderful offensive performance by Luis Robert Jr. and a great outing by the bullpen. This is Chicago’s first series win since early June vs the New York Yankees, and White Sox now move to 34-45.

Tanner Banks started the game for the South Siders, as today was set to be a bullpen day. He got through the first inning unscathed, and went through some trouble keeping his pitch count down in the second inning, but still didn’t allow a run after getting out of a bases-loaded situation. In the top of the third inning, Banks allowed back-to-back walks with one out, leading to a double by Adam Duvall to give the Red Sox a 1-0 lead. Things could have gotten ugly pretty quickly with runners on second and third, but Banks induced a fly out and Jesse Scholtens came in to get Triston Casas to fly out and end the inning.

Kutter Crawford was dealing early on, going scoreless into the bottom of the fourth inning. After a leadoff single by Andrew Benintendi, Luis Robert Jr. blasted his 20th home run of the season to take the lead back, 2-1.

In the bottom of the fifth inning the team added on, as Gavin Sheets led it off with a walk and with two outs, Benintendi doubled to score him from first and extend the lead to 3-1. Benintendi has been great in the leadoff spot recently, which is something to watch going forward with the return of Tim Anderson to the lineup.

Seby Zavala took over for Yasmani Grandal to start the sixth inning after Grandal took a ball off of his mask.

Robert led off the bottom of the sixth inning with yet another missile out of the park, his 21st of the season — the first multi-home run game by a White Sox player at home this season.

Crawford was removed after six innings with five hits, four runs, one walk, and four strikeouts. His ERA is now up to 4.01.

Scholtens continued into the seventh inning in what was a remarkable outing for him, getting the win and going four innings with two hits, no runs, and three strikeouts. He was replaced by Aaron Bummer after getting into trouble with singles to Jarren Duran and Justin Turner. Bummer faced Rafael Devers cleanly to get out of the inning, in a situation that could have escalated quickly.

Bummer also had a bit of a scary (yet impressive) play in the bottom of the eighth inning, to avoid what could have been a major injury.

Keynan Middleton came in for the save, and got a 1-2-3 inning to end the game.

Overall, a series win is always a good thing to power a road trip. We will head west ... again. I don’t know who made this schedule, because I feel like I’m getting deja vu. The team will face Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani in Anaheim starting tomorrow night, with a 8:38 p.m. CT start. Lefty Reid Detmers will be on the mound against Dylan Cease. Everyone have a great rest of your day and get ready for some more late nights on the way.