David Sandlin's first major league start probably couldn't have started much worse. The second pitch of his career got knocked out the park by Minnesota's Byron Buxton.
After that? Sandlin probably couldn't have done much better. He was outstanding, retiring the next 18 batters he faced to earn his first career victory as the White Sox throttled the Twins, 15-2, on Wednesday at Rate Field.
Yesterday, I said Sandlin would probably go five innings or 75 pitches, whichever came first. Ha! Shows what I know.
The 25-year-old right-hander needed only 61 pitches to get through six innings. He struck out four, walked nobody and threw 41 of those 61 pitches for strikes. He got seven swing-and-misses, and his fastball topped out at 99 mph. When Sandlin walked off the mound after the top of the sixth, he left with a comfortable 9-1 lead.
There are few Sox debuts this successful. Even a cynical fan like me thought this performance was awesome.
The Sox offense had a great game, too, as they pummeled Minnesota pitching for 15 runs on 18 hits. They had two five-run innings, one in the fifth and one in the seventh.
The seventh inning featured back-to-back home runs by Chase Meidroth and Munetaka Murakami. For Meidroth, it was his fifth homer of the season and first career grand slam. For Murakami, the solo shot was his 20th homer of the season. That leads the American League, and it's the most home runs by a rookie before June in MLB history.
Murakami has homered in all three games of this Minnesota series. On Wednesday, he was 2 for 4 with three runs scored. There's really no question that his addition has completely changed the complexion of the Sox lineup.
Sam Antonacci went 3 for 4 with two runs scored and three RBIs, including a two-run single in the second inning that erased the early 1-0 Minnesota lead and put the Sox ahead to stay. Randal Grichuk was 3 for 5 with two RBIs.
Meidroth, Colson Montgomery and Tristan Peters also had two-hit games for the Sox, who improve to 28-27, maintain second place and stay 3.5 games back of the Cleveland Guardians in the AL Central.
Game 4 of this series is Thursday afternoon, with the Sox hoping for a series win, and the Twins looking to salvage a split.
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