Sean Burke and a homer brigade turns Opening Day into a laffer, 8-1
Bombs from Austin Slater, Andrew Benintendi, Lenyn Sosa helps first-place White Sox snap the Halos
Unlike in the real world, when encountering a wallet stuffed with cash lost on the ground obligated the finder to report the loss and forgo the bounty, no such morality applies in sport.
Thus, whether the White Sox were handed a 8-1 win on Opening Day by an Angels club even more uncomfortable with fortune than our own matters not. A win is a win, and when a mere 41 were scraped together a year ago, nothing to sniff at.
This win came so easily that Austin Slater provided nearly all the support necessary, with a second inning leadoff solo bomb to left offering a hale and hearty hello to Sox faithful who’d forgotten fireworks could actually go off during game play given 2024’s utterly punchless offense.
The White Sox doubled that bounty later in the second, when three shy Angels mitts Alphonse Gastoned a two-out duck snort to left from Miguel Vargas, scoring two and landing the White Sox leadoff man on second base with a double that he will retell to his grandchildren as a screaming liner to the left-center wall.
As for starter Sean Burke, it was a tale of two games. After laboring through a wild first inning (24 pitches, 10 outside of the zone) and fooling few bats when managing to find the zone through two, the righthander zipped it up tight from there, needing just 39 to sprint through the next four hitless frames, with glancing contact at best.
In a game that motored along — Angels starter Yusei Kikuchi save for the Slater dinger was nearly as sly as Burke, likewise pitching into the sixth — the only move made for possible controversy was rookie skipper Will Venable yanking Burke at 73 pitches and 14 straight retired, handing the ball to his bullpen to get the final nine outs.
Penn Murfee made the apparent kamikaze turn pay off by striking out the side in the seventh, but the script flipped in the eighth. Jordan Leasure came in to provide fire to Murfee’s ice, and the strategy flopped. Pinch-hitter Yoán Moncada, unlike Tim Anderson booed during his approach to the plate, drew the first walk of the game on a full count, followed by a sharp single up the middle to put runners on the corners. But after another change of pitchers and an additional walk to pack the sacks, the fire was put out, without damage.
The tension of the top eighth was rendered largely moot in the bottom half, as Michael A. Taylor and Vargas led off with singles, and after a flaccid infield fly from Luis Robert Jr., this:
And hey, why not pile on, as Lenyn Sosa brought the White Sox side of the score to final with a two-run bomb:
Ron Washington, not wanting to burn his bullpen on [checks notes] Opening Day, after two days off and with one still coming tomorrow, then inserted Naperville’s Own Nicky Lopez to finish out the game. On the Sox side, Cam Booser came within a strike of blowing through the ninth with three strikeouts — well wait, he sorta still did, although he did give up a homer to Logan O’Hoppe to blow the shutout before finishing the Angels off.