ASTROS: REDDICK’S SLAM LEADS WAY IN 10-1 WIN OVER WHITE SOX.
Shaken Chicago distracted as teammate fights serious condition
CHICAGO — On the facade of a caged bullpen in left field hung a lone white jersey, the man who should don it instead laying in the intensive care unit of a Chicago hospital battling a critical bleed inside his brain.
Twenty-one hours earlier, Danny Farquhar was here.
Farquhar threw 15 pitches, retreated to his dugout and began the fight for his life, his terrifying collapse caught live on television. The diagnosis, a ruptured brain aneurysm, was disseminated Saturday morning to his stunned teammates. The clubhouse was “crushed,” one said.
“Yeah,” Hector Santiago added, “we’re more worried about what’s going on with him and his family than worrying about this game right now.”
Perhaps this game was decided before it even began, one team shaken to its core playing another finally unleashing the unrelenting offensive prowess many longed to see from it.
The Astros, again, clobbered the White Sox 10-1 as Josh Reddick belted two home runs, including a grand slam, and Dallas Keuchel pitched six strong innings. The Astros have scored 20 runs and accrued 26 hits in their last 18 innings, all against a disinterested White Sox team with far graver concerns than the baseball ineptitude it has displayed this weekend.
Teammates wrote Farquhar’s name on their hats. His jersey hung in the bullpen. Astros manager A.J. Hinch extended the team’s thoughts prior to the game for another member of the “baseball family.”
Still there was work to do and a game to play. Asked before the game if canceling it was considered, White Sox players and coaches there was no such thought. So Lucas Giolito began the proceedings, which unraveled hastily.
Giolito recorded six outs. He threw 72 pitches and walked seven Astros. Six of them scored. The Astros led 1-0 before making an out and 4-0 before making three.
“The approach with a guy like that especially a young pitcher, is to be ready to hit in the middle of the zone,” Hinch said. “If he can’t locate, he’s certainly going to throw in the big part of the zone.”
George Springer hit the game’s second pitch for a leadoff double. Seven batters later, Marwin Gonzalez struck another that one-hopped the center field fence and cleared the loaded bases.
Giolito walked the first three men he faced in the second inning. A mound visit convened — the White Sox exhausted four of the six allotted to them by the third inning — before cleanup hitter Reddick arrived.
“You have to focus in, find the pitch that you’re looking for and, if you get it, you have to take a swing at it,” Reddick said. “Guy who is struggling, you stay in the zone.”
The first pitch was — a four-seam fastball down and in. Reddick deposited it 360 feet away into the right field bullpen, his second grand slam of the month. Not since Jeff Bagwell in May 2001 had an Astros player hit two grand slams in one calendar month.
Reddick added a solo home run to lead off the fourth inning, affording Keuchel his 10th run of support. The Astros mustered only six in the lefthander’s first four outings.
“I’d been asking for runs,” Keuchel said, “then I was mad that we scored too many runs because it was a slow pace to start the game.”
Like Justin Verlander on Friday, Keuchel navigated six innings with relative ease. He exited after just 95 pitches and the luxury of a nine-run lead, allowing an underworked bullpen to get some required action.
After Tim Anderson led off the first inning with a double, Keuchel retired 10 in a row. Trayce Thompson’s fifth-inning solo home run, a two-seam fastball that stayed up and snuck over the right field fence, was the lone run on his line.
“A lot of things were working tonight, that was nice to see,” Keuchel said. “I felt like I was already settled in after that double … I made it through six and threw some quality high fastballs, which I was intending to do.”
Still, the sparse crowd tried encouragement.
It rose in the sixth inning while Keuchel labored. He walked two men with two outs. Leury Garcia, in this game for Yoan Mocada, dug in.
Garcia, down two strikes to begin the at-bat, evened the count at two. Keuchel buried his sixth pitch — a slider. Garcia swung through. Keuchel sauntered from the mound, his evening complete. Garcia removed his helmet and slammed it to the dirt. His team’s evening morosely continued.
"Just kind of a repetition of last night," Keuchel said.