'Always in it': White Sox complete 24th comeback win this season

CHICAGO -- All-Star Luis Robert Jr. homered for the 26th time in the first half of the 2023 season and Dylan Cease, the ‘22 American League Cy Young award runner-up, gave the White Sox a chance to win Friday night against St. Louis at Guaranteed Rate Field despite a rough start.

But it was Jake Burger and Zach Remillard driving in three runs apiece at the bottom of the order, batting seventh and eighth, respectively, who delivered the knockout punch for the White Sox in erasing a five-run deficit and claiming an 8-7 victory. Remillard didn’t even swing the bat in producing the winning run during a two-run seventh, drawing a four-pitch, two-out walk from Chris Stratton with the bases loaded.

Two of the pitches appeared to be at the top of the zone, according to Statcast. But Remillard wouldn’t budge, and the calls went in his favor during a third straight White Sox free pass.

“In that situation, the moment can speed you up where you can take advantage of it and use it to focus on what you are trying to do,” Remillard said. “Try to get it in the middle of the plate and then anything borderline try to lay off. A couple of calls went my way and [I] stuck to my approach.”

“He’s awesome, man,” said Burger of Remillard. “He’s a big morale guy. He works as hard as anybody. He plays the game as hard as anybody and plays the game right.”

Friday’s Interleague opener of this final first-half series started in the wrong direction for the White Sox (38-52). After losing three straight to the Blue Jays at home, dropping five of their last six and falling to a season-worst 15 games under .500, Cease yielded two in the second and three in the third to the Cardinals (36-52).

Cease had 66 pitches through three innings but still managed to give the White Sox six overall, striking out eight without a walk but giving up 11 hits. A five-run sixth for the White Sox put Cease in line to get a victory, but Nolan Arenado’s two-run homer off Keynan Middleton (2-0) in the seventh handed Cease his eighth straight no-decision marking a White Sox single-season record.

“Baseball’s one of those games where I feel like almost everything that happens is strange,” said Cease, who finished at 107 pitches. “Maybe that’s why it’s such a great game. It’s definitely unique. But as long as we’re winning, I don’t really care.

“Honestly, I really just kind of went away from what had been working for me lately. Early in the game, I was trying to do a little too much with some things I didn’t need to instead of just sticking with what’s been working. I definitely learned a lesson today.”

White Sox manager Pedro Grifol believes his team is learning a lesson with each close game, lessons paying dividends as the season progresses. Chicago is 14-15 in one-run games, with 29 games of that variety leaving it tied for fifth in the Majors.

This particular victory showed resilience and a fighting spirit even when an overall disappointing first half looked as if it was sinking to an even lower level. St. Louis starter Jordan Montgomery left after 4 1/3 innings with a hamstring injury, coming after Burger’s 19th home run and Remillard’s double, but they didn’t stop there.

“Our guys played hard, they played all the way through,” Grifol said. “We got down, and it’s easy to just quit. And these guys never do that.

“They kept battling, got the home run by Burger to put us on the board, and the next inning we came back and had a big inning. They went ahead, we tied it. It was just a good, gutsy performance by everybody.”

Baltimore’s 3-1 victory in 10 innings over the Twins pushed the White Sox within 7 1/2 games of the AL Central lead, although they also sit 7 games behind the Guardians. But the standings don’t matter, nor really do learning experiences, without victories such as Friday’s 24th White Sox comeback this season.

“At the end of the day, wins and losses are really the only thing that matters,” said Cease, whose team won while allowing 16-plus hits for the first time since Sept. 4, 2016. “Obviously, we’ve come up short in that category. But we’ve fought really hard.

“I feel like we’re always in it. We just haven’t really pulled enough of them out.”