The young Chicago White Sox aren’t about to lose any confidence over their 7-1 loss to the visiting Los Angeles Dodgers on Saturday.
Dodgers right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto retired the first 23 batters he faced before a Mookie Betts error gave the White Sox a baserunner with two outs in the eighth. The chance at a perfect game was gone, and Yamamoto lost the no-hit bid in the ninth when Chicago’s Tristan Peters led off with a home run.
After the game, the White Sox figuratively tipped their caps to Yamamoto — the MVP of the 2025 World Series – and were ready to move on to the finale of the three-game series on Sunday. The teams split the first two, with Chicago posting an 8-2 win on Friday before the Yamamoto masterpiece.
‘‘He’s Yamamoto,” said Chicago third baseman Miguel Vargas, who played with him briefly in Los Angeles before a 2024 trade to the White Sox. ‘‘I guess he’s that effective most of the time. We put a lot of good swings out there today, and we [stayed together] as a group. It was his day. and good for him.”
Peters was equally nonchalant.
‘‘It just shows the ups and downs of baseball that a team can go through and an offense can go through,” Peters said. ‘‘I wouldn’t even say we had a bad offensive day, either. I think we put together some good at-bats, and we hit the ball hard. That’s just baseball.”
A third consecutive sellout crowd is expected Sunday at Rate Field, where fans have flocked to see not only the Dodgers but the resurgent White Sox, who are in playoff position approaching the halfway point of the season. That comes after three consecutive 100-loss campaigns.
Their loss on Saturday snapped an eight-game home winning streak. Since April 27, the White Sox are 19-4 at home.
Left-hander Bryan Hudson (3-2, 2,25 ERA) will be making his 34th appearance of the season and fourth as an opener. Hudson threw one scoreless inning in the Friday win, retiring the Dodgers on seven pitches. In five career relief appearances against Los Angeles, he is 1-1 with a 6.75 ERA in 5 1/3 innings.
He is expected to give way to Erick Fedde (1-5, 4.69), who was the bulk-inning pitcher on Tuesday in a 6-5, 10-inning win over the Atlanta Braves. He did not figure into the decision after giving up two runs (one earned) on six hits and no walks in five innings. He struck out four.
Against the Dodgers, Fedde is 1-1 with a 1.96 ERA in four games (three starts).
To start a new streak, the White Sox will look to get their bats going again against Los Angeles right-hander Emmet Sheehan (3-3, 4.70 ERA). In his most recent start, last Sunday against the Los Angeles Angels, he pitched only 1 1/3 innings in a 13-5 loss.
He gave up two runs on three hits and two walks, but he was pulled after getting only four outs on 49 pitches.
“Just frustrating, definitely. Couldn’t put guys away,” Sheehan said after that outing. “Not efficient. Not good all around.”
He has never faced the White Sox.
The Dodgers’ in-game decisions will be made Sunday by bench coach Danny Lehmann, who will manage the team. Manager Dave Roberts left Chicago immediately after the game for Northern California, where his daughter, Emme, will graduate from Stanford. He will rejoin the club on Monday.
“I think that’s one of the good things about the way the world has evolved to where you do some things for mental health or your family and it’s not frowned upon that you care less about your job,” Roberts said before the Saturday game.
“It’s good to feel like I can go and I don’t feel like I’m being judged because I’m going to celebrate my daughter. … I encourage my staff to do it. You see it all around baseball. People are doing things for their family and paternity leave, things like that. It’s healthy.”
–Field Level Media
