'Phenomenal crowd' motivates White Sox to do better

CHICAGO -- There was a boisterous crowd of 36,225 at Guaranteed Rate Field on Wednesday for the series finale between the White Sox and Dodgers, marking the South Siders’ first sellout of the 2024 season.

Yes, major fan support, but no, same White Sox in a 4-0 loss taking 2 hours, 2 minutes to complete.

Some fans’ commute to take part in the White Sox first-ever Mexican Heritage Night lasted a bit shorter than Dodgers starter Gavin Stone (9-2) needed to dispense of the team with the worst record in baseball.

“Great, 36,000. We just couldn’t take advantage of it,” said White Sox manager Pedro Grifol of the strong attendance. “But they were loud and they were here and they were supportive. It was a phenomenal crowd. It gives you a little taste of what it can really be like.”

While the White Sox (21-61) only can hope for better days ahead, they need to find major improvement in a number of areas across these final 80 games. They finished 0-for-3 with runners in scoring position against Stone, leaving them at 0-for-17 for the three games.

It was the 12th series sweep against the White Sox this season, to go with their 12th shutout. Grifol watched the final four innings from his home clubhouse office after being ejected for arguing balls and strikes by home-plate umpire Derek Thomas.

“I wasn’t particularly happy with balls and strikes, especially early on our side with [Erick] Fedde,” Grifol said. “Viewing it from the side, it can be deceiving. The back half of the game I saw inside was pretty good, was called pretty good.”

Fedde yielded a leadoff home run to Shohei Ohtani, ending his home scoreless streak covering 19 1/3 innings. Ohtani has nine long balls against eight White Sox pitchers over the past two seasons, but Fedde also gave up three runs in the third punctuated by Freddie Freeman’s two-run double.

During his Washington pitching days from 2017-22, allowing crooked numbers in an inning frequently spiraled out of control and led to a shortened outing for Fedde, who posted a 5.41 ERA over 102 appearances (88 starts) with the Nationals. The right-hander reinvented himself during a dominant ‘23 campaign in Korea, regained his confidence and has been able to consistently minimize the damage for a struggling White Sox team needing as much good fortune as possible.

“That guy, hopefully, is long gone,” said Fedde, who struck out five and walked one on 88 pitches over six innings. “And looking at myself and getting through six, probably with a chance to go seven if we needed it to be, that’s who I want to be. That’s the standard I want to hold myself. In that sense, very happy.”

“We have the belief he could be very successful here, and he’s obviously proving everybody right that he can be one of the top pitchers in baseball,” said pitching coach Ethan Katz of Fedde. “He’s made comments to me in the dugout where, ‘Years past, that might have got away from me and I might not be going back out there.’ Right now, he’s one of the most dependable arms in baseball.”

White Sox fans took in that dependability fostered by Fedde’s 3.23 ERA, not to mention seven strikeouts from Michael Soroka over three scoreless innings of relief. Their mound work pretty much was the highlight of an otherwise quiet night.

Mariachi Monumental De Mexico put on great pregame entertainment for the crowd, as well as livening things up with their music in-game, and the first 10,000 fans, ages 21-plus, left with an Aztec-inspired Mexican Heritage Night Jersey. The wave actually looked good with this many loud and excited people as it circled around the stadium late in the game.

But the results didn’t change, as the White Sox lost their fourth straight and fell to 7-31 over their last 38 games.

“Keep on passing it. Not going to go down without a fight,” said catcher Korey Lee with a focus on improving the offense. “Get the guy over, cut down the strikeouts and whenever we do that, we get the ball rolling."

“Obviously not happy with the result,” Fedde said. “Looking back on that third inning, I think a big part of when you play lineups like this is you’ve got to get the bottom of the lineup out. When I flipped the lineup with two guys on and nobody out, it makes my job tough.”