Fedde escapes early jam, Kopech fires immaculate inning as Sox split DH
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CHICAGO -- Erick Fedde was in trouble during the first inning of Game 1 of Wednesday’s doubleheader against the Twins at Guaranteed Rate Field.
Bases loaded, nobody out and Jose Miranda, arguably the game’s hottest hitter, at the plate. Miranda even worked his way into 2-0 and 3-1 hitter’s counts. So how did the White Sox wind up with a 3-1 victory in an eventual doubleheader split, ending an 0-8 stretch against the Twins during the 2024 season?
Fedde, who has been one of the American League’s most consistent starting pitchers through the first half, not only minimized the damage but he escaped with no damage at all.
“I was like, ‘Of course Miranda is up right now,’” said a smiling Fedde. “I kind of just thought to myself, ‘I can’t let my first half go to waste on an inning like this. I need to bear down and get through it.’ Luckily made some pitches and got through with a zero.
“If anything, it’s more like count your blessings and let’s go in there and reevaluate what’s going wrong and make adjustments so we are not in that situation again. My biggest thing is to put it in the past and let’s move forward and be better.”
Fedde walked Willi Castro, allowed a Carlos Correa single and then walked Trevor Larnach to load the bases with nobody out and sitting at 24 pitches. But Fedde retired Miranda on a short fly ball to center fielder Luis Robert Jr., struck out Carlos Santana and retired Brooks Lee on a grounder to shortstop Nicky Lopez where second baseman Lenyn Sosa just beat Larnach to the base. He needed 11 more pitches to complete the escape act.
In eight starts at home this season, Fedde is 5-1 with a 1.47 ERA, 0.94 WHIP, has a .200 average against and 46 strikeouts over 49 innings. Five of those eight home starts have been scoreless, highlighting a stellar first half in which he finished with a 2.99 ERA overall.
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“Honestly very happy with it,” said Fedde of his first-half effort, punctuated by his five scoreless innings with five strikeouts on 90 pitches. “Still a lot of starts left, a lot of time to make it better or make it worse. Trying not to think too much about it. I’ve thrown well, grown, and for the most part, every time I stepped on the mound, gave the team a chance to win. That’s what’s important.”
“Settles down, has an 11-pitch inning, a 10-pitch inning and before you know it, he’s out there in the fifth inning and I easily could have sent him out for the sixth,” White Sox manager Pedro Grifol said. “But this is his last start of the first half and it was a good way to end the first half and get ready for the second half.”
That first-inning scare was pretty much it for the Twins offensively, aside from a Matt Wallner solo home run off Jordan Leasure in the seventh. Gavin Sheets produced the White Sox first hit off Bailey Ober (8-5) with a leadoff double in the fifth. He scored on Paul DeJong’s sacrifice fly, while Robert added a two-run homer in the sixth.
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Game 1 ended with Michael Kopech (ninth save) striking out the side on nine pitches, marking the first immaculate inning for the White Sox (27-67) since Sloppy Thurston on Aug. 22, 1923. Kopech used five four-seam fastballs, averaging 99.3 mph, per Statcast, and four cutters to get the job done.
“You could definitely say I needed that,” Kopech said. “It’s been a tough stretch, just felt a little bit inconsistent. Had a game plan that I’ve been tentative to lean on, and we finally leaned into it the last couple days.
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“Korey [Lee] has done a great job of sticking with me through that, and to see it pay off was extremely rewarding. I didn’t expect it to be in that manner, but it was pretty fun.”
It was a little piece of fun Kopech started thinking about after pitch No. 4.
“As soon as I realized there were no balls on the board, I wanted to finish that feat off,” Kopech said. “It feels good, but at the same time, I would have never thought about it again if I threw a ball in there at some point. Just glad to have a clean inning and get the win.”
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Minnesota earned the split with a 3-2 victory in the nightcap, as reliever Michael Soroka fell to 0-10 on the season after allowing the winning run to score in the seventh, while the White Sox dipped to 1-14-1 in their last 16 series. Rookie right-hander Drew Thorpe yielded two runs on two solo home runs over six innings, including one by Brooks Lee, his close friend and roommate at Cal Poly.