White Sox snap four-game skid with 8-3 victory against Brewers

The White Sox and Brewers took the field Friday night at opposite ends of the baseball spectrum, yet some sort of weird baseball anomaly continued between the teams.

The Sox, sporting the fewest wins in the American League, topped the Brewers, who have the most victories in the National League, 8-3 in front of a chilled crowd of 20,004 at Guaranteed Rate Field. The Sox have had a hard time beating anyone the last few seasons, but this was their 13th win over the Brewers in the teams’ last 16 meetings.

“I didn’t realize that — I think that’s a good thing,” Sox manager Rick Renteria said with a laugh after the game.

Tim Anderson’s two-run triple in the sixth inning was the big blow, and the bullpen was brilliant as the Sox snapped a four-game losing skid to improve to 17-37. The Brewers dropped to 36-22.

“The pitchers threw a heck of a game, and we hitters did our thing,” said Anderson, who’s batting .385 over his last seven games. “It’s definitely a great win.”

The Brewers raced to an early lead courtesy of Ryan Braun’s two-run homer in the first and a sacrifice fly by Hernan Perez in the third. The Sox tied it in the bottom half of the third on a run-scoring single by Charlie Tilson — who then scored on an error by Brewers third baseman Travis Shaw — and an RBI single by Yoan Moncada.

In the sixth, Omar Narvaez followed Anderson’s triple with an RBI single to make it 6-3. Yolmer Sanchez and Daniel Palka each knocked in runs in the seventh to complete the scoring.

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Hector Santiago started for the Sox and yielded three runs and five hits with five walks and a strikeout in 3„ innings. Chris Volstad, Luis Avilan, Bruce Rondon and Nate Jones held the Brewers hitless the rest of the way. Avilan got the win.

“I didn’t have a great start, but offensively, we did a good job [and] pitching-wise, coming out of the pen, we did a really good job,” Santiago said. “Good day all around for us.”

Only the best will do

With the MLB Draft starting Monday, Nick Hostetler, the Sox’ director of amateur scouting, is finalizing the team’s rankings. He said the Sox plan to select the best player available with the No. 4 pick.

“When you’re picking this high, you have to,” Hostetler said. “If you start worrying about position [or] you start worrying about what we have . . . you’re going to do yourself an injustice. We have to go with the best player, the guy that we feel has the best tool set, has the biggest ceiling and is going to help us win here.”

Honored

Outfielder Eloy Jiménez was the Sox’ minor-league player of the month for May, while right-hander Blake Battenfield was pitcher of the month. Jiménez batted .374 with six home runs and 25 RBI over 26 games with Class AA Birmingham. Battenfield went 4-0 with a 1.16 ERA and 35 strikeouts over five starts with Class A Kannapolis.