Dallas Keuchel outpitches Robbie Ray as White Sox beat Mariners

Lance Lynn plays catch eight days after surgery.

SHARE Dallas Keuchel outpitches Robbie Ray as White Sox beat Mariners
The White Sox’ Dallas Keuchel pitched five innings of three-run ball Wednesday.

The White Sox’ Dallas Keuchel pitched five innings of three-run ball Wednesday.

Quinn Harris/Getty Images

The White Sox beat the weather. Then they defeated the Mariners 6-4 Wednesday at rainy Guaranteed Rate Field, giving them a 4-1 start for the first time since 2012.

Left-hander Dallas Keuchel, going for his 100th career victory, put them in position to do it by outpitching reigning Cy Young winner Robbie Ray. Keuchel allowed three runs in five innings, striking out five and walking none.

As rain soaked the the field, players and a small but lively crowd after a 45-minute delay to start the game, the Sox scored four runs in the second against Ray on Eloy Jimenez’ 440-foot homer, Jake Burger’s RBI single and Tim Anderson’s two-run double.

Anderson hit his first homer and Robert roped his second in two nights in the seventh, in back-to-back fashion, knocking out Ray and giving the Sox a 6-3 lead.

Kyle Crick, Jose Ruiz, Kendall Graveman combined for three innings of scoreless, hitless relief before Liam Hendriks gave up a run in the ninth.

Jimenez exits with bruised ankle, Harrison with stiff back

Jimenez fouled a Ray pitch off his ankle in the third, and was pinch hit for by Leury Garcia in the fifth as he went for X-rays, which were negative. Jimenez has a bruise and is day to day.

Second baseman Josh Harrison, after making two slick fielding plays, didn’t run down the line at full speed when he hit into a double play in the sixth and left with low back stiffness in the seventh. He was replaced by Danny Mendick.

Right fielder Adam Engel took a home run away from Luis Torrens with a well-timed leap above the wall in the sixth.

Lynn ahead of schedule

Right-hander Lance Lynn played play catch eight days after having surgery to repair a torn tendon on his right knee and said he was “ahead of schedule.”

Expected to miss another seven weeks, Lynn is expected to need about four weeks of minor league game action building up to his return.

“That’s going to tell us everything we need to know,” Lynn said. “Stress-wise, throwing on flat ground is not near as much as on the mound. So we’ll see, when it comes to that time, how we feel. And then after that, it’s building that pitch count.”

Lucas Giolito (lower abdominal strain) threw on flat ground and “said he didn’t really feel it,” manager Tony La Russa said. “Some positive progress. Survive and thrive, man.”

New catcher McGuire ‘more than a stopgap’

Catcher Reese McGuire, who caught two of the first five games, “throws real well, has real quick feet behind the plate for a big guy, he’s athletic,” said Narron, who works with Sox catchers. “Calls a real good game and works with the pitchers well.”

McGuire threw out nine of 29 base stealers (31 percent) with the Blue Jays and did not commit an error behind the plate in 523 innings last season.

“He can definitely be more than a stopgap guy. He has a chance to be here for a while,” Narron said of McGuire, 27, who will not be a free agent until 2026.

Former Sox hurler Joel Horlen dies

Joel Horlen, a mainstay of White Sox starting rotations for most of the 1960s, has died. He was 84. Horlen posted a career 3.11 ERA and led AL pitchers with a 2.32 ERA from 1964-68. He went 19-7 with a 2.06 ERA in 1967, finishing second in AL Cy Young voting.

The Latest
Another federal judge in Chicago who also has dismissed gun cases based on the same Supreme Court ruling says the high court’s decision in what’s known as the Bruen case will “inevitably lead to more gun violence, more dead citizens and more devastated communities.”
Women make up just 10% of those in careers such as green infrastructure and clean and renewable energy, a leader from Openlands writes. Apprenticeships and other training opportunities are some of the ways to get more women into this growing job sector.
Chatterbox doesn’t seem aware that it’s courteous to ask questions, seek others’ opinions.
The way inflation is measured masks certain costs that add to the prices that consumers pay every day. Not surprisingly, higher costs mean lower consumer confidence, no matter what Americans are told about an improving economy.
With Easter around the corner, chocolate makers and food businesses are feeling the impact of soaring global cocoa prices and it’s also hitting consumers.