Sean Burke threw another absolutely superb game tonight, but it just wasn’t enough to snag a win, as the White Sox fell 4-1 to the Astros. The dude was dealing, tossing six innings and only giving up two earned runs, yet it felt like a total gut punch because the bats just went silent.
Sean Burke Was Unstoppable… Until He Wasn’t
Honestly, for five innings, Burke looked like he was pitching on another planet. This dude was dealing, throwing almost 70% of his pitches for strikes and racking up 19 swinging strikes, which is tied for the second-most any Sox starter has done all season. He ended up with 10 punchouts, too, making it the second time this month he’s hit double digits. The Astros could barely touch him, putting only three balls in play over that “hard hit” threshold of 95 mph. He was absolutely cruising, looking genuinely lights-out for most of the night, and you just knew he had that elevated stuff that can’t be faked.
The Luck Ran Out, And The Bats Stayed Cold
But then the sixth inning hit, and man, it was a nightmare. Just like last night, it was a brutal mix of walks and grounders finding holes that turned into a multi-run disaster, and it completely flipped the script. Jeremy Peña got things going with a weak ground ball single, which honestly, was on a great pitch from Burke. Then you gotta walk Yordan Alvarez, because, let’s be real, the guy’s got 34 homers before the last week of July; you absolutely do not mess around with him. But then Isaac Paredes singles on another good pitch that probably gets an out eight or nine times out of ten if you played it over and over, and then, boom, a brutal misplay from Braden Montgomery in right field piles on two extra runs that proved to be the difference in the ballgame. That’s where the wheels completely fell off.
Remember that “extraordinarily good BABIP and LOB% luck” Burke’s been riding lately? Yeah, that rollercoaster finally went off the rails. It’s tough, because his elevated stuff is legit, but you can’t rely on luck forever. And the offense? Woof. They put up eight shutout innings, with an ultimately meaningless scratch run in the ninth that just wasn’t enough. Astros starter Hunter Brown, who was top-three in Cy Young voting last year, was totally in form tonight, throwing a season-high seven shutout innings. He didn’t give up a single walk, which is crazy after allowing more than a walk per inning in his last three starts, aggressively staying ahead and forcing hitters to chase. Tristan Peters got a single in the third, Munetaka Murakami in the fourth, but nobody, and I mean *nobody*, could bring them home.
This one stings, big time. You get a phenomenal pitching performance like Burke’s, and the bats just leave him out to dry. It’s gotta be frustrating for the whole club. They need to figure out how to string hits together and score runs, especially when their starter is dealing this hard. They can’t keep wasting outings like this.
This article was created with AI assistance and published under Seattle On Tap’s editorial standards. See our Editorial Policy.
Originally reported by Yahoo Sports.
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