Lucas Giolito Dazzles as White Sox Take Game 1 vs. Athletics
As much as Tim Anderson may have telegraphed it, Oakland A's manager Bob Melvin was gambling with his pick of Jesús Luzardo to start Game 1 of the Wild Card series.
The lefthander was bounced from his start with one out in the fourth inning, achieving considerable swings-and-misses. However, what the White Sox didn't miss, they hit hard—Adam Engel twice, with a solo homer that broke the ice on scoring in the second, and a double that knocked Luzardo from the game in the fourth.
Flip side, Lucas Giolito sidestepped the trap that can sometimes be his first inning, going 1-2-3 while working quickly despite getting squeezed on some borderline calls. Oakland was getting some hard contact as well, and Giolito wasn't falling back on strikeout stuff early, whiffing just one of the first 10 batters he faced.
In fact, Giolito took a perfect game 76 pitches into the seventh, and was just one of five pitchers to take a perfect game into the seventh in MLB postseason history. Ironically, just as the ESPN broadcast started flashing those perfect game stats, literally the pitch they did so, Tommy La Stella grounded a ball back through the box for the first hit of the game.
In case there were any early jitters for the White Sox hitters, dueling MVP candidates Tim Anderson and José Abreu both singled in the first.
Leading off the second inning, Engel took a 96 mph, thigh high, middle of the plate Luzardo fastball out for the first run of the game, on an 0-2 pitch at that. Engel seemed to say WHOA after making contact and watched the track of the ball, and he hit home plate after a brisk sprint around the bases with a loud LET'S GO!
An inning later, José Abreu knocked a two-run shot in roughly the same spot—about 30 feet farther.
Meanwhile, Giolito was dealing, as he took until the last out of the fifth before Jake Lamb barreled him up—but Luis Robert gobbled it up with a sliding catch in left-center.
Yasmani Grandal added an insurance run leading off the top of the eighth, crushing a home run deep to right field.
In the bottom of the eighth, the A's rallied to drive Giolito from the game after two hits and a walk against eight Ks through seven. Oakland answered the insurance run with an RBI ground out from Ramon Laureano, but Evan Marshall and Aaron Bummer otherwise limited the damage.
Alex Colomé came on for an efficient save, with a perfect ninth.
In the other game in Chicago's bracket, Houston knocked off the Twins, 4-1.
Actor (final credit: murdered by Albert Einstein in "Carnage Hall"), musician (Ethnocentric Republicans), and Nerf hoops champion, Wiffleball aficionado and onetime bilingual kindergarten teacher, Brett Ballantini also writes about baseball, basketball and sometimes hockey, for the NBA, MLB, NHL, and Slam, Hoop, Sporting News, the Athletic, SB Nation and others. He was CSN Chicago’s Blackhawks beat writer when their 49-year Stanley Cup drought ended in 2009-10, and took over the White Sox beat after that. He currently is the editor-in-chief of South Side Hit Pen and beat writer for Inside the Rays. He also wrote a book about Ozzie Guillén but is running out of space, so follow him on Twitter @BrettBallantini and he'll probably tell you even more about himself than you ever wanted to know.