Pirates Complete Sweep, White Sox Go Quiet in 2-0 Loss

The White Sox didn’t score Thursday night. They barely even hit.

Pittsburgh finished a three-game sweep at Rate Field with a 2-0 win, holding Chicago to two hits and sending the club on the road with its lead in the American League Central down to a game and a half. Jared Jones took a no-hitter into the seventh. Oneil Cruz supplied both Pirate runs. The Sox (75-71) have lost eight of 11.

This was the series in three scores: 9-3 on Tuesday, 4-2 on Wednesday, 2-0 on Thursday. Nineteen runs allowed, and only five scored. A first-place team treated like a soft landing for a Pirates club that arrived at .500 and left with four straight wins.

Hagen Smith made his first major-league start and, for what it’s worth, he did his job pretty well. The 23-year-old lefty worked two scoreless innings as an opener: two hits, no walks, three strikeouts, 33 pitches. Erick Fedde took over in the third and lasted 5.1 innings.

The damage came from O’Neil Cruz. He hit a monster home run to center in the fourth, his 18th of the year, and singled home Jared Triolo in the eighth after Bryan Hudson inherited the inning. Fedde was charged with both runs on four hits. He is 8-9.

Jared Jones was the problem that Chicago never solved. He walked the leadoff man in the third and fourth innings, and then retired the next stretch of Sox hitters until Colson Montgomery doubled off the right-field wall with two outs in the seventh. It was the Sox first hit in the ballgame.

Jones finished with seven innings of work, one hit, two walks, and eight strikeouts on 90 pitches. Luke Weaver struck out two in a clean eighth. Mason Montgomery allowed a Randal Grichuk pinch single in the ninth and then closed the door for his 12th save of the season.

“It was a tough day obviously,” manager Will Venable said. “You’ve got to give some credit to these arms that they have over here, which are really good. We saw some really good fastballs this series. Today was the same thing with Jones where he was really aggressive with the fastball, saw a lot of swings and misses, foul balls, and then had a really good slider too. Just weren’t able to make the adjustments and move the ball forward.”

The cold stretch is no longer a blip you can talk around. Eight losses in 11 games. A home sweep against a team that was fighting to get back to even. Cleveland sat Thursday at 74-73. The Sox still lead the division. The math is less comfortable than it was when this homestand started.

.Next is St. Louis for three, then Cleveland on the road. Sixteen games left.

The White Sox are still in first place. If they want to remain there, they will to start playing better baseball.