{"id":820051,"date":"2026-05-25T01:11:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T01:11:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/820051\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T01:11:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T01:11:17","slug":"chicago-white-sox-3-takeaways-from-san-francisco-giants-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/820051\/","title":{"rendered":"Chicago White Sox: 3 takeaways from San Francisco Giants series"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 Rafael Devers hit a tie-breaking grand slam in the fifth inning against Chicago White Sox reliever Grant Taylor on Sunday, leading the San Francisco Giants to an 8-5 victory in front of a sellout crowd of 40,220 at Oracle Park.<\/p>\n

It was the second slam in as many days for the Giants, following one by Harrison Bader in the fifth inning of Saturday\u2019s game.<\/p>\n

Chase Meidroth and Miguel Vargas homered for the Sox in the loss.<\/p>\n

Here are three takeaways after the Sox (26-26) dropped two of three in the series.<\/p>\n

1. Command hiccups were costly for Sox starter Noah Schultz.
\n\"ChicagoChicago White Sox pitcher Noah Schultz throws during the first inning of a baseball game against the San Francisco Giants in San Francisco, Sunday, May 24, 2026. (AP Photo\/Jed Jacobsohn)<\/p>\n

Sox starter Noah Schultz walked one and hit Luis Arraez twice in his four-plus innings on Sunday. And the Giants capitalized in each instance.<\/p>\n

He walked Willy Adames leading off the first. Adames later scored in the inning on a double. Schultz hit Arraez with one out in the third. Casey Schmitt followed with a two-run home run, giving the Giants a 4-1 lead.<\/p>\n

The Sox fought back to tie the score at 4. Schultz surrendered a double to Adames and then hit Arraez again to begin the fifth. That was his final batter. Taylor entered and walked Schmitt. Devers followed with the grand slam, giving the Giants an 8-4 lead.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust some command issues got him there,\u201d manager Will Venable said of Schultz\u2019s outing. \u201cThey did a good job of putting the ball in play hard. Some soft contact. They just made a lot of contact. Leadoff walk there to start things.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe grinded there, battled, and did everything he could. Just command, just not where he wanted it to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schultz allowed six runs on six hits with one walk and one strikeout while falling to 2-4.<\/p>\n

The left-hander described the performance as \u201cnot great.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNot giving the team a great chance to win,\u201d Schultz said.<\/p>\n

2. History was made the tough way on Friday.
\n\"SamSam Antonacci of the Chicago White Sox gets hit in the back of the leg by a pitch from Trevor McDonald of the San Francisco Giants in the top of the fourth inning at Oracle Park on May 22, 2026, in San Francisco. (Thearon W. Henderson\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Sam Antonacci found a painful way into the record books on Friday, becoming the first Sox player to be hit by a pitch twice in one inning. He was plunked by Trevor McDonald and Ryan Borucki in the fourth inning.<\/p>\n

\u201cSam was destined to be the first one,\u201d Sox starter Davis Martin<\/a> said on Friday.<\/p>\n

Antonacci was hit by a pitch 10 times over his first 33 career games. According to Stats Perform, that\u2019s the second-fastest pace in major-league history behind Miguel Amaya of the Cubs (29 games) in 2023.<\/p>\n

He scored both times after being hit during the nine-run fourth inning on Friday, helping the Sox to a 9-4 victory<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust any way imaginable to get the job done, he\u2019s going to get the job done,\u201d Martin said of Antonacci. \u201cAnd everybody knows it. That\u2019s the case. And to spearhead that lineup, I couldn\u2019t think of anybody better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Antonacci entered Sunday tied for the major-league lead with the 10 hit by pitches.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a skill that he has developed,\u201d Venable said on Saturday. \u201cIt\u2019s really interesting how he just stays in there and gets hit. He\u2019s not like leaning into stuff. He just ends up getting hit a lot.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very interesting, but it\u2019s definitely a skill set.\u201d<\/p>\n

3. Execution just wasn\u2019t as crisp as the Sox finished 2-4 on the trip.
\n\"ChicagoChicago White Sox’s Tristan Peters runs home to score against the San Francisco Giants during the fifth inning of a baseball game Saturday, May 23, 2026, in San Francisco. (AP Photo\/Jeff Chiu)<\/p>\n

The Sox trailed 2-1, but threatened in the second inning on Sunday after a double by Derek Hill gave the team runners on second and third with one out.<\/p>\n

Tristan Peters executed a bunt, but the Giants\u2019 first baseman Schmitt got to the ball quickly \u2014 and Colson Montgomery remained at third base as San Francisco got the out at first.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think (Montgomery) thought it was right back to the pitcher, so it was just a read thing,\u201d Venable said. \u201cIn that situation, it is a safety (squeeze) so you trust the player to make a read. In that situation, you\u2019ve probably got to give it a shot. But that\u2019s a play we work on, we\u2019ll continue to learn from.\u201d<\/p>\n

Luisangel Acu\u00f1a grounded out to third baseman Matt Chapman to end the inning.<\/p>\n

Down 4-1 in the fourth, Peters bunted again and moved runners to second and third with a sacrifice. Acu\u00f1a collected an RBI on a sacrifice fly to right field. Giants starter Robbie Ray rebounded by striking out Meidroth to strand a runner on third.<\/p>\n

The Sox made Ray pay for back-to-back walks to begin the fifth, converting them into runs. But overall, the Sox went 1-for-8 with runners in scoring position on Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did a good job of drawing the walks (eight total), just got to be able to cash in,\u201d Venable said.<\/p>\n

The execution, whether it was losing pop-ups in the sun<\/a> defensively on Saturday or leaving runners on base on Sunday, was just a little off for the Sox during the last two games of the series.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter maybe not our cleanest baseball, to come in and have a chance to go 3-3 on a road trip, and not able to get it done, so that\u2019s disappointing,\u201d Venable said. \u201cSome stuff that we didn\u2019t execute situationally where we did before, so we\u2019ll continue to go to work on that stuff.<\/p>\n

\u201cA road trip in which we were a win away from feeling pretty good about it, but weren\u2019t able to get it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 Rafael Devers hit a tie-breaking grand slam in the fifth inning against Chicago White Sox…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":820052,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,1274,29987,81504,5386,1818,1822,37843,275560,1275,210045,13250],"class_list":["post-820051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-white-sox","tag-colson-montgomery","tag-grand-slams","tag-il","tag-illinois","tag-mlb-baseball","tag-noah-schultz","tag-sam-antonacci","tag-san-francisco-giants","tag-tristan-peters","tag-will-venable"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116632558187298463","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=820051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/820052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=820051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=820051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=820051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}