There's a version of a 14-2 loss you shrug off as a bad night. Then there's the version the White Sox just lived through, which felt less like a bad night and more like a data point in a much bigger story about where these two teams are headed.
Start with Patrick Sandoval, because his story is too good to bury under the score. He got his first major league win in more than two years on Tuesday, striking out five and allowing two runs over five-plus innings. That's more than a nice line. This is a guy who missed a season and a half to Tommy John surgery, finally back on the mound, taking down a team that had mostly given him trouble. Sandoval entered the night with a career line of 0-3 with a 6.41 ERA in four career starts against the White Sox, including a 2-1 win in his Red Sox debut on July 9. He left it having flipped that history, a reminder of why Boston was willing to wait on him.
But the story of this game isn't really about one comeback arm. It's about six runs in the first inning, ignited by a Willson Contreras single and blown open by Caleb Durbin's grand slam, and about Wilyer Abreu adding two more solo homers on a night Boston hit four home runs as a team for the second game in a row. That's a lineup that had won 24 of its last 27 games and carried a five-game winning streak into Fenway, one it stretched to six with Tuesday's rout. You don't back into numbers like that.
This game looks less like a one-off disaster for Chicago and more like proof that the Red Sox, aggressive at the trade deadline in pursuit of catcher Adley Rutschman, weren't just buying a name for headlines. They're building a team playing like one of the best in baseball, and they're doing it without their newest addition. Rutschman is out with a wrist injury and wasn't even part of Tuesday's blowout. If Boston can do this missing the centerpiece of its deadline haul, that should worry everyone left on its schedule.
Credit where it's due: the White Sox arrived at Fenway in a genuinely surprising spot, holding a three-game lead in the AL Central entering this series after a good run against the Yankees and Rays. That's real, and it's not nothing for a team that hasn't seen the playoffs in years. But surprising division leads get tested by exactly this kind of series, and Tuesday's game was Chicago getting outclassed, extending its own skid against this particular opponent. Sean Burke draws a brutal follow-up assignment Wednesday against Sonny Gray, who's been about as good as any starter in the league this season, and there's no version of that matchup that looks easy after what just happened.
Over the Monster, Boston's fan-blog chronicler of this stretch, called Tuesday's game a beatdown in blunt terms. That's their voice, not a neutral verdict, but it's hard to argue with the spirit of it watching six first-inning runs and a grand slam turn this into a laugher by the middle innings. The White Sox have two more chances this week to prove Tuesday was the outlier and not the preview. Given how Boston has been playing, I wouldn't bet the division on it.
