Three-peat of pain as the White Sox hit 100 losses in a Bronx beatdown

The Yankees sure didn’t play like they had a hangover from their postseason celebration last night. They rolled out of bed and steamrolled the White Sox this evening, all the damage done in the second and third innings. New York starter Max Fried made sure Chicago never sniffed a comeback. Bronx Bombers 8, South Siders 1. That’s the story.

How did opener Fraser Ellard do, you ask? The southpaw didn’t even last an inning. In the first, he walked the bases loaded with nobody out, and somehow managed to wriggle out of it. He got Giancarlo Stanton to fly out and Ben Rice to whiff. Then it was time for Jonathan Cannon, fresh off the plane from Charlotte, to bail him out by fanning Paul Goldschmidt. Disaster averted, but only just.

In the bottom of the second inning, Cannon’s luck ran out. Anthony Volpe doubled, Trent Grisham walked, and then up strolled Aaron Judge, who absolutely obliterated a first-pitch fastball for his 50th homer of the year. Four straight seasons with 50-plus for the Captain, now shoulder to shoulder with Babe Ruth on the Yankees’ all-time list. That’s some rare air there.

For the third frame, it was the same story. Rice tripled, Goldschmidt singled, Jazz Chisholm Jr. doubled, and suddenly it’s 5-1. The righthander finally settled down for a couple of innings, only giving up a single to Bellinger, but the damage was done. Cannon’s final line: five runs, six hits, a walk, six strikeouts. It was definitely not his night. Well, actually, if you’re keeping track, it hasn’t been his night since early July.

Tyler Alexander mopped up for two innings after that. He held the fort in the sixth and seventh and, fortunately, kept the Yankees from piling on. Cam Booser got the ball for the eighth, and he was downright awful. With two outs, he walked McMahon, then Grisham launched a two-run shot to center. Judge followed with his second bomb of the night, and this one was now well out of reach, 8-1.

The Good Guys managed their lone run in the second. Miguel Vargas singled, Colson Montgomery nudged him to third with a base hit, and Lenyn Sosa cashed him in with a sac fly. Corey Julks reached on a McMahon misfire, but Brooks Baldwin flew out, and Taylor whiffed. That was the sum total of the offense.

Fried put the Sox bats in a sleeper hold the rest of the way, giving up just two more hits: a Baldwin single and a Montgomery ground-rule double. Chicago went 0-for-5 with RISP. In the final two frames, the Yankee bullpen coughed up only a two-out single to Sosa in the ninth, and the Pale Hose limped to their third straight 100-loss campaign.