Astros fizzle, White Sox romp, 12-3

When Jeremy Peña led off the game with a homer off Erick Fedde, it seemed to portend a rough day for the White Sox. It portended wrong.

It only took two Sox batters to turn things around. Sam Antonacci led off the bottom of the first with a walk, and then Munetaka Murakami started his celebration of his own bobblehead day.

Peña tied the game at two with another solo shot in the third, so Murakami struck back by grounding in a run in the bottom of that inning to make it 3-2. Then in the fourth, Braden Montgomery decided to at least stall of the next Astro dinger for an inning.

Still, Taylor Trammell did the solo-shot bit for Houston in the fifth to tie it again in the fifth and it looked like the Astros would have another big sixth inning as they’d had the first two games of the series, but they left the bases loaded and were apparently so discouraged by the failure they gave up on offense for the rest of the day.

Not so the White Sox, who hadn’t hit a homer in a week and decided to make up for that all in one day. Miguel Vargas went deep in the bottom of the sixth to make it 5-3, and then it was time to sit back and have fun.

Chase Meidroth parked one to lead off the seventh, and the bobblehead man drove in two more runs with a single:

Then Andrew Benintendi decided there might as well be a cheap run, too, and blooped a 68 mph RBI to make it 9-3, White Sox.

Not enough long ball? Of course not. Even .171 hitter Junior Perez, a defensive replacement, got in on the action with a two-run shot. And that gave one more at-bat to the man of the hour … and day … and he showed his appreciation.

Make that six RBIs on the day for the bobblehead, and five long balls for the Sox — a season high.

The final score was 12-3, running Chicago’s record to 55-49 with the Yankees heading to town tomorrow and putting Gerrit Cole on the mound for the opener of a four-game series. With the Guardians losing to the Rays (understandable) for their fifth loss in a row and the Tigers falling to the Royals again (huh?), the lead in the AL Central is now 2 1/2 over Cleveland, 3 1/2 over Minnesota, and six over Detroit.