CHICAGO – White Sox starter Sean Burke gave a blunt assessment of his command after walking five batters and giving up five earned runs against the Chicago Cubs on May 17.
“It was awful. It was terrible,” Burke said last weekend at Wrigley Field. “My last two starts, it’s been terrible. You can’t go out there and walk five people and expect to have good results.”
After that start, Burke said he needed to get back in sync with his delivery as he felt his arm was coming through too late. His three walks in his next start on Friday left some room for improvement, but overall, it was a strong bounce-back outing for the second-year right-hander.
In a 4-1 win over the Rangers at Rate Field, he pitched six innings with three hits, one earned run and six strikeouts on his way to his third win. That marked his sixth outing among 11 this season with one earned run or fewer, and the six strikeouts represent a season high.
The work on his delivery is beginning to pay off.
“Definitely, just the crispness and the sharpness of all the stuff felt a lot better,” Burke said. “Obviously still some work to do. I think it was a little bit inconsistent with the stuff I was trying to improve today so just continuing to put the same week of work in I put in this week into next week and keep riding with that.”
The White Sox provided Burke with run support in the third inning. It began with singles by Lenyn Sosa and Josh Rojas, and a Mike Tauchman walk loaded the bases. The first run scored on a Miguel Vargas walk, while Andrew Benintendi and Luis Robert Jr. drove in runs with a sacrifice fly and a single, respectively.
Between Benintendi and Tauchman returning from injury, Chase Meidroth and Edgar Quero making their major league debuts earlier in the season, and Andrew Vaughn and Tim Elko being sent down to Triple-A, Friday marked the first iteration of a new White Sox lineup.
“Guys that have been around, veteran guys who know how to control an at-bat, know how to execute a game plan. We saw that tonight,” Venable said. “It just kind of puts guys in better spots throughout the order. Happy to have those guys and put it all together tonight.”
