New York Yankees at Chicago White Sox

Ryan Weathers (4-7, 4.03 ERA) got the ball for New York looking to close the series out on a high note, going up against Sean Burke (7-5, 3.04 ERA), who's been the best story in the White Sox rotation all July.

Burke has been nails lately — a sub-2.00 ERA over his last several outings coming into Thursday, with the strikeouts piling up right alongside the results. Chicago's lineup has been shorthanded most of the summer, missing Kyle Teel behind the plate and Austin Hays in left, but a rotation this good buys a beat-up roster some cover.

New York, meanwhile, is still trying to win games without Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton in the middle of the order, and Cody Bellinger's hamstring strain just knocked out another piece of the lineup. That's a lot of thump to replace, and it showed up again in a one-run final.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	R	H	E
NYY	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	1	6	0
CWS	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	1	2	6	1

This one had series-split written all over it from the jump. The Yankees rolled in game 1, 9-5, then survived a tight one in game 2, 3-2 — putting Chicago in a 0-2 hole in its own building. The White Sox answered by grinding out a 12-inning walk-off, 6-5, on Wednesday, and carried that momentum straight into the finale.

Thursday played out like the rest of the series: nothing for nine innings, then chaos late. Both offenses were held scoreless into extras before New York scratched across a run, and Chicago answered right back to walk off with the 2-1 win. It's the kind of finish that fits this stretch of White Sox baseball — nobody's blowing anybody out, but Chicago keeps finding a way to be the last team standing.

For the Yankees, it's a series split on the road against a team fighting for its own playoff footing, with the injury list doing plenty of the talking about why the offense has been inconsistent. For the White Sox, taking 2 of the last 3 to even the series is a legitimate feel-good moment, and Burke's continued emergence gives them a real answer at the top of the rotation heading into August.

Sources