Michael Kopech took his recent groove to another level Friday night — almost a perfect one.
The hot-and-cold White Sox right-hander retired the first 16 Royals batters and faced the minimum 24 batters through eight shutout innings in a 2-0 victory before 20,329 fans at Guaranteed Rate Field.
Kopech (2-4) was dominant from the start and building up steam in the sixth with a strikeout of Hunter Dozier — his eighth strikeout and third in a row. But No. 8 hitter Michael Massey — the Brother Rice product — singled cleanly to right field to break up the perfect game and no-hitter. Jackie Bradley Jr. grounded into a 4-6-3 double play to end the inning.
He allowed one hit and struck out 10 on 98 pitches in eight innings. Kendall Graveman pitched a scoreless ninth.
The 27-year-old Kopech has been building up to this after a rough start in 2023. He was 0-3 with a 7.01 ERA in his first five starts. But in his last four starts, he’s now 2-1 with a 25 ERA — allowing 11 hits with 23 strikeouts in 24.2 innings.
The Sox parlayed four consecutive hits off Zack Greinke to score both of their runs in the fourth inning.
After Yoan Moncada and Andrew Vaughn singled leading off the inning, Gavin Sheets singled to right to score Moncada. Jake Burger singled, with Sheets being thrown out at second as Vaughn held at third. Romy Gonzalez hit a sacrifice fly to score Vaughn to make it 2-0.
Hendriks update
Closer Liam Hendriks threw 20-something pitches of live batting practice prior to Friday night’s game. But there is no timetable for his return after missing the first part of the season with cancer treatments.
“It was good,” White Sox pitching coach Ethan Katz said. “Everything was a step in the right direction. You don’t want to rush it. It’s a situation nobody has much experience with and we want to make sure we do the right thing by him to take care of him and get him back on track when he’s ready.”
Crochet’s debut
Garrett Crochet needed just seven pitches to get through his first inning since Oct. 1, 2021 following Tommy John surgery — a 1-2-3 inning vs. the Guardians on Thursday night.
“Seven easy pitches,” Katz said. “When a guy is missing time, he might get a little giddy and lose the strike zone. But it was easy work. It was a nice landing spot for hin to get his first appearance under his belt and get things going for him.”
Colas raking at AAA
Rookie Oscar Colas hit .211 (16-for-76) with one home run and seven RBIs in 25 games after making the team out of spring training. He’s hitting .362 (21-for-58) with one home run and 12 RBIs in 14 games with Class AAA Charlotte.
I can’t say that some of the struggles we hadn’t seen before,” White Sox assistant general manager Chris Getz said. “The transition to the major leagues can be difficult. There are a lot of adjustments beyond just playing baseball.
“More than anything was, ‘All right, let’s perhaps press the reset button a little bit and send him down to Charlotte, let him breathe.’ It is, oftentimes, easier to make the adjustments in your game at the minor league level than at the major league level. It did appear that he was trying so hard to get immediate results, and this game can be very brutal is you’re chasing results.”