Has there ever been an MLB game in which a run was scored in all 17 or 18 half-innings of play? If there has, it wasn’t this one, but it sure felt like it for a few innings there.

Brandon Marsh’s scorching-hot series and season continued in the final game of the three-game set between the White Sox and Phillies, a 9-5 win for the latter that boosted the latter’s record to 35-30 and dropped the former’s to 34-31.

Using an opener is a perfectly sound strategy. The Sox have had plenty of success using it this year, and they did last year as well. This was not one of those days, as the combination of Tyler Gilbert and David Sandlin allowed four earned runs over four innings, rendering the time-through-the-order advantage of the opener strategy totally moot.

A few particularly cantankerous veterans notwithstanding, most starters these days don’t seem to take much issue by being used behind an opener now and then, but I’m willing to bet most starters don’t like the idea of not entering the game with a clean inning. That’s what happened to Sandlin, who wound up entering the game probably a little sooner than Will Venable intended when opener Gilbert allowed a run and two hits within the first four batters of the game. Sandlin limited the damage, but he never quite managed to get into a rhythm, ultimately finishing with three earned runs over three innings of work, another somewhat disappointing follow-up to his brilliant MLB debut.

Sandlin wasn’t terrible at locating his pitches, throwing 63% strikes and punching out six hitters, but as I noted in the game thread, Philadelphia is not a team that allows many mistakes to get past them. One could argue that the pitch that Rafael Marchán launched into the right field seats wasn’t even a mistake, as it looked like he simply got the pitch he was looking for on the two-run homer that put the Phillies back in the lead in the second inning:

On the other side of the ball, Tristan Peters just continued to do his thing. Another solid day at the plate left him hitting .307/.365/.448 at game’s end, and he now leads the team with 15 doubles and is playing at a remarkable 5-WAR pace on the year.

From the No. 7 spot in the order, Peters served as the sparkplug and engineer for Chicago’s first three runs of the day, first on a second-inning double that moved Jacob Gonzalez to third base, where he later scored before Peters himself came around on Sam Antonacci’s single. An inning later, Peters was the beneficiary of the kind of play the Sox are used to being on the wrong side of: His jammed two-strike swing resulted in a ball in play at just 82 mph, and while Aaron Nola might have recovered from the ball dropping between shortstop Bryson Stott and left fielder Marsh, but he didn’t get the chance. Marsh overran the ball, letting it squirt past him, opening a window for Chase Meidroth to motor around the bases and tie the game at three:

Of course, Marsh took the run right back the next inning, launching his eighth homer of the year to give the Phillies the lead for third time in three innings. So remains the way of the White Sox.

Nola’s stuff was zig-zagging like an alligator was chasing it, but he just wasn’t able to throw enough fastballs in the strike zone to avoid getting himself into trouble nearly every inning. It’s been quite a rough ride for Nola this season, as the 33-year-old entered the afternoon was a 5.55 ERA despite throwing six and five innings of two-run ball over his last two starts. After a nightmare-fuel 2025 resulted in a career-worst 6.01 ERA, Nola hasn’t been able to quite get the juice back on the knuckle curve that made him one of the most reliable workhorses in baseball between 2017 and 2024. Nola’s locations were actually pretty good, but the Sox chased at just 36% of the curveballs he threw, which makes it impossible to work with any kind of efficiency when you throw as many of them as Nola does.

Nola was chased from the game at the 93-pitch mark in the fifth inning. He was ultimately charged with the two runners he left on base, as lefty reliever Tim Mayza allowed pinch-hitter Randal Grichuk powered the fifth lead change in the first five innings of the game with a sharp single the other way. Grichuk is now hitting .308/.333/.692 as a member of the Sox, driving in a hefty 17 runs in just barely more than 50 trips to the plate.

I’m trying to find ways to bring this game alive without resorting to a simple blow-by-blow recap, but the bullpens did not make it easy today. By the time the fifth inning concluded, neither starter remained in the game, and a series of hits from the bottom end of the Philadelphia order pushed them to snatch a lead for the fourth time in five innings.

Even in blowing leads, though, this 2026 White Sox team is showing more and more promise by the game. Though the Phillies ended that fifth inning with a 7-5 advantage, it likely would have been a lot worse were it not for a brilliant inning-ending double play among Meidroth, Miguel Vargas and Colson Montgomery that kept the game within reach:

The alignment shuffling triggered by Grichuk’s pinch-hit appearance saw Meidroth finish the game with his fourth appearance at shortstop this season. While he simply doesn’t have the arm to play the 6-spot on any kind of regular basis, his ability to spell Montgomery if need be gives Venable the option to move Sam Antonacci into the infield while keeping all three of them in the lineup, flexibility that ought to be quite useful moving forward.

The crux of the game may have come in the fourth at-bat of the sixth inning, an impressive nine-pitch battle between Phillies reliever José Alvarado and pinch-hitter Edgar Quero. Trailing 7-5, a Sox rally — spurred by what else but an Antonacci hit-by-pitch, his league-leading 15th of the year — brewed with runners on first and second with one out. Quero battled valiantly against the high-octane lefty, fouling off six pitches and coming mere feet away from changing the lead yet again with a would-be home run. On the very next pitch, he kept his drive in fair territory, but a brilliant catch from who else but Marsh kept everyone where they were.

When Montgomery proceeded to strike out to end the inning, Chicago’s comeback momentum seemed to have stalled. Bryan Hudson took over for Tyler Davis, allowing an additional two runs in his partial inning of work, and Orion Kerkerinf took over for Alvarado, keeping a clean scoresheet as the Sox went down in the seventh.

Righthander and former starter Trevor Richards came on to soak up the remaining innings for the Sox, who went down more or less without a fight on the offensive side of the last three innings. You can’t shock the world every day, I suppose.

With a 2-4 road trip now in the books, the South Siders are off tomorrow before showing up at home for a three-game bout with the NL-best Atlanta Braves. Erick Fedde gets the ball for the series opener, with Davis Martin potentially getting a bit of an extra breather after his first genuinely rough start of the campaign. First pitch is at 6:40 p.m. CT, and we’ll see you there!