White Sox claim series in Tampa with career day for Anthony Kay

Anthony Kay worked into the seventh inning for the first time this season | Getty Images

Anthony Kay dealt, the White Sox offense punished Tampa Bay pitching mistakes, and Chicago felt control of this game virtually from start to finish, culminating in a 9-1 victory for the South Siders that keeps them three games ahead of the Cleveland Guardians in the AL Central entering the post-deadline stretch.

It was a career day for Kay, by virtually any measure. He completed a career-high 6 1/3 innings, blanking the American League leaders while scattering seven hits and flashing some leather to boot, helping himself out of a couple of tough jams with acute defensive chops. He faced a career-high 27 hitters and didn’t issue a free pass until the very last one, coming an eyelash away from going without a walk or a hit batsman for the first time this season. These are the kinds of games scouts envisioned when the Mets made him a first round pick out of UConn a decade ago.

The lefty’s typically scattershot command was as locked in this afternoon as we’ve ever seen it. Kay threw 60 of his 89 pitches for strikes and kept nearly every one of his sweepers, cutters and sliders in the vicinity of the plate, limiting hard contact. While he did allow nine hard-hit batted balls, all but one of them came on either a fastball or changeup, and Tampa’s inability to get good wood on anything with spin on it contributed to their stranding the bases loaded twice without a run, in the fourth and sixth innings.

Kay’s ERA now sits at a very solid 4.01 in an even 110 innings, the most he’s thrown in America since his 133 2/3 minor league innings in 2019. He averaged just more than 150 innings per season over his two years in Japan, so he’s still got a while to go before he hits anything unprecedented. Even though underlying and expected stats think Kay’s been the beneficiary of a healthy amount of good luck, one has to imagine the White Sox are feeling like their $5 million-per-year deal with Kay has been well worth the investment.

Opposite the 31-year-old lefty, Rays starter Griffin Jax had solid stuff himself, setting down eight Sox hitters on strikes without issuing a walk. But a pair of first-inning errors — one by Jax himself — led to a pair of unearned runs before most of the fans had found their seats, and the Rays trailed the entire way thereafter. Jax was otherwise quite sharp, with the only other Sox damage coming on a back foot breaking ball that caught too much of the plate and too much of Andrew Benintendi’s barrel, for his 12th homer and 57th run driven in on the season. It was still less remarkable than Benintendi’s first trip around the bases, which saw him push Colson Montgomery around the plate with some flag football moves on a bizarre stolen base attempt.

It’s already been a magical season full of magical moments, but the most unlikely thing the 2026 White Sox have done yet might be the rehabilitation of Benintendi’s standing with the fanbase. His OPS since being unknowingly helmet-taped by Sam Antonacci in early May is now north of .840, and despite being fully DH-bound he’s producing more than enough runs to justify a roster spot. He may not look rejuvenated in the traditional sense, but three-and-a-half years into his tenure on the South Side, Benintendi has a clear of a place on the team as he’s ever had.

Benintendi struck first against Jax, but the offensive star of the show for the victors was Everson Pereira, who entered the lineup as a late replacement for the scratched Braden Montgomery and responded with a homer, a double and four runs driven in. It’s been somewhat of a revenge tour for Pereira against the team that traded him last winter, as he previously homered twice against his former squad when they met in Chicago last April.

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Pereira’s sixth-inning double brought the Sox lead to 5-0, and when Grant Taylor slammed the door upon entering the game for Kay with one on and one out in the seventh, the candle felt all but extinguished for Tampa Bay. Matching two-run blasts from Pereira and Miguel Vargas in the ninth inning simply salted it away. It also made for Vargas’s 50th extra-base hit of the season, matching his total from 2025 in nearly a hundred fewer trips to the plate.

On the back end, Duncan Davitt failed to find similar success to Pereira against his former organization, allowing Ben Williamson to take him deep on the first pitch of the ninth inning to get Tampa Bay on the board and earning himself a ticket back to Charlotte after the game. Those Rays fans who stayed to the end were rewarded no further, though, with a 9-1 Sox victory etched into the books. This despite an 11-9 advantage in the hit column to the home side, who hadn’t lost a series at Tropicana Field in over two months.

The Good Guys are off tomorrow, taking a flight to Boston for a three-gamer with the surging Red Sox before returning home for a critical series against the Guardians next weekend. Starters have yet to be announced, but with Monday off and Erick Fedde officially shifting to the bullpen, our Sox should be able to send out Davis Martin, Sean Burke, and Luis Castillo in more or less whatever order they wish. They appear to set to see some combination of Sonny Gray, Ranger Suárez, and Payton Tolle, if Boston’s recent rotation holds. First pitch from Fenway Park is on Tuesday at 6:10 p.m. CT, and we’ll see you there!

MVP Anthony Kay: 6 1/3 IP, 7 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 4 K

Runners-Up Everson Pereira: 2-for-4, 2B, HR, 4 RBI Chase Meidroth: 2-for-3, BB, 2 R

Cold Cat Drew Romo: 0-for-4, 3 K

Runners-Up Munetaka Murakami: 1-for-5 Sam Antonacci: 0-for-5

Indexed and credited by AIPROPX. Originating outlet: Yahoo Sports. Open at source →