Foltynewicz, Braves shut down White Sox

So, how was the first half of the season for the Chicago White Sox?

"It was good, then it was bad, then it started getting good again," manager Robin Ventura said.

As far as descriptions go, Ventura was short, to the point, and very accurate.

The Sox were the talk of the American League after racing off to a 23-10 start, but they followed up with 23 losses in their next 33 games before closing the first half with a 12-10 record.

They had a chance to win their sixth straight series Sunday, a feat last accomplished in 2010.

But behind the strong pitching of Braves starter Mike Foltynewicz, a southwest suburban Minooka product, the White Sox lost 2-0 at U.S. Cellular Field and wound up dropping two of three to an Atlanta team that has the worst record (31-58) in the majors.

Discouraging yes, but the Sox hit the all-star break with a winning record (45-43) for the first time since 2012 (47-38).

"It's that simple, we were playing good baseball, then we didn't play good baseball, and now we're playing better baseball, Ventura said. "I think, for these guys, they put that out of their mind and you're continuing to go every day.

"Every day's a new day. I think once you've lived through it, you can see that the sun comes up the next day and you get back after it."

James Shields was on the mound Sunday, and he gave the White Sox every chance to win.

"I was being aggressive in the zone, attacking the hitters with the fastball early, trying to keep ahead in the count," Shields said after allowing 2 runs on 6 hits in 7⅔ innings. "I got behind in the count with a few hitters there, but really I only made two bad pitches today and unfortunately we lost the game."

Shields made a bad pitch to Jeff Francouer in the second inning and a bad pitch to Jace Peterson in the third. Both mistakes resulted in solo home runs, and that was the difference.

"You want to go as deep as you can in the game and try to put up a quality start, keep the team in the game and give us a chance to win," Shields said after delivering his third straight quality effort. "We definitely wanted to take that series and make it six in a row. We had a good stretch there, and we feel really good going into the break.

"Our team has been playing really well as of late, the last three, four weeks or so, and hopefully we'll hit our stride after the break."

With Foltynewicz on the mound Sunday for Atlanta, the White Sox barely hit anything.

Now with the Braves, former Sox catcher Tyler Flowers was asked about Foltynewicz before the series opener.

"Crazy arm," Flowers said. "God-given arm. He's got some of the best stuff I've ever seen. He's a guy where it's a work in progress, working with his mentality, trying to get him to grow in that area to allow his talent to come out and work for him.

"The only time he gets in trouble is when he gets frustrated, he starts overthrowing and gets flat in spots or falling behind guys."

Foltynewicz allowed 5 hits over 7 innings to go with 10 strikeouts, a career high.

"He was fantastic," Ventura said. "He has great stuff. Anytime you can get it up there around 100 (mph), it didn't fall off, either. The velocity, the control that he had and a good breaking pitch, it was tough. Our guys just couldn't get on it and anytime we got something going, he snuffed it out."