Chicago White Sox lose game and series to Houston Astros after another rough outing from Luis Castillo
HOUSTON — Luis Castillo has been with the Chicago White Sox for a little more than a month.
In three of his five August outings after being acquired in a trade from the Seattle Mariners, the right-hander allowed at least four runs.
His September didn’t get off to any better start.
Castillo allowed six runs in four innings Thursday in a 6-2 loss to the Houston Astros in front of 24,155 at Daikin Park.
“Luis’ been doing a really good job of trying to make adjustments, just haven’t found the right one yet,” manager Will Venable said. “He’s going to continue to work and have a good few days before his next start and hopefully find some better results.”
Castillo surrendered six hits, struck out three, walked two and hit one batter in the 78-pitch performance.
“We’re going to keep trying to figure this out,” Castillo said through an interpreter.
The Sox lost three of four in the series and went 3-4 on the trip to Minnesota and Houston. Despite the loss, the first-place Sox (73-67) remain three games ahead of the second-place Cleveland Guardians (70-70) in the American League Central. The Guardians also lost Thursday, 6-3 to the Toronto Blue Jays.
The Sox fell behind quickly Thursday. With two outs in the first, Castillo battled Isaac Paredes for 10 pitches, resulting in a walk. Two pitches later, Jose Altuve launched a very high fastball over the left-field wall for a two-run home run.
The Sox responded with two runs in the second inning. Jake Rogers collected an RBI on an infield single. Sam Antonacci drove in the tying run with a single.
Four of the team’s seven hits came during the second. They had just one hit in the final six innings.
“Good job early on there, I thought it was really nice to see our guys answer there with some really good at-bats,” Venable said. “And then (Astros starter) Hunter (Brown) just settled down and did a really nice job, didn’t really have a lot of answers for him.
“Just kind of stalled out there. But again these guys are going to work, doing the best that they can. I thought the energy was good, the focus was good. Just ran into a really good pitcher and couldn’t get anything going.”
The Sox left runners on the corners in the second when Munetaka Murakami struck out to end the inning. Murakami went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts Thursday and finished 3-for-24 on the seven-game trip.
“There’s always good times and bad times throughout the season,” Murakami said through an interpreter. “It’s really important just to keep focusing on the approach every single day. One trigger, one little key, hitting would really trigger the success.”
The Astros took control of Thursday’s game with four runs in the third inning. Paredes broke the tie with an RBI double. He later scored on Daulton Varsho’s two-run triple. Christian Walker drove in Varsho with a single to center field, extending the Astros’ lead to 6-2.
Castillo worked around a leadoff double in the fourth, which turned out to be his final inning of the game.
“Really good job first couple of batters (of the game),” Venable said. “Then the walk and Altuve, obviously drove that ball out of the ballpark when it was like a foot and a half up out of the zone, so credit to him there. And then just couldn’t stay off the barrel. Just a lot of hard contact.”
Castillo has a 7.52 ERA in six starts with the Sox, allowing 22 earned runs in 26⅓ innings. Venable said he had a conversation with Castillo after the game.
“High confidence,” Venable said. “I just had a conversation with him just to reaffirm that. We believe in him. He’s here to help us. And ultimately his job is not to go out there and throw six scoreless innings, he needs to give us a chance to win. And there’s been a couple in which we haven’t been able to get there. But we believe that he can do that.
“We have confidence in him. We’re going to continue to support him. We’re going to continue to work. He’s not somebody that you need to push to work and make adjustments. He’s open to anything, and so we’ve just got to keep working and find the right one for him.”
Castillo said of the meeting that he wanted to point out to Venable: “I know that I’m struggling right now, and I have a responsibility that I owe to this team to perform because I came here to help this team. And I feel even though the results haven’t been there, I’ve been trying to find ways to help this team and perform the way that they want me to perform and the way that I know that I can do it.”