Rodon sails along in White Sox' win over Astros

Is Carlos Rodon as good as Chris Sale? Not a chance.

Does Rodon have a chance to be as good as Sale? No question.

The night after Sale took the mound and buzzed through the Astros, Rodon came pretty close to following suit in the White Sox' 4-2 win Tuesday night at U.S. Cellular Field.

"I hope so," manager Robin Ventura said when asked if Rodon benefits from pitching behind Sale in the Sox' rotation. "I think this game has a lot of that, where if you get a guy you can cherry-pick off of, it's great. He should be doing that. Right behind him, it's probably a pretty good opportunity to sit there and watch a guy work like Chris and be able to come back out and hopefully repeat it.

"He's pretty luck to have a guy like that. Even with Q (White Sox starter Jose Quintana), you can sit there and learn a lot by watching these lefties pitch to certain teams, usually teams he's going to face."

Rodon (2-0) pitched 6 scoreless innings and allowed 4 hits to go with 5 strikeouts.

Jose Abreu's 2-run homer (No. 10) off Astros starter Dallas Keuchel in the sixth inning gave the Sox the early lead. Melky Cabrera's added a 2-run double in the eighth.

Rodon, a 22-year-old rookie, has given up only 3 earned runs in 24⅓ innings over his last 4 starts. He also is riding a scoreless streak of 11 innings.

"Getting more confident," said Rodon, the No. 3 overall pick in last year's draft. "I had some tough situations there early on, big play by Gordon (Beckham) defensively. Two big plays by (left fielder) Melky (Cabrera) out there, those line drives that were tough to catch.

"I just got some stuff done on the sides and felt more comfortable throwing the changeup, fastball, strikes, the slider."

Rodon would have gone deeper against the Astros, but his pitch count was at 116 after the sixth inning.

"Definitely a high pitch count, but he battled," Ventura said. "He got in some tight spots and for him it's just nice to see a guy go out and battle at that level. He wanted to go back out, but it's at a point where he was with the pitch count, high leverage that it was, you didn't want to let him go back out.

"But to get through it like that, with a lot of traffic out there, it was pretty impressive for a young guy. He kept his composure. He got into some tough spots and worked his way out of it."

As Rodon's career continues, he very well could be drawing more and more comparisons to Sale.

"Yeah, I was definitely pumped watching him pitch last night," Rodon said. "I'm just trying to get early contact, throw 6 or 7 innings for these guys and give the team a chance to win and stay light on the bullpen."