CHICAGO (WGN) — The weather on White Sox Opening Day mirrored their franchise outlook heading into 2025. Murky, gray and dreary with little to be excited about besides the fact baseball season is all the way back.
Good thing the White Sox played well in spite of the melancholy conditions.
“We got a good team of coaches, catchers and some position players. We upgraded some hitting. It’s a new team. It’s the 2025 Sox and I’m really excited about it,” Korey Lee said ahead of the game.
Opening Day starter Sean Burke twirled a gem—six scoreless innings where he gave up three hits, no walks and struck out three on 73 pitches, while Austin Slater, Andrew Benintendi and Lenyn Sosa all slammed home runs for the South Siders in a lopsided Opening Day victory.
“Sean was great. Really starts with the fans showing up and bringing energy and Sean responds to that. All the guys respond to that,” first-year White Sox manager Will Venable said after the game. “Sean was amazing, worked through some trouble in there early and then the slider was really working for him. Some weak contact, early contact, which got him through six with a good pitch count.”
Paid attendance at Rate Field Thursday was 31,403.
Game Recap
Burke displayed some opening day jitters, but worked through them nicely early on Thursday.
Taylor Ward hit a 109-mile-per-hour rocket to center field for a double to lead off the game, but after a Nolan Schanuel groundout moved Ward to third, Burke hit Mike Trout with a pitch and struck out Jorge Soler and Tim Anderson back-to-back to leave runners stranded at the corners.
A similar deal applied to Burke in the second inning.
A pair of one-out singles from Logan O’Hoppe and Jo Adell followed by a Kevin Newman sac fly moved O’Hoppe to third.
This time around, Burke got the better of Ward and induced an inning-ending groundout to short to keep a clean sheet.
“He knows how to battle. Some tough innings early. Some baserunners got on. He was able to put up some zeroes, put us in a really really good spot to win the game,” Lee said after the game. “Outstanding opening day start from—I call him kid. He’s about two feet bigger than me. He showed us what he’s got and that’s the Sean Burke I know.”
The White Sox put three on the board in the bottom of the second, courtesy of a solo home run to left field from Austin Slater and a seeing-eye, hustle double to short left-center from Miguel Vargas that scored Korey Lee and Jacob Amaya with two outs.
“It felt great. Not a better way to start the season than that,” Slater said after the game of his home run. “[Yusei Kikuchi] was throwing a lot of off-speed pitches first inning. Took a first-pitch slider for a strike and then I was kind of waiting on it for the rest of the at-bat and was able to get one over the heart and pull it.”
From that point on, Burke settled in. The Massachusetts native retired 14 consecutive batters before being relieved by Penn Murfee to start the top of the seventh.
Murfee pitched a clean seventh inning before Jordan Leasure came on in the eighth.
Leasure induced a groundout from Adell to start the innings, before giving up a pinch-hit walk to former Sox third baseman Yoan Moncada. He was able to record one more out—a Ward flyout to right—before Schanuel singled to center, putting runners at first and third.
Mike Clevinger came in to face Mike Trout, who worked an eight-pitch walk before Clevinger struck out Soler to leave the bases loaded.
The White Sox added a five spot in the top of the ninth. Michael A. Taylor and Vargas hit a pair of singles to lead off the ninth, then after a Luis Robert Jr. pop out, Andrew Benintendi hit a 3-run home run to right field to make it 6-0.
Nick Maton worked a pinch-hit walk two batters later, and Lenyn Sosa smacked a two-run home run to left field to make it 8-0.
Nicky Lopez, the South Siders’ starting second baseman in 2024, then came on to record the final out of the inning.
O’Hoppe hit a two-out solo home run in the bottom of the ninth to erase the shutout before pinch hitter Kyren Paris struck out to end the game in an 8-1 White Sox victory.
Up Next
Game 2 of the Chicago White Sox’s Opening Day series against the Los Angeles Angels is set for 1:10 p.m. Friday. Jonathan Cannon gets the nod for the White Sox, while Jose Soriano will take the mound to start for the Angels.