Grady Sizemore earns first win as White Sox beat Yankees

CHICAGO — Grady Sizemore approached his postgame presser with soaking wet hair and his uniform shirt covered in various substances, some of which were absolutely unidentifiable.

Such are the trappings of winning baseball, or in this case, Sizemore picking up his first victory as White Sox interim manager via a 12-2 thumping of the Yankees on Monday night at Guaranteed Rate Field. A little grease and grime, and whatever else was used, was worth the tremendous effort.

“From protein shakes to I think I tasted some beer, some Gatorade, I don’t know,” said Sizemore of what went into his victory dousing/celebration. “Maybe some [shaving] cream. I got a little bit of everything.”

“Everything from cereal to ketchup to baby powder,” added first baseman Gavin Sheets of the traditional first victory honors. “He’s probably taking three showers tonight, but I think he enjoyed every second of it.”

This victory ended a three-game losing streak for the White Sox and a franchise-record 12 straight losses at home while raising their record to 2-20 since the All-Star break. They also ended an 0-14 season-long funk on Mondays and set a season high for runs.

Anyone watching the first four innings of the game, though, would have been surprised by the outcome. Rookie Ky Bush, making his second career start, walked seven (one intentionally) and yielded six hits over 4 2/3 innings but allowed only two runs. His evening started with walks issued to Alex Verdugo and Juan Soto and Aaron Judge’s double laced to left, scoring one.

But Bush managed to navigate 97 pitches (55 strikes). With the bases loaded and two outs in the second, Judge hit a Statcast-projected 347-foot drive to right with the possibility of career home run No. 300. It ended up 5 or 6 feet short of the wall, hauled in by Corey Julks.

“Just keep going pitch by pitch, compete, attack and not let the previous at-bat affect you,” Bush said. “Just grind through it with the next guy. Tried to keep that mentality the whole time.”

“He didn’t back down without a fight,” said catcher Korey Lee, who launched his 10th homer among his two hits. “We went out and talked to him. In between innings, he was cool, calm and collected. It was a great outing and a great learning experience on his end.”

Luis Gil (12-6) struck out 14 over six innings when he beat the White Sox on May 18 at Yankee Stadium, but the White Sox got to him for four runs on seven hits over four innings Monday. They scored six in the seventh with six straight hits off reliever Enyel De Los Santos, capped by Brooks Baldwin’s three-run homer.

Sheets matched a career high with four hits and drove in four, while Andrew Vaughn added four hits of his own. The White Sox set season highs with 18 hits, nine extra-base hits and seven doubles.

“They have been having great at-bats,” Sizemore said. “They’ve been battling just showing a lot there. Playing together, feeding off each other, and they just keep competing. Just a great job all around.”

“We had a really good game plan. We stuck to it and we fed off each other,” Sheets said. “Obviously, hitting is contagious, and we wanted to get big hits for each other. We were able to do that for the first time in a while. I think Friday night was a big step forward, too.”

On Friday, the White Sox rallied from a 7-0 deficit against the Cubs to trim the deficit to 7-6 with the bases loaded, two outs and Vaughn facing Héctor Neris in the ninth. Vaughn just missed a pitch and flied out to center as the game-ender, but the energy already had begun flowing under Sizemore.

“It’s been a lot of positive vibes,” Sheets said. “Everybody can see it. Everybody can see the dugout, everybody can see the way guys are rallying around each other. This is what the fans deserve. This is what we want to give them. We want to give them a good brand of baseball, a high-energy brand of baseball.”

High energy is great. Wins feel even better, better than the myriad individual Sizemore accomplishments as an All-Star player.

“Right now this feels better than anything,” Sizemore said. “I love those guys. It’s such a team effort tonight. Definitely more animated and more happy and just rooting those guys on than I ever was for myself. This one, it’s the top right now.”