Eloy Jimenez powers White Sox to victory with first homer of season

KANSAS CITY, Mo . — The Royals walked Jose Abreu intentionally to pitch to Eloy Jimenez.

It wasn’t a good choice.

With Adam Engel on third and Abreu on first as the go-ahead run, Jimenez launched a hanging 0-1 slider from right-hander Kyle Zimmer to give the White Sox a two-run lead in their 5-3 victory against the Royals Tuesday night at Kauffman Stadium.

It was an interesting strategy — Abreu’s MVP credentials notwithstanding — and Jimemez seemed to acknowledge Royals manager Mike Matheny’s decision as he stood and watched the ball travel 459-feet to left-center. It was Jimenez’s second hit of the night following his 0-for-4 season debut Monday in the Sox’ 4-3 loss. Jimenez also made a shoestring catch and threw a runner out at home.

Michael Kopech struck out the first three batters in the Royals lineup — Whit Merrifield, Carlos Santana and Salvador Lopez — in order in the ninth and Liam Hendriks pitched a perfect ninth to even the Sox’ four-game series with their division foes.

Engel watched the Jimenez homer disappear into the night from third base, the latest in a series of moments he and shortstop Tim Anderson are enjoying more than you might know.

Engel made his debut in 2017, a year after Anderson made his. They had been through a lot of losing through a rebuild, until last season when the Sox reached the postseason for the first time since 2018.

“It’s been rewarding as of late for sure,” Engel said. “Nobody wants to lose all those games. Me and Timmy have talked about it, we have lost too many games and come too far not to enjoy the success we’re having.”

To quote Ozzie Guillen, who managed the 2005 World Series champion Sox, “winning is fun and fun is winning.”

The Sox had a fun group, evident in the clubhouse and in the dugout even when they were losing in the rebuild years under manager Rick Renteria, but the joyous expressions are coming in bunches now as they enjoy an 8 1⁄2 game lead over the Indians in the American League Central.

“You look at this team, guys are winning and having so much fun,” Engel said. “It’s a characteristic of this team and I think it’s because we’ve been on the bottom and we know what it’s like to stink. Now that we are playing good baseball, it’s a lot of fun. I wouldn’t want to go back through the years and re-live that. But now that we’re on this side of it, it’s like man, this is so much better than being the worst team in the league.”

Jimenez provided a needed jolt to a Sox lineup that had scored only eight runs over their previous five games. The Sox had lost four of those.

Dylan Cease pitched six solid innings, allowed three runs (two earned) on six hits while walking one and striking out six. The walk, to Jorge Soler leading off the second, was converted into a run on Hunter Dozier’s sacrifice fly, which preceded right fielder Andrew Vaughn’s drop of Michael Taylor’s slicing liner in the Royals’ two-run second. Andrew Benintendi doubled and scored on Ryan O’Hearn’s single in the fourth.

Royals right-hander Brad Keller, who entered with a 5.84 ERA, held the Sox to four hits over seven innings, one of them Gavin Sheets’ sixth homer for the visitors’ only run against him.

Cease strung three scoreless innings before being pulled after six innings and 89 pitches, perhaps as manager Tony La Russa monitors his workload. Cease, whose career high is 141 1⁄3 innings between the Sox and the minor leagues in 2019, is at 108 2⁄3 innings.

“I’ve never had a full year in the show yet so it’s hard for me to say [what my limit would be],” Cease said. “I want to throw as many innings as I can.”

Reynaldo Lopez pitched a scoreless seventh in relief of Cease to earn his first win of the season.