Cosart Battles Early, Harrel Falters Late As White Sox Take Series

Things looked like they could get out of hand early tonight against Chris Sale and the White Sox, but Jarred Cosart battled and kept the Astros in the game through the first six innings. Unfortunately, things unraveled in the seventh as Lucas Harrell continues to do his best to pitch his way into DFA land. Chris Sale once again dominated the Astros as he went eight plus and struck out 12 Astros.

Jarred Cosart continued to do what he's done in his first handful of starts for the Astros. And that is limit runs and struggle with command. The latter of the two issues was at the forefront tonight as Cosart walked five in six innings. He struck out four in his six innings of work and once again has more walks than strikeouts. His K/9 now stands at 4.41, but his BB/9 sits at 4.59. He lowered his ERA tonight to 1.50 with his six innings of one run ball, but has a much higher FIP of 3.84, and xFIP of 4.86, which signals that Cosart is in line for significant regression. Here's a look at how he fared inning by inning tonight.

Cosart's struggles with command tonight were evident from the onset as he walked the lead off batter, and followed that with back-to-back singles to load the bases. After getting a big Adam Dunn strikeout Cosart allowed a single to Paul Konerko to score the White Sox first an only run off of Cosart tonight. He was able to induce a double play off the bat of Avisail Garcia to evade further damage with the bases loaded.

Though he still struggled with command in the second he enjoyed a reasonably successful inning allowing a walk and inducing three fly outs. He allowed a single to Jeff Keppinger in the third, but was able to get out of the inning without allowing any other baserunners. Cosart followed that inning up by allowing a single and a walk in the fourth, but was able to work out of the inning after Cody Clark caught Avasail Garcia attempting a steal of second. Cosart allowed another walk in the fifth which raised his pitch count to the 90 range, but was once again able to escape without any further damage.

Cosart looked to be in trouble in the sixth after allowing back-to-back singles (neither hit all that hard) to open the frame. However he was able to coax a double-play off the bat of Jordan Danks, and a ground out from Josh Phegley after his fifth walk of the night came against Dayan Viciedo.

All things considered Cosart did a magical job of keeping the White Sox off the board tonight considering the amount of traffic that he allowed. He battled to say the least, especially considering the amount of baserunners that he allowed tonight.

Lucas Harrell relieved Cosart in the seventh with the score tied at one and things got ugly quick. Harrell would allow four runs in the frame that was capped by a three run homer from Avisail Garcia. His final line on the night was two innings, three hits, five runs, three walks, one homerun, and no strikeouts. Just not a good night to say the least.

The Astros were not able to generate much offense tonight against Chris Sale and the White Sox. As mentioned above Sale once again dominated the Astros by striking out 12 in eight plus innings. His only blip of the night came on a Chris Carter blast to left. Carter was the only Astro who seemed to have any kind of answer for Sale tonight as he also drilled a double off the left field wall that almost went for a home run as well. Other than Carter, Matt Dominguez, Jake Elmore, and Jonathan Villar each added a single. Other than that the Astros offense was unable to get anything else going.

The Astros will host the Seattle Mariners tomorrow night at Minute Maid Park as Erasmo Ramirez will take on Jordan Lyles.