{"id":795950,"date":"2026-09-03T23:27:17","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T23:27:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/795950\/"},"modified":"2026-09-03T23:27:17","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T23:27:17","slug":"chicago-white-sox-lose-game-and-series-to-houston-astros","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/795950\/","title":{"rendered":"Chicago White Sox lose game and series to Houston Astros"},"content":{"rendered":"

HOUSTON \u2014 Luis Castillo has been with the Chicago White Sox for a little more than a month.<\/p>\n

In three of his five August outings after being acquired in a trade from the Seattle Mariners<\/a>, the right-hander allowed at least four runs.<\/p>\n

His September didn\u2019t get off to any better start.<\/p>\n

Castillo allowed six runs in four innings Thursday in a 6-2 loss to the Houston Astros in front of 24,155 at Daikin Park.<\/p>\n

Column: A must-wand game for the White Sox, Cubs SS Dansby Swanson is going stir crazy and other takeaways<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cLuis\u2019 been doing a really good job of trying to make adjustments, just haven\u2019t found the right one yet,\u201d manager Will Venable said. \u201cHe\u2019s going to continue to work and have a good few days before his next start and hopefully find some better results.\u201d<\/p>\n

Castillo surrendered six hits, struck out three, walked two and hit one batter in the 78-pitch performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to keep trying to figure this out,\u201d Castillo said through an interpreter.<\/p>\n

The Sox lost three of four in the series and went 3-4 on the trip to Minnesota<\/a> and Houston. Despite the loss, the first-place Sox (73-67) remain three games ahead of the second-place Cleveland Guardians (70-70) in the American League Central. The Guardians also lost Thursday, 6-3 to the Toronto Blue Jays.<\/p>\n

The Sox fell behind quickly Thursday. With two outs in the first, Castillo battled Isaac Paredes for 10 pitches, resulting in a walk. Two pitches later, Jose Altuve launched a very high fastball over the left-field wall for a two-run home run.<\/p>\n

The Sox responded with two runs in the second inning. Jake Rogers collected an RBI on an infield single. Sam Antonacci drove in the tying run with a single.<\/p>\n

\"AstrosAstros second baseman Jose Altuve and White Sox catcher Jake Rogers watch Altuve’s two-run home run in the first inning Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026, in Houston. (Alex Slitz\/Getty)<\/p>\n

Four of the team\u2019s seven hits came during the second. They had just one hit in the final six innings.<\/p>\n

\u201cGood job early on there, I thought it was really nice to see our guys answer there with some really good at-bats,\u201d Venable said. \u201cAnd then (Astros starter) Hunter (Brown) just settled down and did a really nice job, didn\u2019t really have a lot of answers for him.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust kind of stalled out there. But again these guys are going to work, doing the best that they can. I thought the energy was good, the focus was good. Just ran into a really good pitcher and couldn\u2019t get anything going.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Sox left runners on the corners in the second when Munetaka Murakami struck out to end the inning. Murakami went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts Thursday and finished 3-for-24 on the seven-game trip<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s always good times and bad times throughout the season,\u201d Murakami said through an interpreter. \u201cIt\u2019s really important just to keep focusing on the approach every single day. One trigger, one little key, hitting would really trigger the success.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"WhiteWhite Sox center fielder Tristan Peters tries to field a two-run triple by the Astros’ Daulton Varsho in the third inning Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026, in Houston. (David J. Phillip\/AP)<\/p>\n

The Astros took control of Thursday\u2019s game with four runs in the third inning. Paredes broke the tie with an RBI double. He later scored on Daulton Varsho\u2019s two-run triple. Christian Walker drove in Varsho with a single to center field, extending the Astros\u2019 lead to 6-2.<\/p>\n

Castillo worked around a leadoff double in the fourth, which turned out to be his final inning of the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cReally good job first couple of batters (of the game),\u201d Venable said. \u201cThen the walk and Altuve, obviously drove that ball out of the ballpark when it was like a foot and a half up out of the zone, so credit to him there. And then just couldn\u2019t stay off the barrel. Just a lot of hard contact.\u201d<\/p>\n

Castillo has a 7.52 ERA in six starts with the Sox, allowing 22 earned runs in 26 1\/3 innings. Venable said he had a conversation with Castillo after the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cHigh confidence,\u201d Venable said. \u201cI just had a conversation with him just to reaffirm that. We believe in him. He\u2019s here to help us. And ultimately his job is not to go out there and throw six scoreless innings, he needs to give us a chance to win. And there\u2019s been a couple in which we haven\u2019t been able to get there. But we believe that he can do that.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have confidence in him. We\u2019re going to continue to support him. We\u2019re going to continue to work. He\u2019s not somebody that you need to push to work and make adjustments. He\u2019s open to anything, and so we\u2019ve just got to keep working and find the right one for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Castillo said of the meeting that he wanted to point out to Venable, \u201cI know that I\u2019m struggling right now, and I have a responsibility that I owe to this team to perform because I came here to help this team. And I feel even though the results haven\u2019t been there, I\u2019ve been trying to find ways to help this team and perform the way that they want me to perform and the way that I know that I can do it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON \u2014 Luis Castillo has been with the Chicago White Sox for a little more than a month.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":795951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2389],"tags":[13378,18241,42,5,49,139,54,3211,1386,817,331,4,44882,73,17709,998],"class_list":["post-795950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston-astros","tag-al-central","tag-american-league-central","tag-astros","tag-baseball","tag-chicago-white-sox","tag-houston","tag-houston-astros","tag-houstonastros","tag-jake-rogers","tag-jose-altuve","tag-luis-castillo","tag-mlb","tag-mlb-playoff-race","tag-munetaka-murakami","tag-sam-antonacci","tag-will-venable"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117209703978503975","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=795950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/795951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=795950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=795950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=795950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}