Yasmani Grandal's 2-run double boosts White Sox past Pirates

Jun. 23—When the South Siders needed a big play, they went opposite.

Yasmani Grandal hit a two-out, two-run double to the North Side Notch in the fifth inning to boost the Chicago White Sox to a 4-3 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates on Wednesday afternoon before 10,406 at PNC Park.

"I feel like we could have done better," Pirates starter Chase De Jong said, "if I would have just executed a little bit better in some key situations."

The White Sox (44-30) took a 2-0 lead in the second inning when Leury Garcia hit a leadoff homer to right-center — his first of the season — and Luis Gonzalez doubled and scored on a Tim Anderson double.

The Pirates (26-46) tied it in the third, thanks to a double error by White Sox pitcher Dylan Cease (6-3). He bobbled Chase De Jong's bunt, then made an errant throw to first that allowed De Jong to take second and Michael Perez to advance to third.

De Jong said he caught too much barrel on the bunt and blamed JT Brubaker's bat, which he borrowed, for having "way too much pop."

"Honestly, once I put it down, I knew it was a bad bunt and it was going back to the pitcher, and I was just thinking about really running hard to break up the double play," De Jong said, "and, obviously, it worked out for us — but it was a bad bunt."

Perhaps so, but it was a good omen for the Pirates. Perez scored on Adam Frazier's groundout to second, and Ke'Bryan Hayes drove in De Jong with a tying single down the third-base line.

De Jong didn't have his tempo working until after a mound visit where pitching coach Oscar Marin reminded him to speed it up. De Jong got six strikeouts before giving up a leadoff single to Tim Anderson and a two-out single to Jake Lamb in the fifth.

With runners on first and third, Shelton pondered which side to pitch to the switch-hitting Grandal, knowing the White Sox had right-handed hitters on the bench in Yermin Mercedes and Andrew Vaughn. He stuck with the righty De Jong instead of lefty reliever Chasen Shreve.

De Jong was warned about his two-strike pitches and to play off Grandal's aggressive approach.

"Kind of figured that he was looking for the heater up since that's kind of my bread and butter, so I threw a lot of good breaking balls," De Jong said. "The last one wasn't the best one we threw. ... and, obviously, didn't get the result we wanted trying to go hard slider, get weak contact there. Left it up a little bit, and he found a gap."

Grandal drove the 3-2 slider to the 410-foot mark of the outfield, scoring Anderson and Lamb for a 4-2 lead. After that, Shreve replaced De Jong.

"Throughout that at-bat, he worked him well," Shelton said of De Jong, "and then the last pitch, we got to go strike-to-ball instead of strike-to-strike, and we left a ball over the middle of the plate and they capitalized on it."

The damage could have been worse. Gregory Polanco made a pair of nice plays off the wall followed by strong throws, the latter holding Grandal at third base on a Brian Goodwin single.

The Pirates started the bottom of the fifth with a Frazier single and Hayes walk and no outs before things went awry. Reynolds grounded into a double play at short to force out Hayes, and Colin Moran stranded Frazier at third with a groundout to second to end the inning without scoring a run.

Frazier and Hayes took it into their own hands in the seventh, when Frazier hit a one-out double to right and Hayes drove him in with a single to center to make it 4-3. Reynolds followed with a single to left, causing the White Sox to replace Codi Heuer with Aaron Bummer, who got Moran to fly out and Polanco to ground out.

"He wasn't able to drive it like he can, but he was still able to have a good at-bat, get a base hit and get the next man up," Hayes said of Reynolds. "As long as we're doing that, that's what we're trying to do — each batter, trying to put together good at-bats and move runners around.

"Hopefully, somebody can get that big two-out double."

After returning home amid a 10-game losing streak and three consecutive series sweeps, the Pirates won three of five games during the homestand with both losses coming by one run.

"We came home after not playing very well," Shelton said. "I thought we were more aggressive. We created those run-scoring opportunities throughout this homestand. Today we created, and we just didn't capitalize on them. It's something that we hadn't done on the road trip. We had them. Reynolds hit a hard double-play ball, that happens. But at least we're back to creating those opportunities, which is important."

Kevin Gorman is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Kevin by email at kgorman@triblive.com or via Twitter .