Montgomery breaks out, goes 3-for-5 in second career game

DENVER -- Colson Montgomery picked up speed like a runaway freight train in his second career game, pacing the White Sox to a 10-3 win over the Rockies, securing the three-game weekend set and setting up a potential sweep on Sunday.

Montgomery, Chicago's No. 5 prospect according to MLB Pipeline, got his first big league hit in the first frame, driving an RBI triple to center to plate Brooks Baldwin. He’s the first Sox player to hit a triple for his first big league hit since Tyler Saladino on July 11, 2015.

“It was awesome,” manager Will Venable said of Montgomery’s night. “He put some really good swings on some pitches with the quality of at-bats. Happy that he got his first knock, and obviously with some slug there. It was a great day for Colson.”

The rookie shortstop went on to collect a pair of singles, to right in the third and to center in the seventh, ending the night 3-for-5.

“I hit pretty good, and I knew we're in Colorado, so the ball flies a little bit,” Montgomery said of his first hit, coming off Rockies right-hander Germán Márquez. “I knew I at least hit it off the wall. So once it hit off the wall, I knew I had a chance to get third. I got out of the box pretty good too.”

Montgomery was only hitless for one game in his two-game career, but he was relieved to erupt in his second start Saturday.

“You're just trying to get it out of the way,” he said of the hit. “Once I got the first one out of the way, I was like, ‘All right, now we're just playing. Now we're just trying to win the game.’ Our veterans set the tone early, and it's kind of easy to feed off of.”

After the Sox scored a pair of runs in the opening inning on three extra-base hits, the Rockies came back in the bottom of the inning with three straight hits to open their night at the plate, with Jordan Beck knocking a two-run single.

Starter Jonathan Cannon shut down the Rockies for the remainder of his 5 1/3 innings, allowing two runs on eight hits and two walks while striking out one. The Rockies left six men in scoring position from the fourth through seventh innings.

“Cannon was solid,” Venable said. "It was nice for him to get that sixth up after coming back and only getting three ups his first outing," a three-inning one-run appearance on June 29. “He did a good job battling through some adversity there and some traffic.”

“They put a couple of good swings on some pitches, couple of cheap hits,” Cannon said. "But I was able to kind of lock it in from there and execute a little bit better. They were really aggressive today, swinging at a lot of pitches early in the count, and we were able to take advantage of that there in the middle innings."

The Sox rebounded quickly, scoring three runs on three hits in the second inning. After a leadoff double to left from Austin Slater, Mike Tauchman drove him in with a single, and was driven in himself by a two-run homer from Lenyn Sosa.

Sosa came up again with the bases loaded and nobody out in the eighth, slapping a two-run single to center, giving him a career-high-matching four RBIs in the game.

“He's seeing the ball really well,” Venable said. “He doesn't mind hitting with two strikes. He doesn't mind using the whole field. He just continues to just be in control and put good swings on good pitches.”

Both cited Sosa’s relaxed, unrushed approach as a key ingredient in his current nine-game hitting streak.

“My success today was just being patient -- I was able to get the pitch that I wanted to hit,” Sosa said of his approach. “Just trying to slow the game down or be calm, and when you have your pitch, be aggressive with your pitch.”

After the Rockies added a run in the eighth on a leadoff homer to left from Brenton Doyle -- his first career pinch-hit homer -- Michael A. Taylor capped the scoring with a two-out, two-run 464-foot homer to the White Sox bullpen in the top of the ninth. All the Sox runs came with two outs.

Steven Wilson, a Littleton, Colorado, native, closed the game for the White Sox, allowing one hit in the ninth to lower his career ERA against his hometown Rockies to 1.17 (15 1/3 innings, 2 ER).