HOUSTON -- There were no physical problems for White Sox right-hander Sean Burke during his team’s 10-2 loss to the Astros Wednesday night at Daikin Park.
Quite the contrary.
"Probably the best physically I've felt in a little bit,” said Burke after lasting 3 2/3 innings and 73 pitches, as Houston beat the White Sox for the second time in five games this season. “My stuff felt really good.”
Burke’s velocity was up across the board, according to Statcast, supporting his feeling on the hill. But instead of turning in his fourth straight quality outing, a three-game stretch that saw his ERA drop from 4.69 to 4.03, the right-hander allowed seven runs on eight hits, with four strikeouts and one walk.
So, what went wrong for Burke during his 12th start and 14th appearance of 2025? White Sox manager Will Venable pointed to a couple of postgame possibilities.
"There were strikes, but maybe not the command that you need for this lineup and just usage-wise, it just seemed like it was a lot of spin,” Venable said. “Didn’t really establish the fastball. I just thought they were sitting on spin and hit spin.
"We were just a little late to adjust," added Venable. "Yeah, it’s all about the fastball, man, for me. With him, we have seen it when the fastball is good and he’s attacking with the fastball, it’s in the zone. Usually good things happen.”
Venable made a similar point before the game, in regard to the fastball opening up a great deal for Burke. On Wednesday, Burke threw 28 curveballs and 17 sliders against 24 four-seamers for a hurler who has featured the four-seamer 40.3 percent of the time.
"I think it kind of happens organically when maybe you don’t establish the fastball and use that up front,” Venable said. “You are searching for answers and he went with the breaking ball. It wasn’t strategic. There wasn’t anything strategic missing. We weren’t able to use the fastball the right way early.”
“There were some points in the game where I got a little bit too soft, just following a pattern of a lot of sliders and curveballs,” Burke said. “It's a good fastball-hitting team, so I didn't want to just hand-feed them a ton of fastballs like I do with some other lineups. Definitely feel like I could have used the fastball a little bit more, a little bit differently, just to get them off the breaking stuff and that would be a little bit more effective."
Houston (37-30) jumped on Burke for three in the first, topped off by Christian Walker’s two-run blast to left covering a Statcast-projected 412 feet. His home run came off a Burke hanging slider.
Walker added a two-run double in the third against a four-seamer up and out of the zone. When Houston tacked on two more runs in the fourth, Burke gave way to Owen White.
"Just kind of one of those nights where you get hit around a little bit,” Burke said. “They hit some pitches that I made mistakes on and they hit some pitches that I thought I made some decent pitches on. It's kind of one of those games where they saw it pretty well, put some good swings on the ball.”
"They attacked us in the first couple of innings and we couldn’t come back,” said White Sox third baseman Miguel Vargas, who singled home a run and made a slick leaping defensive grab over the rail near the third-base dugout to snare Victor Caratini’s foul popup to end the third. “It’s tough sometimes.”
White made his White Sox debut by allowing three runs over 4 1/3 innings, striking out five. It was his first outing since working 5 2/3 innings for Triple-A Charlotte on May 30, and Venable thought it was a stronger effort than the final numbers.
Burke will learn from Wednesday, just as he bounced back from a stretch of rough starts in April after throwing six innings of scoreless baseball against the Angels in his first career Opening Day trip to the mound.
"So kind of taking the positives of feeling good with the stuff but obviously working on the results aspect of it,” Burke said. “And try to make better pitches and then sequence guys a little bit better."
"That’s what it’s all about, being a Major League Baseball player and performing in this league. You are not going to be good all the time,” Venable said. “How do you make the adjustments and get back on track? The guys who can do that better are the ones who last in this league.”