BALTIMORE — Nicky Lopez entered Wednesday with six career home runs in six major-league seasons — most recently on Aug.12 of last year while with the Atlanta Braves.
The Chicago White Sox infielder added to that total in the first inning against the Baltimore Orioles, leading off the game with a home run to right field.
“Kind of crazy, huh?” Lopez said. “I don’t hit them often, but when I do it’s a good feeling. It’s not the type of player I am, but it’s a weight off the shoulders to get one.”
It was the first of three home runs on the night for the Sox, who snapped a 12-game losing streak with an 8-1 victory in front of 17,843 at Camden Yards.
The Sox avoided the sweep by winning the finale of the three-game series. It was the team’s first victory since Aug. 21 at San Francisco.
“Every win is good,” Lopez said. “It’s been tough this year to get those. But every win feels good. Especially because — and I feel like a broken record — we pull so hard for each other in here. It’s a close group and we haven’t been able to get over that hump.”
The Sox are 32-109, and with 21 games remaining they need to go 11-10 to avoid tying the 1962 New York Mets (40-120) for the most losses in modern-day Major League Baseball history.
Andrew Vaughn hit a home run to lead off the fourth, his 16th of the season, giving the Sox a 2-1 lead. Dominic Fletcher added a two-run homer later in the inning. Like Lopez, it was the first of the season for Fletcher.
The Sox knocked Orioles starter Albert Suárez out of the game during a two-run fifth. He allowed six runs on eight hits in 4 1/3 innings.
Fletcher also aided the Sox defensively, making a tremendous throw from right field to third to cut down Cedric Mullins, who had tagged up from second, to end the second inning.
Center fielder Luis Robert Jr. also made an impact offensively — going 2-for-4 with an RBI — and defensively — running to the fence to rob Mullins of an extra-base hit with a leaping catch in the fifth. But Robert exited with right hamstring tightness after grounding into a double play in the sixth.
“Luis is good, he said he was fine to stay in there,” Sizemore said. “I knew coming into the game they said he was a little tight from yesterday, said he felt something a little bit. I just wanted to be cautious.
“He’ll be in there Friday (at Boston), everything is good.”
That was the only hiccup of the night for the Sox, who received strong pitching from starter Jonathan Cannon.
The right-hander has played a role in ending each of the three double-digit losing streaks for the Sox this season. He earned the save when the Sox snapped a 14-game skid by beating the Boston Red Sox 7-2 on June 7. He was the winning pitcher when the team’s 21-game slide ended against the Oakland Athletics with a 5-1 victory on Aug. 6.
Cannon allowed one run on five hits with four strikeouts and one walk in 5 2/3 innings and picked up the victory Wednesday.
“I felt really good with command of everything,” Cannon said. “I think the biggest thing for me was just getting ahead, We’ve talked about in my last couple starts just being in bad counts, and just being behind. And that was just the biggest focus today was just to get ahead of these guys.”
After losing the first two games in the series by a combined 22-3 (13-3 on Monday, 9-0 on Tuesday), Cannon provided a pitching performance the team desperately needed.
“This is a night where it came together,” Sizemore said. “It was nice to get some balls falling in and get good pitching and clean defense. That’s the way we want to play.
“It shows those guys how they can do it and try to repeat those kinds of efforts where we are playing clean, we’re having good at-bats and doing everything we need to do to win.”
