The young Chicago White Sox aren’t about to lose any confidence over their 7-1 loss to the visiting Los Angeles Dodgers on Saturday.

Dodgers right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto retired the first 23 batters he faced before a Mookie Betts error gave the White Sox a baserunner with two outs in the eighth. The chance at a perfect game was gone, and Yamamoto lost the no-hit bid in the ninth when Chicago’s Tristan Peters led off with a home run.

After the game, the White Sox figuratively tipped their caps to Yamamoto — the MVP of the 2025 World Series – and were ready to move on to the finale of the three-game series on Sunday. The teams split the first two, with Chicago posting an 8-2 win on Friday before the Yamamoto masterpiece.

‘‘He’s Yamamoto,” said Chicago third baseman Miguel Vargas, who played with him briefly in Los Angeles before a 2024 trade to the White Sox. ‘‘I guess he’s that effective most of the time. We put a lot of good swings out there today, and we [stayed together] as a group. It was his day. and good for him.”

Peters was equally nonchalant.

‘‘It just shows the ups and downs of baseball that a team can go through and an offense can go through,” Peters said. ‘‘I wouldn’t even say we had a bad offensive day, either. I think we put together some good at-bats, and we hit the ball hard. That’s just baseball.”

A third consecutive sellout crowd is expected Sunday at Rate Field, where fans have flocked to see not only the Dodgers but the resurgent White Sox, who are in playoff position approaching the halfway point of the season. That comes after three consecutive 100-loss campaigns.

Their loss on Saturday snapped an eight-game home winning streak. Since April 27, the White Sox are 19-4 at home.

Left-hander Bryan Hudson (3-2, 2,25 ERA) will be making his 34th appearance of the season and fourth as an opener. Hudson threw one scoreless inning in the Friday win, retiring the Dodgers on seven pitches. In five career relief appearances against Los Angeles, he is 1-1 with a 6.75 ERA in 5 1/3 innings.

He is expected to give way to Erick Fedde (1-5, 4.69), who was the bulk-inning pitcher on Tuesday in a 6-5, 10-inning win over the Atlanta Braves. He did not figure into the decision after giving up two runs (one earned) on six hits and no walks in five innings. He struck out four.

Against the Dodgers, Fedde is 1-1 with a 1.96 ERA in four games (three starts).

To start a new streak, the White Sox will look to get their bats going again against Los Angeles right-hander Emmet Sheehan (3-3, 4.70 ERA). In his most recent start, last Sunday against the Los Angeles Angels, he pitched only 1 1/3 innings in a 13-5 loss.

He gave up two runs on three hits and two walks, but he was pulled after getting only four outs on 49 pitches.

“Just frustrating, definitely. Couldn’t put guys away,” Sheehan said after that outing. “Not efficient. Not good all around.”

He has never faced the White Sox.

The Dodgers’ in-game decisions will be made Sunday by bench coach Danny Lehmann, who will manage the team. Manager Dave Roberts left Chicago immediately after the game for Northern California, where his daughter, Emme, will graduate from Stanford. He will rejoin the club on Monday.

“I think that’s one of the good things about the way the world has evolved to where you do some things for mental health or your family and it’s not frowned upon that you care less about your job,” Roberts said before the Saturday game.

“It’s good to feel like I can go and I don’t feel like I’m being judged because I’m going to celebrate my daughter. … I encourage my staff to do it. You see it all around baseball. People are doing things for their family and paternity leave, things like that. It’s healthy.”

–Field Level Media

The Houston Astros have already secured their first winning series at Kansas City since 2022. Considering how well they’ve fared with Spencer Arrighetti on the mound, a sweep could be next.

They’ll try to accomplish that feat Sunday and win a sixth consecutive start made by the talented right-hander in this series finale against the scuffling Royals.

After using a nine-run first inning to win 10-8 in the series opener Friday, Houston rallied from deficits of 3-0 early and 7-5 late Saturday, to pull out an 8-7 victory over the Royals.

“We’re ready for any moment,” Astros outfielder Brice Matthews, who has homered in each game of this set, told Space City Home Network.

“We’re just there to fight, to claw. Try to get a win each and every day.”

The Astros are 9-1 this season in games started by Arrighetti (7-1, 2.21 ERA).

He yielded seven earned runs through his first eight 2026 starts, but has equaled that amount in the two since. Three of those runs came during the Astros’ 5-4, 10-inning victory over the Los Angeles Angels on Monday, when he also gave up four hits and walked four, but completed six innings for his fifth quality start of the season.

Arrighetti surrendered seven runs and seven hits over just three innings of Houston’s 11-2 loss at Kansas City in 2024 — his only previous start against the Royals.

This weekend, Houston has totaled 21 hits, and clubbed eight home runs in Kansas City. Christian Walker has hit two of his 18 homers in the series, while MVP contender Yordan Alvarez has three hits in each contest, including that two-homer first inning Friday, to raise his batting average to .327.

Riding a 20-game on-base streak, Alvarez is batting .359 in 34 career games against the Royals.

Alvarez has never faced scheduled Kansas City starter Stephen Kolek (3-1, 3.14 ERA), who’s been a pleasant surprise since being pressed into service in early May due to injuries within the starting rotation.

He’s been especially good at home, going 2-0 with a 1.80 ERA in three starts.

Kolek yielded three earned runs over 12 innings of his two June starts. On Tuesday, the right-hander yielded eight hits, but only an earned run over five innings of the Royals’ 5-3 home victory over Texas.

A Houston native, Kolek has never faced the Astros, but will try to keep this version at bay after Kansas City’s first two starters of the series – Luinder Avila and Noah Cameron – allowed 12 runs and four homers over five innings.

The Royals have lost four in a row — all at home, where they’re mired in a 3-11 rut.

“It’s just finding a way, competing every day,” star Bobby Witt Jr. told the Royals’ official website.

Witt had three hits Saturday, including career No. 800. He’s 7-for-18 in the last four games.

Teammate Vinnie Pasquantino is batting .333 during an eight-game hitting streak. However, he exited Saturday’s game with a right hand/hamate injury, leaving his immediate status uncertain.

–Field Level Media

The St. Louis Cardinals will vie for their eighth win in 10 games on Sunday as they wrap up a three-game series against the Minnesota Twins in Minneapolis.

Manager Oliver Marmol’s team snapped a two-game losing streak on Saturday with a 9-6 win over the Twins, and in that victory, the Cardinals continued to swing the bats well. They managed 13 hits and smacked four home runs.

“Offense did a really nice job today,” Marmol said. “They continue to just – one through nine – take some really, really tough at-bats.”

Over the last nine games, St. Louis is averaging seven runs a game. As a team, the Cardinals have batted .292 (93-for-319) and hit 16 of their 81 homers in that span.

Jordan Walker extended his hitting streak to 10 games on Saturday and did so in emphatic fashion. His one hit in five at-bats was his 18th home run, which hit off the third-deck facade in left field.

During his hitting streak, Jordan has .362 (17-for-47) batting average and a .660 slugging percentage.

Even a newcomer has gotten in on the action. Third baseman Blaze Jordan made his debut Friday. Ranked the team’s 25th best prospect by MLB.com, the 23-year-old has gone 2-for-4 in both starts. On Saturday, he tripled and hit his first major league home run.

While the Cardinals have been hot of late, the Twins have lost five of their last seven, although they are starting to find their power stroke. They homered three times in Saturday’s loss and seven times so far in the series. Manager Derek Shelton’s squad has homered 15 times in its last nine home games dating back to June 1.

“It’s important, and I think we knew the ability to hit the ball out of the ballpark was going to come when the weather warmed up here,” Shelton said.

Royce Lewis and Byron Buxton both homered in Saturday’s loss. Lewis, who was recalled last weekend from Triple-A St. Paul, has a six-game hitting streak with three home runs in his last four games.

Buxton, who ranks third in the American League with 22 homers, has five in his last seven contests.

A pair of 25-year-old right-handers will start on Sunday.

Michael McGreevy (3-5, 2.99 ERA) seeks his first win since May 8 for the Cardinals. He got a no-decision last Sunday against the Cincinnati Reds in a game St. Louis claimed 5-3, when he gave up two runs on five hits in six innings. Both runs came off solo homers. He will face Minnesota for the first time in his big-league career.

Taj Bradley (5-3, 4.02) has lost his last two starts and has not gotten out of the fifth inning in his last three. Bradley gave up three home runs in 4 1/3 innings Tuesday at Detroit, allowing five runs on seven hits and three walks in a 10-4 loss.

His only start against St. Louis took place on Aug. 7, 2024, as a member of the Tampa Bay Rays. He gave up five runs on nine hits and three walks in 4 2/3 innings and was tagged with the loss as the Cardinals won 5-2.

-Field Level Media