White Sox Demolish Athletics in First Inning Blitz

If you’re looking for a feel-good story about competitive baseball on this Sunday, July 12, 2026, look elsewhere. What we got at Rate Field was a clinic in how to absolutely pummel an opposing pitcher before most fans had finished their first hot dog. The Chicago White Sox didn’t just beat the Oakland Athletics 9-1, they embarrassed them, and J.T. Ginn served as the unwilling instructor in a masterclass on pitching incompetence.

The first inning alone should have come with a trigger warning for A’s fans. Six runs scored before the White Sox could even work up a sweat. Sam Antonacci got things started with a solo blast to right field. Then Kyle Teel singled to right, plating two more runs. But the real dagger came courtesy of Braden Montgomery, whose three-run homer sent the Chicago faithful into a frenzy and left Oakland’s dugout looking like someone had just informed them their flight home got cancelled indefinitely.

Sure, Shea Langeliers answered back with a solo shot in the top of the first for Oakland, a nice little consolation prize that meant absolutely nothing. It was like bringing a knife to a gunfight, except the knife was also broken. Ginn lasted just 4.1 innings, coughing up eight earned runs on six hits while walking three. The only thing keeping him from looking completely hopeless was his strikeout total of seven, which frankly felt more like luck than anything resembling competence.

Montgomery Carries Heavy Load

Let’s be honest about who actually won this game: Braden Montgomery. The man went 2-for-4 with a homer and four RBIs, essentially doing the heavy lifting while his teammates chipped in their contributions. That three-run shot in the first inning? That was the game right there. Everything else was just formality, padding the final tally to avoid embarrassment. He added an RBI single in the fifth for good measure, because apparently one dominant performance wasn’t enough.

White Sox Pitching Gets The Job Done

Noah Schultz, meanwhile, pitched like a man who understood the assignment. Five innings of work, four strikeouts, no walks, just one earned run allowed on four hits. This is what competent pitching looks like compared to what Ginn served up. The contrast was almost violent in its clarity. The White Sox didn’t need fireworks throughout the entire game because they built an insurmountable lead before lunch was served.

The fifth inning provided another White Sox rally with two more runs, powered by Montgomery’s RBI single and a fielder’s choice groundout from Tristan Peters that brought home another run. At this point, we were essentially watching a different sport than what baseball is supposed to be.

This wasn’t a game between two evenly matched competitors on Sunday at Rate Field. This was an execution, a complete dismantling of a team that came to play and got absolutely schooled by a Chicago squad that was simply operating on another level. The Athletics could point to Langeliers’ solo homer as a bright spot, or note that Ginn struck out seven batters, but those are the consolations of the defeated, the participation trophies of baseball. When you lose 9-1 and your opponent scores six runs in the first inning, there’s no real recovering from that narrative, no matter how many individual statistics you can point to. The White Sox were better, faster, and more execute-capable on this Sunday, and the scoreboard showed it mercilessly.