Miguel Vargas homered in the second inning Tuesday night, and the Chicago White Sox followed with a burst Arizona never recovered from, beating the Diamondbacks 11-5 at Chase Field.
Munetaka Murakami, Vargas and Colson Montgomery hit back-to-back-to-back home runs in the second, turning a close game into a 7-0 White Sox lead after just two innings. It was the kind of inning that can flatten a home crowd and tilt a game before a starter has a chance to settle in.
The damage landed squarely on Merrill Kelly, who was making his first home start of the 2026 season after missing nearly the first three weeks with a back irritation that surfaced in spring training. He was charged with eight runs in 4.1 innings, allowing 10 hits and three walks on 101 pitches. Kelly called it “just a bad day” and said it was really “a bad couple innings, bad couple batters when you look at the total body of work. It is what it is.”
That second-inning outburst was only part of the White Sox surge. Chicago had hit 13 home runs over its previous five games and had scored 22 runs in its prior series against the Athletics, so the power was already carrying them when they arrived in the desert. The club improved to 9-14 with the win.
Murakami’s homer continued a run that has made him one of the hottest bats in the lineup. He has gone deep in four straight games, and Kelly’s night added another twist to a matchup that already carried some history: Murakami had taken Kelly deep before, in the championship game of the 2023 World Baseball Classic for Japan.
Arizona manager Torey Lovullo said starters are expected to set the tone, but Kelly could not do it on this night. “Starting pitchers go out there and set the tone for us and unfortunately they jumped on Merrill and never let him really get into rhythm,” Lovullo said.
The loss was Arizona’s second straight, dropping the Diamondbacks to 13-10. It also pushed a rotation that entered Sunday with a 3.40 ERA, ninth in Major League Baseball, to 4.03 after two starts. Kelly said a play in the inning was the kind of thing a team probably will not see again this season, but by then the White Sox had already done the real damage and the game was moving in one direction only.
