White Sox power show buries Rays, stretches AL Central lead

The White Sox didn't waste any time turning Tropicana Field into a launching pad. Miguel Vargas got things going in the first inning with a 433-foot blast, the longest home run of his career, and the barrage never really let up from there.

Barstool Baseball

@StoolBaseball

MIGUEL VARGAS

Andrew Benintendi followed it up by making it 2-0, and White Sox fans on the timeline weren't shy about hyping it up.

whitesoxdave

@barstoolWSD

Beni got every single ounce of that baseball 😂😂😂

Then came the real headline moment. Munetaka Murakami's 2-run shot in the third didn't just extend the lead to 4-0 -- it tied Kazuma Okamoto for the Japanese rookie home run record at 24 bombs. That's a serious number for a first-year guy trying to make his mark in the American League.

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@StoolBaseball

MUNE SHOT

Colson Montgomery added a two-run shot of his own later on, and Chicago closed it out 6-1 behind 4 total homers. It's not just a fun Friday night stat line, either -- with Vargas, Murakami and Montgomery all going deep in the same game, that trio has now done it 5 times this season. The last group to pull that off was the Dodgers' Cody Bellinger, Corey Seager and Joc Pederson back in 2019.

The win pushed the AL Central-leading White Sox to a 3-game cushion over the field, a real statement for a team that's been building around a young core all year. Vargas has quietly turned into a legit middle-of-the-order threat, Murakami's rookie power surge is becoming one of the better stories in baseball, and now they've got a Rays team on the ropes in Tampa. If this is the kind of night Chicago can produce with the long ball, the rest of the division should be paying attention.