The White Sox entered Sunday afternoon’s game with an opportunity to sweep the first-place Cleveland Guardians. The vibes were high and it felt like things were finally moving in the right direction. Then reality set in.
The night before Pedro Grifol’s squad had capped off their fourth win in a row. Their 3-1 victory over the Guardians was highlighted by good pitching, timely hitting and some aggressive base running. It was the type of baseball the front office had envisioned when they assembled this team. However, the team reverted to its old ways on Sunday.
White Sox starter Michael Sorka got tattoed for five runs (four earned) in five innings. The defense made two costly errors and the offense stranded eight runners, despite outhitting the Guardians six to five, en route to a 7-0 loss. It marked the 10th time the offense has been shut out this season.
Despite trailing 4-0 in the sixth inning it felt like the game was still within reach. The White Sox had threatened to score multiple times and had gotten at least one runner on base in each of the first five innings. But timely hitting was nowhere to be found.
The White Sox had a runner at second base with just one out in the first inning and failed to advance him. Andrew Vaughn hit into a rally-killing double play in the third inning when the White Sox had runners on first and second with nobody out. In the fourth inning, Rafael Ortega failed to even put the ball in play with runners at the corners. In the fifth inning, a leadoff single was followed by a Tommy Pham flyout and a pair of strikeouts from Vuaghn and Eloy Jimenez.
Then things unraveled in the sixth inning. After Soroka issued a one-out walk to Jose Rameriez, Grifol lifted him from the game in favor of left-hander Tim Hill. Hill airmailed a pickoff attempt on the first batter he faced to put Ramirez in scoring position. Hill was able to record the second out of the inning and had a chance to escape the jam when Will Brennan hit a soft ground ball to second base. But White Sox second baseman Zach Remillard threw the ball away into the Guardians dugout to extend their lead to 5-0. Then a passed ball from Korey Lee made it 6-0. When the dust settled the Guardians had scored a total of three unearned runs. What was once a manageable four-run defect grew to seven to put the game out of reach.
If you told someone before the series that the White Sox would take three of four from the Guardians it would have sounded like a positive. But Sunday’s loss reminded everyone why the White Sox have a 12-29.
“That’s one we got to turn the page quickly and get ready for Washington,” Grifol said during his post-game press conference. “We couldn’t get anything going offensively.”
