Twins 8, White Sox 4: Another loss ...
The South Siders may never win again
Who wants to bet that the Chicago White Sox may not win another game this season? They have dropped yet another game, their eighth straight, to the Minnesota Twins, 8-4. Hey, at least they scored some runs this time, right? Sorry for the sarcasm, it’s just the only way to cope with this season.
Not White Sox-related, but Yankee Aaron Judge made history tonight with his 61st home run of the season, tying Roger Maris for the AL record. Congratulations to a very special accomplishment for Judge and the team.
Let’s get into the game. Josh Winder shut it down in the top of the first with a 1-2-3 inning, as did Johnny Cueto. In the top of the second inning, Gavin Sheets and AJ Pollock hit back-to-back singles as Yasmani Grandal followed to score Sheets.
Josh Harrison struck next, with a sacrifice fly.
A two-run lead? Surely that will last.
Spoiler alert: It didn’t. José Miranda started the bottom of the second inning with a single, followed by a Gio Urshela double. Jake Cave singled in Miranda, and Matt Wallner doubled to give the Twins the lead, at 3-2. After that, Cueto struck out the side, as if that counts as striking out the side.
The Twins struck again in the bottom of the fourth inning, as Urshela started off the inning with a single as Cave hit a double. Wallner struck again on a RBI single to extend the lead to 4-2. With runners on first and third but no outs, Ryan Jeffers grounded into a double play, but scored Cave. The Twins has a 5-2 lead now. Sigh.
The South Siders threatened to come back in the top of the fifth with Winder still in the game, as Harrison started out the inning with a single, followed by Romy González getting hit by a pitch. With two outs, our lord and savior José Abreu came through with a single to score Harrison and cut the lead to 5-3.
Winder wouldn’t make it out of the inning, as Caleb Thielbar replaced him with two outs.
Cueto continued into the sixth inning, but was replaced by Jake Diekman after he loaded the bases. Cueto didn’t have the best night; he must have caught whatever the rest of the team has. He went just 5 2⁄3 innings, with 10 hits, six earned runs, and seven strikeouts. Diekman didn’t do much better, as he walked Gilberto Celestino with the bases loaded to gift the Twins a run and make it 6-3.
With Michael Fulmer on the mound, Harrison and González started the seventh inning with back-to-back singles, and Andrew Vaughn had an RBI single to cut the lead to 6-4.
With the bases loaded, the team had an opportunity to score more with Eloy Jiménez, but the Big Baby grounded into a double play to end the inning. On-brand.
Joe Kelly started the bottom of the seventh inning with the dreaded leadoff walk to Carlos Correa, which came back to bite him as Miranda hit an RBI double to extend the lead to 7-4. The Twins tallied on one more in the bottom of the eighth off of José Ruiz, as the pitching staff gave up another leadoff walk, this time to Ryan Jeffers. Jeffers was then replaced by Billy Hamilton.
That was a bittersweet moment, as we reminisce the last time we had fun (last year) when Billy was on the White Sox. He then stole second base, and proceeded to score on a Luis Arráez single. Now at 8-4, the Twins had a comfortable lead for Jorge López to close it out in the top of the ninth inning.
And that’s exactly what he did. The White Sox fall to three games worse than .500 and secured the series loss. What do we even say anymore? Well, moving past that, the White Sox will try and end their losing streak tomorrow afternoon at 12:10 p.m. CT. We will see you then, if you dare.