The White Sox split the doubleheader against the Baltimore Orioles tonight, which means they also split the season series.
That's not great. Especially when they needed the assistance of a Baltimore brain fart -- and needed to hurdle another bad Rick Renteria squeeze idea -- to set up Yonder Alonso's two-run walk-off single.
Leury García started the ninth by drawing a walk off Evan Phillips, and professional efforts were difficult to find after that. Adam Engel bunted him to second, and reached himself when Chris Davis thought about cutting down the lead runner, only to change his mind and leave himself with a poor throwing position to get Engel at first. A swinging bunt from Yoan Moncada against lefty Paul Fry moved both runners into scoring position, and when Renteria called for José Rondón, Brandon Hyde called for righty Miguel Castro.
Before the doubleheader, Renteria talked about the difficulty of playing smallball against live arms like Castro's:
So of course he had Rondón try to squeeze home García. He fouled it off to put him behind 1-2, and then swung at a changeup off the plate. Hyde then intentionally walked Abreu to bring Yonder Alonso to the plate against a righty, and Alonso sliced a single to left to bring this game to a merciful and more respectable end.
The late rally put a win on Thyago Vieira's record for his two scoreless innings, so he made the most of his 26th man appearance. It also got Aaron Bummer off the hook, as he would've been tagged with a loss he didn't deserve thanks to two Tim Anderson errors that put the go-ahead unearned run on the board.
Bummer pitched his ass off. He entered a game tied at 5 with Iván Nova's runner on second and struck out Jonathan Villar to end the sixth. Bummer then tried to clean up his own mess after he allowed a leadoff single in the seventh. First, he induced a double-play ball from Dwight Smith Jr., but Anderson let it skip under his glove, so it was two on and nobody out.
Bummer bounced back by striking out Renato Nunez, then got Davis to hit a weak grounder to second. It was a slow-developing play, but Davis' baserunning is slow-developing itself. Yolmer Sánchez flipped to Anderson, whose momentum crossing the bag carried him into the path of the sliding Rio Ruiz. Anderson still had plenty of time to get Davis, but his jump-throw sailed well wide of first and allowed the run to cross the plate.
Capping it off, Bummer got one more grounder to short, and Yonder Alonso had to dig out Anderson's throw. Anderson now has eight errors on the season, which is my only reservation about his decision to go big on fun without regard for the rest of the league. He might want to remember that double plays are just as enjoyable as bat flips.
Bummer might not have faced as tight a situation if Iván Nova didn't turn into Dylan Covey the second time through the order. He gave up a three-run homer to Stevie Wilkerson in the fourth inning to give Baltimore a 4-2 lead. The Sox responded to that one with three of their own, but a massive blast by 26th man Anthony Santander tied the game in the sixth.
Nova went two innings longer than Carlos Rodón in Game 1, but he gave up nine hits and two walks over 5⅔ innings. Fastball command is still a problem, and Baseball Savant says he only threw 13 cutters out of 102 pitches, although I question the classification on the Wilkerson blast. Statcast called it a cutter, but it had the velocity and action of his changeup, dropping right into the hitting zone of a lefty's uppercut swing.
The White Sox offense worked Andrew Cashner hard. They scratched across a run in the second on an Adam Engel infield single, and Jose Abreu tagged him for a no-doubt solo shot in the third. An inning later, Abreu capped off the most enjoyable moment of the doubleheader.
Cashner started the inning with two strikeouts, but Engel's line drive left of center dropped past a diving Joey Rickard for a triple. Yoan Moncada worked a five-pitch walk, and so did Nicky Delmonico to load the bases. Up came Abreu, who got ahead 3-1 before chopping a changeup foul to load the count. With all runners in motion, Cashner tried a third changeup of the at-bat, and Abreu stayed back long enough to spank it through the middle for a two-run single.
Check that -- a three-run single. Nick Capra waved Delmonico home as the ball came into second, and despite the repeated pleas of catcher Austin Wynne, the relay home was not immediate and Delmonico scored with a dive to put the Sox ahead 5-4.
Outside of a Delmonico outfield assist -- he cut down Smith at second base when both runners tried tagging on a fly ball to left for the second out of the fifth -- the highlights crashed to a halt, at least until the ninth. Gabriel Ynoa and Phillips combined to strike out seven White Sox from the fifth inning through the eighth, allowing only an Anderson single that was erased by a Welington Castillo double play.
Bullet points:
*The two teams combined for nine errors over the two games, with the Sox committing five of them.
*The Sox struck out 16 times, including three-K games for Delmonico, Castillo and Ryan Cordell.
*Engel raised his average to .239 with three hits, two of them infield singles.
*Abreu in the six games against the Orioles this year: 12-for-27, two homers, four doubles, 13 RBIs.
Record: 13-15 | Box score | Highlights
