What a deflating end to the season.
Not the White Sox running themselves out of a potential go-ahead situation in the seventh before Reynaldo López gave up a leadoff homer and two other runs in the ninth. More the fact that we had a potential for dramatic tiebreakers in each league and ended up with nothing to show for it. The Yankees won in the ninth with a single run, the Red Sox rallied from four down to beat the Nats, and the Giants routed the Padres.
There will be no baseball on Monday. Boooooooooooo.
As for this game, I paid more attention to the games with actual implications, so a bullet-point recap:
*Dylan Cease threw a sturdy four innings of one-run ball, and the only reason it wasn't more innings and fewer runs was Leury García misplaying a ball in front of him and a ball at the fence for Detroit's first run.
*García also couldn't stop a grounder down the line from rattling around the corner, turning a two-out double into a two-out triple in the sixth inning. Three misplays, but none of them counted as an error.
*Reynaldo López gave up a wall-scraping, go-ahead homer to Daz Cameron to start the ninth, followed by a single, RBI double, walk and sac fly that gave the Tigers plenty of insurance. Matt Foster, who had to finish Dallas Keuchel's ugly appearance on Saturday, cleaned up again for López here.
*Yoán Moncada committed an error during Foster's portion of the ninth, getting played by a hop on a wet infield.
*Ryan Tepera struck out two during a perfect eighth that only too 14 pitches.
*Michael Kopech was dominant at everything except stopping the running game over his three innings. Akil Baddoo greeted him with a single, stole second, moved to third on a lineout and scored on a sac fly to give Detroit a 2-1 lead in the fifth.
*The Tigers went 4-for-4 running on White Sox pitchers, including three swipes on Cease.
*The White Sox offense had a quiet game mostly due to Moncada, Yasmani Grandal, Eloy Jiménez and García going 0-for-13 from the No. 3-7 spots. It's 0-for-15 if you count unsuccessful replacement at-bats for Billy Hamilton and Zack Collins.
*Luis Robert put the "H" in "DH" with a 117-mph screamer into the left field seats in the first inning off Tyler Alexander, which tied the game at 1.
*Adam Engel was healthy enough to go 2-for-4 with a double while playing center the whole time.
*Engel scored after his double on an RBI single by Andrew Vaughn, who bounced a first pitch through the big hole on the right side.
*Vaughn didn't score because Moncada's sharp grounder with the bases loaded resulted in a force at home ... and then a double play, because Tim Anderson ran through third when Dustin Garneau dropped the transfer, and was eventually tagged out after a lengthy rundown.
*Cease finished the year 13-7 with a 3.91 ERA and 226 strikeouts over 165⅔ innings.
