The lasting impression of this game is that the White Sox are not built to compete in their own ballpark.
The lasting image of this game is a dejected José Abreu staring forlornly onto the field after the game.
The White Sox fell to 0-5 against the Twins this year, mostly because they fell behind 6-1 in home runs this series. The Twins hit five homers tonight, including four off Michael Kopech over 4⅔ innings. The best the White Sox could do was a Josh Harrison double that bounced over the fence.
The Sox (2-for-8) outhit the Twins (0-for-5) with runners in scoring position, but that only underscores the difficulties in responding to missiles with muskets.
For instance, the Sox had more good innings against Josh Winder than bad ones. They mounted threats in the third, fourth and fifth innings, but they were all crafted in painstaking fashion with anticlimactic payoffs. The first one ended with a Tim Anderson double play, and the third one culminated in an Anderson run-scoring fielder's choice. In the middle, Yoán Moncada split the right-center gap for an RBI double for the only real cheerable moment.
Pitching position players don't salvage evenings anymore, either. It used to be interesting when Matt Davidson competed with 90 mph fastballs and somebody like Leury García would throw in the mid-80s, but Harrison came out lobbing pitches between 45 and 57 mph, which only made an Abreu over-the-shoulder catch on a wet warning track look like a disproportionate effort, and unnecessarily dangerous under the conditions.
There's small satisfaction in holding Byron Buxton homerless for the first time in seven games, but that's about it.
Bullet points:
*Harrison collected his 1,000th hit n the form of an RBI single.
*Reese McGuire had a nice night at the bottom of the order, with three line-drive singles in his first three at-bats.
*AJ Pollock was ejected after striking out in the ninth inning via Randy Rosenberg's expanding strike zone, which also counted McGuire as a victim to end the game.
*Jake Burger played second base and turned a double play started by Moncada.
