Hanser Alberto entered this game as a defensive replacement at third base, because Pedro Grifol pinch-hit Gavin Sheets for the original third baseman, Jake Burger, in the sixth inning. At the time, the White Sox led 3-0.
When Alberto came to the plate and hit for himself in the bottom of the eighth inning, the White Sox trailed 6-3.
The spate of injuries to the usual suspects already tore open the scabs that formed over the wounds of 2022, but watching Alberto hit for himself in a game state that no longer demanded him brought the most acute sense of deja vu, because leaving defensive replacements to hit for themselves when the Sox required offense was a trademark of Tony La Russa's two years. It often featured Leury García, but Billy Hamilton was also a popular candidate for this treatment.
The difference is that La Russa usually had better options, whereas Pedro Grifol has none. Even if he could have pinch-hit for Alberto with a superior candidate, said candidate would've come to the plate with two outs and nobody on, so there wouldn't have been a point.
The question is whether the motives matter. The White Sox are already five games out of first place, so it's a bad time for the win probability chart to reverse course so violently, however it happened.
And what a way it happened tonight.
The White Sox led 3-0 after six shutout innings from Mike Clevinger, who once again showed a knack for pitching effectively wild. He issued five walks over six innings and only generated nine whiffs on 92 pitches, but because his misses mostly occurred outside the strike zone, he only allowed a single otherwise.
Then came the White Sox bullpen, which lacked the knack for such escapes.
Jake Diekman, pitching for the eighth time in 14 games, opened the seventh by walking Gunnar Henderson. He struck out Austin Hays, but he issued a questionable balk, then backfilled first base by walking Jorge Mateo.
Having fulfilled the three-batter minimum, Pedro Grifol turned to Reynaldo López, who got Ryan O'Hearn to fly out. He then sawed off Terrin Vavra,. but it resulted in a crazy cue shot to short, and between the initial unusual spin and a kick off the side of the mound, it proved too much for an Elvis Andrus barehanded attempt to load the bases.
Then López walked Cedric Mullins on four pitches to bring Adley Rutschman to the plate, and that proved to be as bad an idea as it sounded. López got ahead 1-2, but he grooved a fastball, and Rutschman split the left-center gap to clear the bases for a 4-3 Orioles lead.
Jimmy Lambert also crumbled with two outs an inning later. After striking out the first two he faced, he gave up a double off the left-center wall. Luis Robert Jr. made a fine play on the carom and a strong throw to second that might've had a chance to get Austin Hays ... if anybody were covering. Lenyn Sosa ended up catching the ball well off the bag, and that was the first of three Orioles doubles that tacked on two insurance runs that proved unnecessary.
The Baltimore blitz erased a 3-0 lead the White Sox built in painstaking fashion. Jake Burger put the Sox on the board with a missile off Tyler Wells in the second, but they couldn't tack on additional runs until the sixth. Andrus hit the first of his two doubles, then came around to Andrew Benintendi's flared single to center. Two batters later, Andrew Vaughn walked, and Eloy Jiménez flipped a broken-bat single to left to score Benintendi.
The Sox had a chance to score more. When Wells exited for Mike Baumann, Grifol went to Sheets, who drew a walk to load the bases with still just one out. Alas, Yasmani Grandal and Sosa both struck out, and the flood gates of disappointment creaked open.
Bullet points:
*Benintendi made a nice diving catch by the foul line in left field to help out Clevinger in the sixth, but he also made an unsuccessful leaping attempt at the wall on one of Lambert's doubles, and a play was possible.
*The same can be said for Sosa, who made a nice catch near the netting in right-field foul territory to keep a runner frozen at third, but then forgot to cover the bag an inning later.
*The Orioles stole two bases in the eighth, but Clevinger kept control of the running game during his portion of the evening, including a pickoff of Henderson.
*The White Sox invited problems by walking nine batters over nine innings.
