After Gavin Sheets cleared the bases with a double off the base of the wall to give the White Sox a 3-2 lead in the seventh inning, Pedro Grifol did that thing he does by subbing in a defensive replacement, even though there's a decent chance that player's bat may be needed before the game is over.
The move was rendered quaint on two levels. For one, Joe Kelly picked a rough time for his first tough time in May, losing the lead two batters into the bottom of the seventh via a Zach McKinstry solo shot. He gave up three more hits (and two more runs) before Grifol removed him from the game. The Sox trailed 5-3, and then Jimmy Lambert gave up a no-doubt blast to ninth-hitting Zack Short in the eighth.
Also, Sheets' spot in the order never came back to the plate. The Sox were retired in order in the eighth, and a one-out infield single by Andrew Vaughn was erased by a Yasmani Grandal double play, so Sheets wouldn't even have had a chance to reach on the on-deck circle.
The White Sox only resembled a professional offense in the seventh inning. Across the first six and the last two, the Tigers faced batter over the minimum. Michael Lorenzen started his afternoon by retiring the first 17 batters he faced before Romy González broke up the perfect game with a single to center.
They finally broke through the seventh inning, but mostly because of a Detroit mistake. Andrew Benintendi walked and Yoán Moncada singled, but Vaughn and Grandal were both retired to bring Jake Burger to the plate.
Jason Foley relieved Lorenzen and got Burger hit a routine bouncer that made Andy Ibáñez range a little to his right, but Ibáñez became the latest defender to be fooled by Burger's shape and size. He waited way back on it, only to realize that Burger gets down the line faster than seems possible, and his rushed throw took Spencer Torkelson off the bag to load the bases and keep the inning alive.
Up came Sheets, who fell behind 1-2, but stayed alive until Foley threw a sinker high and on the outer half. Sheets hit it to dead center, over the head of Riley Greene, to give the Sox that short-lived 3-2 lead.
At least it took Jesse Scholtens off the hook. Scholtens avoided suffering his third loss in four career appearances despite pitching reasonably well in all of them. He gave up two runs in the second inning, and they probably shouldn't have been earned.
Clint Frazier started in center for Luis Robert Jr., and it's fair to say that Robert would've caught Baddoo's sinking linter to center field standing up, where Frazier couldn't get there even with a dive. That gave Baddoo a one-out double, and then Tim Anderson got eaten up by a Jonathan Schoop one-hopper for a single that back-filled first base.
Neither counted as an error when they could've been the second and third outs of the inning, and the Tigers took advantage. Ibáñez singled home Baddoo, with Schoop taking third when Sheets' throw home cleared the cutoff man, and then McKinstry hit a sac fly that made it a 2-0 game.
Both runs scored due to suboptimal defense, and when backed by standard play, Scholtens was fine. He gave up those two runs on four hits and two walks over 4⅔ innings, and the hook was a proactive one by Grifol. Scholtens was only at 67 pitches, and probably could've faced Torkelson without second thought had he a little more experience.
Bullet points:
*The Tigers outhit the White Sox 11-4, and had 11 of the 15 hardest-hit balls of the game. They also stole three bases in three attempts.
*McKinstry went 3-for-4, and has reached base 11 times in three games.
