Bless Pedro Grifol's heart.
He described this game as a must-win for the White Sox even though it wasn't. Eloy Jiménez validated Grifol's decision to play him by belting a homer. The Sox led 3-0 going into the bottom of the ninth.
And they still got swept, with a controversial decision by Grifol looming large.
Kendall Graveman immediately dug a ... hole ... with a leadoff walk, followed by a single and a double that made it a 3-1 game and put both runners in scoring position. Carlos Correa then hit a sac fly to make it 3-2. but Graveman got Edouard Julien to fly out to left to keep the runner frozen at second.
At that point, he had the option of intentionally walking lefty Alex Kiriloff to face righty Donovan Solano, who'd struck out in all four of his plate appearances. Graveman has sort-of reverse splits on the season, holding lefties to a .160 average, but partially because he pitches very carefully (13 walks, 12 strikeouts).
If he was trying to pitch around Kiriloff, it didn't work. Graveman threw a sinker just off the plate on a 1-0 count, but Kiriloff targeted that area and sliced a soft line drive inside the left-field line for a game-tying double. Solano then grounded out to send the game into extras.
And extras was indeed plural, because both teams made a mess of it. Tim Anderson came through with a two-out double to put the Sox ahead 4-3 in the top of the 10th, but Tanner Banks immediately moved the automatic runner into scoring position with a wild pitch, setting up a game-tying sac fly, which was extremely shallow but functional because Oscar Colás fell down.
In the 11th, the White Sox went down in order, but Banks managed to keep the Twins off the board because Joey Gallo's two-out bunt attempt traveled 114 feet in the air to Yasmani Grandal at first.
The Sox had their own ill-advised bunt in the 12th, when Zach Remillard tried to reach with one out and merely moved Colás to third. Carlos Pérez flied out to end the inning, setting up another scenario where one run wins it for the Twins.
Minnesota took the longest possible route to get there, but it got there. Jesse Scholtens had the bases loaded with nobody out after a leadoff single and an intentional walk to Byron Buxton. It paid off when Tim Anderson finally made the play that's stumped him all year, fielding Christian Vazquez's grounder to a drawn-in shortstop to start a 6-2-3 double play. But that still left one out to go, and Ryan Jeffers shot a single through the right side to make it moot.
That's how the White Sox fell to a season-worst 19 games under .500, a season-worst 12 games back of the Twins, and an inepxlicable 0-10 when their pitchers strike out 14 batters.
It should've been a lot more straightforward. Lucas Giolito came out kind of flat, but he still managed to dodge a ton of traffic by striking out nine Twins over five shutout innings. Joe Kelly struck out the side in his return from the injured list, and Reynaldo López threw two perfect innings to get the game to a rested Graveman.
On the other side, the White Sox continued their history of struggling to build innings against Bailey Ober, but they found a shortcut to three runs. Jiménez hit his solo shot in the second inning, and Remillard hit his first homer , but Remillard also homered (which made that 12th-inning bunt confounding).
They tacked on an unearned run in the fifth. Colás singled with one out, then attempted to take second on a steal. The ball beat him to the bag, but the hop eluded Julien and rolled into center field, allowing Colás to take third. Remillard then pounded a single through the left side (which made that 12th-inning bunt confounding).
That was the first of two White Sox hits with runners in scoring position, with Anderson's 10th-inning double the other. They went 2-for-13 with RISP, but the Twins were 5-for-22 and stranded 16. Nobody deserved to win this game, just like nobody deserves to win this division. In both cases, somebody must, and the Twins accept all gifts.
Bullet points:
*Colás had a crazy day, going 3-for-5 with one stolen base, one extremely caught stealing on premature acceleration, one terrific assist on the hardest-thrown ball by an outfielder this year ...
... and one clumsy catch on a woozy route that didn't allow him to use his arm on the game-tying sac fly in the 10th.
*The White Sox struck out 13 times against zero walks. Luis Robert Jr. went 0-for-5 with four strikeouts.
*The Twins lead the season series 6-3.
