By and large, the White Sox played well enough to win. Erick Fedde certainly pitched well enough to win, and the offense came up with two big, multiple-run producing hits -- one early, one late -- to provide the kind of margin a well-rested back end of the bullpen can carry across the finish line.
So you can guess what happened if you didn't see it live: The White Sox's three best relievers all faltered to one degree or another.
With the White Sox leading 3-1 in the seventh, Jordan Leasure gave up a run. After a two-run single by Andrew Benintendi restored and enhanced the lead in the top of the eighth, Michael Kopech gave up a two-run blast to Trevor Larnach.
Steven Wilson had the misfortune of facing Byron Buxton to lead off the ninth, and Buxton did what he often does to the White Sox: Scorch a ball over the fence for a gutting high-leverage homer.
This one only tied the game, but the game didn't get to extras. With one out, Wilson missed just low on a full-count sweeper to Carlos Santana, who moved to third on Ryan Jeffers' bloop double and scored on Alex Kiriloff's single through the middle. The Twins completed the comeback while the White Sox lost their 20th game in just 23 opportunities.
Pedro Grifol did the thing where, in the absence of a bona fide closer, he used the closest thing to it for the toughest part of the order. That meant that Kopech got the ball for the top of the Minnesota order with a three-run lead in the eighth. He gave up a single to Christian Vázquez, but it looked relatively harmless until Kopech threw a second consecutive down-and-in fastball to the lefty Larnach, who launched it out to right some 433 feet away to make it a 5-4 game.
Kopehc ended up striking out Max Kepler, but after 19 pitches, Grifol chose to go to Wilson for the ninth. He, too, misplaced a second consecutive fastball to Buxton, who lasered it off the foul pole in left to tie the game at 5.
While the White Sox would lose the game a few batters later, that pitch cost Fedde what would've been a well-deserved victory. After giving up three consecutive two-out hits for a first-inning run, he gave the Twins nothing afterward. He completed six innings for the first time in a White Sox uniform, striking out a career-high 11 and retired the last 16 he faced.
Fedde used his cutter, slider and splitter fairly equally, and all to great effect. He racked up 17 whiffs and another 15 called strikes over 95 pitches, and more than half of those swinging strikes came on pitches in the strike zone, which was a testament to the life and variety of his pitches.
He outpitched Pablo López, who came out of the gate with diminished stuff and never found a groove. Eloy Jiménez was the only one who was able to really punish him, but he made it count by hammering a hanging curveball just inside the left-field foul pole for a three-run homer that put the Sox up 3-1 in the fourth.
Once the Twins bullpen entered, it looked like their opportunity to tack on runs had passed, but the Sox sequenced their way into another crooked number in the eighth. Danny Mendick led off with a double, and while Robbie Grossman wasn't able to get him over, Mendick ended up reading Jay Jackson and stealing third without a throw. Jiménez walked, and while Andrew Vaughn couldn't cash him in, Jiménez ended up stealing second without a throw -- nobody was holding him on or covering the bag -- and Andrew Benintendi flipped a single into center for that 5-2 lead.
Bullet points:
*Jiménez reached base three times, including on a broken-bat single where a piece of wood flew into his eye. He stayed in the game.
*Mendick went 2-for-4 with a double from the second spot, as his positive at-bats at Charlotte have translated to Chicago.
*Martín Maldonado went 0-for-3 with a strikeout, as his average dropped to .049. He also tried to backhand a Leasure curveball in the dirt, which allowed a runner to advance into scoring position and score on a single.
*Buxton now has 20 homers against the Sox, or eight more than the next-most victimized team (Cleveland).
