A four-game winning streak buys a certain amount of grace, so when the White Sox got shut out for the 10th time this season in a game started by Logan Allen and his 6.41 ERA this afternoon, you could write off some of the offensive struggles by acknowledging they had to lose somehow, even if you'd rather see them scratch one run across the plate.
The White Sox didn't have to play defense the way they defended today, however. The "2" in the error column undersells the sloppiness of the effort, and while the "0" in the run column says it didn't decide the game, it all added up to an unwatchable mess.
The Guardians dispersed their seven runs over three innings, and the White Sox offered their assistance in two of them.
They got on the scoreboard in the third because Rafael Ortega poorly calculated a diving attempt on an Estevan Florial fly ball that fell in front of him, turning a single into a triple. Florial then scored on Brayan Rocchio's sac fly, because Tommy Pham's on-target throw home took two hops, and the second one was higher than Korey Lee anticipated.
In the sixth, the Guardians turned a 4-0 game into the eventual final score thanks to a series of mistakes. Tim Hill relieved Michael Soroka after his one-out walk to José Ramírez and promptly fired wildly on a pickoff attempt, giving Ramírez second base. Yet Hill should've been able to strand Ramírez because he induced a pair of grounders to the right side around an intentional walk to David Fry. Andrew Vaughn was able to backtrack on Josh Naylor's chopper and make an on-target throw to Hill for a 3-1 putout, but after the free pass, he misread the release point on Zach Remillard's submarined, cross-body throw on Will Brennan's dribbler and whiffed on it entirely. Ramírez scored and Fry moved to third on the error, after which he scored on a Lee passed ball for another unearned run. A Florial double then scored Brennan to put the game on ice.
Meanwhile, the White Sox offense squandered the handful of opportunities they'd built. Vaughn grounded into a double play after the first two reached in the third, and Allen similarly defused a two-on, one-out situation in the fourth with a groundout and a strikeout. Leadoff runners in the fifth, sixth and eighth also went nowhere.
The only bright spot is that the Sox only needed three pitchers. Soroka pitched 5⅓ innings on just 71 pitches in a mixed-bag performance. He improved his efficiency and strikeout-to-walk ratio (4:1 today), but he also gave up a pair of homers in the fourth inning to tarnish his line independent of the defensive mistakes. When Hill proved ineffective, Brad Keller came in and carried the game over the final 3⅓ innings, allowing a mere walk.
Bullet points:
*Pham drilled Allen in the back with a line drive that Naylor ended up fielding at first base to open the bottom of the first. Later on, Allen plunked Pham on the toe with a literal back-foot breaking ball.
*John Schriffen missed this game, so he didn't witness first-hand that the Sox once again lost the day after a "South Side, Stand Up!" call.
