In another season, it's easy to see a path for the White Sox winning this game. They showed above-average plate discipline and defense early, which could've bought Jonathan Cannon enough time to get untracked for a quality start.
But Cannon would've needed extraordinary defense and above-average bullpen work the whole way through, and eventually both broke down. Then again, it was the White Sox's 100th loss of the season, so they had to lose it in a characteristic fashion.
The White Sox jumped out to a 2-0 lead by foiling Detroit's opener strategy. They took the first nine pitches they saw from Beau Brieske, resulting in a Nicky Lopez walk and a grounder that moved him into scoring position, after which Andrew Benintendi and Andrew Vaughn doubled for a quick 2-for-2 performance with runners in scoring position.
When the Tigers finally broke through against Cannon for a run in the top of the third, a no-doubt homer by Vaughn answered it to restore the two-run lead.
But if there was a line of demarcation in the game, it happened before Vaughn's homer. The top of the third started with two strong defensive plays, both involving Lenyn Sosa, who snagged a carom off Vaughn's glove and threw to a covering Cannon, then ranged into shallow right field for a diving catch on a soft line drive. Kerry Carpenter then tried the left-center gap, where first Dominic Fletcher couldn't track it down (forgiveable), then flung it around the warning track trying to pick it up (an error). That put Carpenter on third, and he scored on Colt Keith''s single.
That sequence foreshadowed the style of play over the last six innings, which was more or less a mess. Benintendi couldn't run down a high fly ball from Parker Meadows that bounced inside the left-field foul line and into the corner, so a potential third out instead became a triple that made it a 3-2 game. Then Cannon hit a wall in the fifth, giving up three straight singles -- two of them on 0-2 counts -- to leave the bases loaded for Fraser Ellard.
Ellard got Andy Ibañez to hit a potential double play ball to the right side, but Sosa couldn't quite smother the short hop, and while he was able to control the juggling for a force at second, Ibañez beat out the double play. At least that bobble didn't lead to a run, because while Trey Sweeney singled home another run while keeping runners on the corners, the Tigers ended up running into a 1-2-5 double play that killed the threat.
It should've been a simple contact play that didn't work, but the White Sox actually executed two rundowns on the same play. First, Ellard snagged a comebacker and made a firm throw home to force Ibañez to retreat, and then Chuckie Robinson ran him back to third far enough for the flip to Miguel Vargas to result in a simple tag. Vargas then turned to see Sweeney caught up between second and third, because the rundown wasn't long enough for him to advance 180 feet, and Vargas simply ran the ball all the way at Sweeney before applying the tag himself.
That was one of the few bursts of competence the rest of the way. Vargas committed the White Sox's third error when he waited back on a Spencer Torkelson chopper, got a bad hop and then fired the ball into the dugout. That kept the inning alive for Ibañez, who took Enyel De Los Santos deep to make it a 7-3 game. After the Sox manufactured a run in the bottom of the inning starting with a Vargas infield single, Colt Keith dropped a two-out, two-run double inside the right-field line, which Corey Julks played into a triple for error No. 4. The Tigers scored six of their nine runs after two outs, victimizing three different White Sox pitchers (Touki Toussaint was the last one).
Bullet points:
*Chuckie Robinson committed catcher interference for the first error in the first inning, but Cannon was able to induce a double play to leave them loaded.
*Vaughn drew a walk along with the homer and the double, so he's taken the team lead in OPS at .706.
*White Sox pitchers threw 185 pitches for the 10th time this season. White Sox hitters have only seen 180 pitches in a game twice (they saw 146 today).
