Twins 10, White Sox 3: Giolito yields homers galore

With two months to go, the Minnesota Twins set a record with their ninth five-homer game of the season.

Lucas Giolito was on the losing end of history. He gave up four of them over five innings, including three to Nelson Cruz on three different pitches.

Cruz took him deep on a 2-2 plate-splitting fastball in the first. Two innings later, Giolito threw a decent first-pitch curveball, but Cruz fished it out and hammered it out to center for a 3-1 lead.

Capping it off, Cruz watched a first-pitch slider on the outer half for strike one in the fifth, but when Giolito came back with an elevated changeup in the same spot, he lifted it out to right center for another two-run homer.

(And two batters before that, Max Kepler got on top of an elevated fastball and crushed it to a similar spot for the first of two two-run shots that inning.)

Giolito departed after giving up seven runs over five innings, and Jimmy Cordero gave up the fifth homer to Miguel Sanó an inning later.

The White Sox were able to answer one of those homers, as Yoan Moncada took Jose Berríos into the White Sox bullpen to briefly tie the game at 1 in the second.

Afterward, the Twins played with bazookas while the White Sox chose slappers only.

In one particularly regrettable moment, Leury García bunted Adam Engel to third with nobody out in the third. Engel was lucky to be on second, as he attempted to advance to second on a hot shot that deflected off Luis Arraez’s glove. Engel was a dead duck at second by 25 feet, but he reversed course and started a rundown. When Jonathan Schoop couldn’t catch him and flipped to Sanó, he did so in too close of proximity to Engel, who stuck out his elbow and initiated the interference.

Yet even with the gift of Schoop’s oops and multiple runs to overcome, García moved him to third. Engel never scored, because Jon Jay shanked one back to the mound and Jose Abreu lined out to center.

Ironically, García ended up driving home the second Sox run with the third straight single of the inning, scoring Yolmer Sánchez. (Jay, who had an uncharacteristically ugly game, once again couldn’t get a runner from home with fewer than two outs.)

The Twins put the third Sox run on the board in the sixth courtesy of a three-error inning. Yoan Moncada reached when Sanó couldn’t stop his grounder, moved to third when he couldn’t scoop Schoop’s throw on a grounder to second, then scored on an AJ Reed sac fly. James McCann moved to second on Eddie Rosario’s vain airmailed throw, then took third when the throw skipped past Mitch Garver.

Bullet points:

*Abreu got doubled up on a deep Moncada drive to left when he failed to retouch second base on his way back to first.

*At the 100-game mark, the White Sox are on pace for 73 wins.

Record: 45-55 | Box score | Highlights

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PauliePaulie

Whether that bunt was Leury’s idea or not, it’s on Renteria. It’s the second time Garcia has done that since the AS break.

GoGoSoxFan

Yeah, and the five hoome runs are on Coop and the baserunning errors are on Capra.

PauliePaulie

Quite obviously not the same thing.

Kelly Wunsch N' Munch

?

iowasox1971

The bunt was NOT the reason we failed to score that inning. Leury moved the runner to third, as is his job, when there is a man on second and no outs. Blame the next two guys who failed to drive in the runner from third.
All in all, a terrible game, with our ace pitcher getting pounded, pathetic situational hitting and Abreu not knowing how to run the bases.
That’s 3-11 since the all-star break, and that record probably would be worse if we hadn’t been fortunate enough to play a very tired Tampa Bay team last weekend. Still wouldn’t be surprised if this team went 17-45 the rest of the way to finish with 100 losses again. But, from what I’ve been told, the rebuild is going very, very well, and there are no reasons to be concerned.

mikeyb

Your job, with your fastest player on the team on 2nd base in the 3rd inning, down by two runs, is to get that player over to third? That seems like some little league nonsense to me. A single is scoring Engel there. That early in the game, all three batters should be going up there looking to get a hit.

Trooper Galactus

White Sox playing Jaws, Twins selected Oddjob.

PopeDonnPall

MLB.com’s Joe Frisaro writes that “many scouts” have been looking at White Sox starter Ivan Nova.

ImmortalTimeTravelMan

How many RC Cola’s can we get for him?

ParisSox

oh man. Is that drink still around? I used to love RC Cola.

ParisSox

Homers galore?
comment image

5742mail

The offense needs Robert and Mercedes now.

roke1960

After a pretty fun first half, this has been painful to watch. Granted two of out bigger bats are still out, but this team is so punchless. The Twins have 7 or 8 guys in the lineup that can hit the ball a mile, and we have 3 or 4, and one of them AJ Reed, never makes good contact. When Timmy and Eloy come back, it’s time to start putting in guys that will possibly be relevant in 2020. Eloy and Timmy should replace Engel and Rondon on the roster. The AJ Reed experiment is failing miserably. Bring Collins back up and give him some consistent ABs, which they didn’t do the first time. He’ll also probably fail miserably, but then at least we’ll know and can move on. Yolmer is swinging a tired bat as would be expected when he plays every day. Move him to a utility role and put Goins or Mendick at 2nd as a bridge to Madrigal. And bring Robert up and send Cordell packing.
The Sox are playing small ball while everyone else hits bombs. That’s no way to win in today’s MLB.

roke1960

The Twins starting lineup yesterday has one guy with an OPS below .800. The Sox starting lineup has 3- one was Goins, who has only been there a week, and one is McCann, who likely won’t be above .800 much longer. That leaves Yoan. What a mismatch.

roke1960

And now the rumors have the Sox going after Mazara, whose career OPS is .745. Another cheap option for cheap Jerry, instead of spending money on a legit lefty power bat.

knoxfire30

I actually dont mind the Mazara option. He still has upside despite the fact it seems that he has been around a while he is only 24. (He is really their version of avi garcia) Assuming its more mid tier prospects to acquire him he may be a good roll of the dice in 2020, if he bombs out you wouldnt have sacrificed much to get him and can find someone else for 2021. I have looked hard at free agency or trade options for a LH hitting power bat that could be a corner OF or DH type and the list is sad. Mazara and Dickerson were two of the only guys I saw as realistic and both are probably platoon types. I still think their best option to fill that void is using Colome and or Bummer in some type of packages for dylan carson of the cards, seth beer of the astros, or trevor larnach of the twins.

roke1960

Yeah, he’s better than nothing, but you’d have to ask why Texas would be willing to trade him since they are in a very similar situation to the Sox. I’m not sure another team’s version of Avi is a real solution.

knoxfire30

Its more flyer then solution. Maybe their staff and or management doesnt like him… it happens. To play the positive side of it he is a 790 ops hitter vs righties. Thats very platoonable.

Outside the box a bit too, you could “gulp” try to sign Brett Gardner and put him in right…. he is on pace to have a 3 WAR season at the tender age of 36

There are a lot of bad options. Which is why I would take on some of our relief pitching trade value and flip it for a left handed bat. Rutherford and sheets arent gonna do it. Free agency simply doesnt offer any solutions.

roke1960

That’s where they have to think out of the box. The best left handed bat likely on the market this winter will be Didi Gregorius. They need to get him and put Timmy in right. With Timmy’s athleticism, he would be a better rf than Mazara is, and Gregorius provides more offense than Mazara. But Mazara is cheaper, so that’s the way Jerry will go.

knoxfire30

I mean the odds the whitesox put anderson in RF are slim to absolute none.

roke1960

Right, because they are the White Sox and they are a bunch of morons.

knoxfire30

There are few franchises in professional sport that need an entire regime change as bad as they do… funny you can add the bulls to that list as well.

roke1960

They may be the two worst run sports franchises. Do they have anything in common? Hmmm.

As Cirensica

Edited.

mikeyb

When is the last time the White Sox had an all-star continue to play out the second half of the season at (or close to) the same level that he played at in the first half?

NDSox12

Well, Abreu was actually much better after the All-Star Game (before getting hurt) last year. But that was an unusual case because he made the All-Star team despite a below average first half.

Foulkelore

I feel the Abreu TOOTBLAN needs a little more discussion for those who didn’t see it (not a criticism of the well written recap). For those who weren’t watching this horrible game late, Abreu didn’t just barely miss the corner of second base while trying to go back to first. When the fly ball was caught, after he had already rounded 2nd, he cut directly across the diamond towards first to try to get back. He didn’t even try to head back via second base. I don’t remember seeing a player do this before. Between this and the negated home run earlier this year when he passed the runner ahead of him, does he not know the complete rules, or is he just losing focus in these instances?