Accounting is the one thing that keeps me from accepting the automatic runner in extra innings.
Jesse Scholtens, making his second career MLB appearance, was saddled with his first MLB loss by throwing one pitch that was bunted.
Scholtens took the mound for the bottom of the 10th after the White Sox failed to score the Manfred Man in the top of the inning. He threw a pitch to Michael A. Taylor, who intended to bunt the zombie runner to third. The game didn't get to a second Scholtens pitch, because Hanser Alberto fired wide and doinked his throw off Taylor's helmet for the game-ending error.
Scholtens' line shows an unearned run. It should also be an unearned loss, because the runner that scored didn't belong to Scholtens. Nor did it belong to Reynaldo López, or Keynan Middleton, or even Jake Diekman in another encouraging night for the bullpen.
At least the weird ending suited a weird game. The White Sox jumped out to a 2-0 lead on Pablo López before López recorded an out, but when he recorded an out, he then recorded 23 in a row. Lance Lynn gave up two homers over the first two innings, but settled in himself to deliver a strong six.
Luis Robert Jr. got Lynn off the hook because Jhoan Duran, who throws a 104 mph fastball and a 100-mph splinker, opened the ninth with an 88-mph curveball, and Robert one-handed the ball over the left-center wall to tie the game.
But when it came to execution, the White Sox used all of it up over the first four batters.
Andrew Benintendi, batting leadoff in the first game of Tim Anderson's absence, opened the game with a nine-pitch at-bat and a single. Robert then hit a nubber between the mound and the third-base line, and López realized he should eat the ball halfway into throwing it. The compromise resulted in a thrown ground ball 60 feet up the first base line and into foul territory, putting runners on second and third. A Gavin Sheets walk loaded the bases, and then Andrew Vaughn scored two with a double to left.
López ditched his slider and leaned heavily on his changeup to get through the inning, and it paid dividends. He struck out Yasmani Grandal, then got Jake Burger and Oscar Colás to ground out.
The other 6⅔ innings were a breeze. López threw 31 pitches in the first inning, and 67 pitches the rest of the way. He found the ears on his slider without losing the changeup, and he was able to expand the plate by several inches as a result.
Even more disheartening, Lynn lost the lead two batters into the game. He gave up a single on a slider and a two-run homer to Byron Buxton on a mediocre cutter. An inning later, Taylor golfed a curveball out to left center. It was only 98 mph off the bat, yet it traveled 408 feet. It makes sense that Robert's homer canceled it out, both on the scoreboard and aesthetically. Both seemed like they would've been warning-track flies at best with last year's baseball.
Lynn had his own impressive recovery, even if he couldn't quite match his counterpart. He struck out 10 Twins without a walk or a hit batter. He got 18 whiffs thanks to better location and velocity that hung around the entire game.
The White Sox bullpen allowed Robert's homer to keep Lynn from taking the L. Keynan Middleton impressed in his White Sox debut, striking out the side in the seventh, and recording a fourth out to start the eighth. Jake Diekman worked around a walk to finish that frame, and López brought his best fastball while working on consecutive days.
The Sox also brought their gloves, at least until they didn't. López didn't retire the last batter he faced, but an excellent relay made up for it. Christian Vazquez split the right-center gap with a line drive. Robert slid in vain, and while Colás dodged Robert, his momentum required him to take a circuitous route to retrieve the ball on the warning track.
Vazquez thought he had the time to get to third, but Colás made an on-target throw to Romy González, whose two-hope throw to Alberto arrived in time for the tag, which survived a challenge.
Unfortunately, all three of those players faltered in the 10th. Lenyn Sosa pinch-ran for Grandal on second and moved to third on Alberto's grounder up the middle, but Colás' fly to left was too shallow for Sosa to get the green light, and González bounced back to the mound to keep the Sox scoreless. One pitch later, Alberto's error ended the game.
Bullet points:
*The White Sox struck out 14 times against one walk, yet they had the edge in plate control (the Twins also walked once, but struck out 15 times).
*Burger went 0-for-3 with two strikeouts in a rare start against a righty.
*The lineup is a lot shorter without Anderson and Yoán Moncada. The bottom five spots in the order went a combined 0-for-19 with 10 strikeouts.
*Elvis Andrus made a great diving stab and throw from his knees to take a single away from Donovan Solano in his first start at shortstop this year.
*The White Sox's first extra-inning game in the pitch clock era wrapped up in two hours and 23 minutes.
