Red Sox 3, White Sox 1: New middle infield joins old problems

It’s still the offense, but, in a change of pace that few will find refreshing, it was also the defense.

Both White Sox middle infielders committed errors that led to runs on Lucas Giolito’s tab, and two runs happened to be the margin of the game.

Giolito did make one mistake, hanging a slider to Rafael Devers on the eighth pitch of a battle in the fourth inning. Devers launched it out to right while Giolito looked like he wanted to find a reset button before the console saved his progress.

The problem was that prior to Devers’ bomb, Elvis Andrus mishandled a Masataka Yoshida grounder that put a runner on first to start the inning. Instead of a solo shot, it was a two-run bomb, and the Red Sox took a 3-1 lead that proved insurmountable.

Making matters worse, it was the second of two errors by White Sox shortstops in as many innings.

Tim Anderson, who was a late addition to the lineup while making his MLB debut at second base, put his fielding percentage there in the hole when he failed to catch Giolito’s attempted pickoff of David Hamilton. It was neither a good nor bad throw — it didn’t have a chance of catching Hamilton, but it was eminently catchable itself. Still, it glanced off Anderson’s glove and trickled into the outfield as Hamilton raced all the way home for the game’s first run.

At least Anderson was able to get the run back. He came to the plate with runners on second and third after Seby Zavala earned a single on 11 pitches, and Andrew Benintendi dropped an automatic double into the left-field corner. It sounds overly generous to praise Anderson for hitting a 371-foot fly ball to center, but considering he came into the game with the highest ground-ball rate in the majors, any elevation should be encouraged.

That was the only run the White Sox tallied, and it didn’t even count as a clutch hit (they went 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position).

Other potential threats were snuffed out by Boston’s defense. Christian Arroyo and Hamilton teamed up for a lightning-quick 4-6-3 double play on a Gavin Sheets grounder that seemed too slow to turn two in the second. In, and then Andrew Vaughn was too slow to outrun a 5-4-3 double play that Rafael Devers started with a great diving stop to wipe the slate.

They had chances throughout the game, but they only drew one walk, so they wasted all their eight hits building opportunities, rather than capitalizing on them. Benintendi doubled twice, Eloy Jiménez had three hits including a double, and they accounted for zero runs between them.

Meanwhile, Giolito endured some lengthy at-bats by the Red Sox lineup to strike out 10 over six innings, and Gregory Santos, Reynaldo López and Keynan Middleton made it 17 K’s for White Sox pitching against just one six baserunnners. The Red Sox had the one big hit that capitalized on a White Sox mistake, whereas the inverse proved elusive.

Bullet points:

*The White Sox are now 0-7 when they strike out more than 14 batters in a game somehow.

*The Red Sox also went hitless with runners in scoring position, albeit they were just 0-for-2.

*The Twins won, so the White Sox are now seven back.

*Andrus also dropped what should’ve been a strike-him-out-throw-him-out at second base on a catchable short-hop, but Giolito managed to keep that mistake off the board.

*Pedro Grifol said Anderson played second in order to get back in the lineup while giving him shorter throws for his troublesome right shoulder. This headline made me laugh:

Record: 32-45 | Box score | Statcast

Take a second to support Sox Machine on Patreon