DETROIT -- Perhaps a collection of nondescript losses and blowout wins have obscured this fact up to this point, but the Sox are very much still trying to figure out how their bullpen will close out games. What Spencer Torkelson's walk-off two-run double off Jordan Leasure to complete a three-game sweep suggested Sunday, is that they simply won't be able to.
"A tough one," said manager Will Venable. "Credit the Tigers there for continuing to battle. But just too many walks out of the bullpen. We expect better out of those guys."
After 6 1/3 more sublime innings from starter Martín Pérez, Venable tried five different arms to record the final seven outs to protect a 3-1 lead, alternating between options whenever the window for a viable matchup slammed shut, which happened often. And six walks in 1 2/3 innings was too many.
Mike Clevinger was first and recorded an out, but the two walks he issued set things up for AJ Hinch to pinch hit with lefty Riley Greene, which in turn prodded Venable to counter with Cam Booser to strike Greene out and end the seventh. But when the eighth opened with lefty killer Andy Ibáñez, that necessitated side-arming righty Penn Murfee. Ibáñez's swinging bunt single was bad luck, but Murfee still only retired half the four hitters he faced, so Fraser Ellard was necessary when Kerry Carpenter strode up as a go-ahead run, inducing a first-pitch groundout.
If you're a little bedraggled after reading this, that sort of resembles how Ellard looked returning for the ninth, as he walked fellow lefties Greene and Zack McKinstry to load the bases with one out. Leasure, clearly not the original first option to escape such a mess, also clearly was not commanding at the outset. He walked Ibáñez before falling behind Torkelson, and left a 1-0 thigh-high inner half fastball as the challenge pitch the Tigers first baseman was ready for. Even with Michael A. Taylor in left, that was the ballgame.
"McKinstry had a really good at-bat, kind of threw everything I had at him," Ellard said. "I don’t even know how many pitches it was, I think it was a lot [note: it was nine]. And I think after that, I needed to take a breath and then focus and get back into Riley Greene and didn’t do that. That was the lapse right there."
Watching this whole tenuous chain of events play out suggests there will be times the final moments of a 2025 White Sox game render the first two-thirds of it irrelevant, but here's a summary of it anyway.
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Jackson Jobe's struggles to miss bats even with his fastball despite plus velocity and characteristics is concerning if you're a contributor to an outlet that rated him as the top non-Roki Sasaki pitching prospect in baseball. For just viewing his Sunday performance against the White Sox, it's nice to see anyone working to revitalize Midwestern manufacturing.
As young pitchers pumping a lot of secondaries can do, Jobe ran some deep counts and issued some free passes (three in five innings), and the two White Sox offensive outbursts were centered around them. Luis Robert Jr. walked after Mike Tauchman singled on the sixth pitch of the afternoon in the first, and Andrew Vaughn fighting off a sinker to short right before a Matt Thaiss sacrifice fly made for a two-run opening frame.
Thaiss and Miguel Vargas repeated that opening to the fourth, and the ponderous sequence of asking Brooks Baldwin to bunt two runners in scoring position for Jacob Amaya led to another sacrifice fly. For the second time in the series, the Sox treated the arrival of the bottom of their order as reason to play for one run, and got one run as a result.
So far this season, Martín Pérez did Martín Pérez things is not just a placeholder for struggling to describe his cutter and changeup-heavy attack, but also implies that he glided through six quality innings (or in this case, one out more) with a mix of command mastery and a willingness to accept that medium-scary fly outs on a cold day also count as quick outs.
"First couple innings, I felt the weather a little bit," Pérez said. "But as soon as I was throwing pitches I got loose and I got back to our plan and I think it was a great game. We lost in the last inning. That's part of the game, man. As a pitcher you've got to stay on the attack. We got behind and we walked a couple guys and they got a double. But it's still early, I trust my team and I trust my pitchers. We'll be fine."
Báez had half of the four hits against Pérez, including a flared two-out RBI single to center in the second that colored Will Venable's decision to opt for Clevinger in the seventh rather than allow for a third encounter. Barring a Sox starter morphing into 2005 Mark Buehrle, the bullpen carousel will have to start at some time every day, and it will always feel like an inflection point.
Bullet points:
*Andrew Benintendi left the game after two at-bats with that the team said is left adductor tightness. He is "day-to-day" for now. Travis Jankowski, come back!
"It was part of running into the wall yesterday," Venable said of the injury. "He felt OK today. And then that first at-bat, started flaring up on him a little bit and we just want to do the right thing, get him out of there."
*Tauchman went 1-for-3 with a walk, a run scored, and a nice sliding catch in the sixth in his season debut.
*It is with a heavy heart that I report Pérez did in fact crack 90 mph on the day, ending a beautiful high-80s dream.
