White Sox 3, Tigers 2 (10 innings): 1-0 in the Long-Term Ownership Investment Agreement Era

The final line won't look like Tim Elko (1-for-5 with three strikeouts), nor the White Sox situational hitting (2-for-9 with 12 runners stranded) had a breakthrough, but the dogpile on the infield says differently.

After a 13-1 drubbing in the series opener, the White Sox sealed a surprising series split with the owners of the best record in baseball as Elko drilled an 0-1 plate-splitting slider through a drawn-in infield for a 10th inning walk-off winner. Austin Slater dropped the second of two productive White Sox sacrifice bunts on the day to set up Elko for the game-winner.

"My first few at-bats definitely weren't my best, but you know in baseball you've got to have a quick memory and learn from your mistakes, then move on to the next one," Elko said. "So I was able to just kind of put those in the past and focus on that last at-bat." 

For a game wildly overshadowed by the ownership news that dropped an hour before it, the Sox celebrated in the clubhouse that simply didn't waste the sterling pitching the followed.

"They're playing really good baseball, like us right now," said Edgar Quero of the Tigers. "We're playing really good too. Today was an amazing game and we did it."

Surely emboldened by the news that Suns owner Mat Ishbia will be a "significant investor" in the new White Sox transition plan, former high school basketball star Sean Burke set a new career-high with seven innings pitched. Liberally sprinkling in his changeup and curve against a lefty-heavy Tigers attack, Burke wasn't without some early scares, with Mike Tauchman easily throwing out Wenceel Pérez trying to go first-to-third to snuff out a growing rally in the second.

"If you are able to watch a team once just to kind of see what their approach is against us, if they are stealing or when they are stealing, that bring little things like that within the game," Burke said of watching the Tigers the last three days. "I think it’s helpful and I try to play attention to those games when I pitch later in the series."

Burke eventually found himself riding into the seventh on a stretch of retiring 14 out of 15 Tigers hitters, ending abruptly when Pérez scooped a 1-2 slider into his team's bullpen to cut the Sox lead in half. Zach McKinstry followed with a one-out single to center, and Burke lost a nine-pitch battle for a walk to Colt Keith two batters later.

That set up a choice to stick with Burke against pinch-hitter Dillon Dingler with the tying run on second, or tap a warming Cam Booser, who was preparing for a slate of lefties at the top of Detroit's order. Venable stuck with Burke, who got Dingler to chase a slider off the plate, which only served to set up the Tigers' most effective form of offense of the past two days: a popup down the line. McKinstry scored the tying run as Chase Meidroth's diving effort came up short, but Keith was out by so many steps at home that retreat came to mind as a viable alternative. It wasn't, but the resulting Benny Hill-style scramble of Quero chasing him up the line was worth it.

If success for the White Sox offense means a coherent team approach, a well-defined concept of the strike zone and consistently grinding at-bats, the first two innings against Tigers starter and former No. 1 overall pick Casey Mize were a shining success. The first four batters of the game all reached full counts. The Sox loaded the bases in each of the first two innings, drew four walks, and Mize was forced to throw a whopping 64 pitches to get through those opening frames.

If success for the Sox means hitting the snot out of the ball (they've homered twice in their last seven games) or scoring some dang runs, that took a bit longer and provided fewer rewards. Only once Mize took on a much more efficient form that nearly got him threw five were the Sox able to append any damage to his line. Josh Rojas and Michael A. Taylor led off the fourth with a pair of soft singles, before they both moved over on a Vinny Capra bunt, and scored successively on a garden variety Tauchman sacrifice fly to left and Meidroth lashing a high and outside sinker down the first base line.

"We didn't really get him early on but I think what we did that first time through the lineup set us up the second time through," Taylor said. "The biggest thing is just looking at the quality of our games. If we don't win, it's did we take care of the baseball, did we have good at-bats? Things like that, focusing on the little things and then just trusting that. But if we continue to do that, we'll end up on the right side of the score."

To their credit, a White Sox bullpen coming off a pen day the night before kept pace with their offense's cannibalization of opportunities. Cam Booser pitched over two walks, Dan Altavilla walked the leadoff man in the 10th and Steven Wilson made ample use of medium-scary fly outs to deep right, including a drive to the wall from Spencer Torkelson to end the 10th, to keep the Tigers sitting on two runs.

Bullet points:

*With two hits Thursday, Meidroth now has 12 mulit-hit games on the season, which is as many as Luis Robert Jr. and Andrew Vaughn have combined for on the year.

*Rojas had three hits, and yes that was the first time all season.

*Meidroth reached base five times total, collecting half of the team's six walks. They walked more than they struck out (five).

*The White Sox grounded into double plays in the sixth, seventh and ninth, and Taylor needed to hustle to avoid doing it again in the eighth.

*Sox are now 4-16 on the season in one-run games.

Record: 20-43 | Box score | Statcast