Who can stop the stopper?
The answer: A Minnesota Twins offense seeing Davis Martin for the second time in six days, with many assists from the White Sox defense.
Martin entered this one 7-0 after a White Sox loss and appeared to be in excellent position to make it eight wins when the White Sox staked him to a 3-0 lead in the top of the third.
Then came the barrage of hits -- most legit, some aided by an extremely generous official scorer -- that ended up knocking out Martin before he could close out the fifth. The White Sox had a couple of golden opportunities late, but they couldn't close the gap to get Martin off the hook, and preserve his perfect record as a stopper.
"Kind of felt out of whack tonight, and it's just gonna happen over the course of 32 [starts]," Martin said. "I want the ball until my arm falls off, regardless of good results, bad results. That's the name of the game. I pride myself in trying to go deep into games, regardless of how many runs are being given up, and so on and so forth. Wish we had just been a little sharper."
The unraveling started slowly with a bizarre sequence in the bottom of the third. Chase Meidroth let a hard-hit Tristan Gray grounder sneak under his backhand attempt for a "single." Martin then balked him to second, and then when Alex Jackson tried a push bunt to move Gray to third, it ended up being a single thanks to Jacob Gonzalez's inexperience at first base. He initially charged the bunt before backtracking to first, and while he hadn't returned all the way to the bag when he caught Martin's flip, it would've looked fine had he simply placed the tag on a passing Jackson.
But nope, Gonzalez lost track of where he was, and when he reached his left foot back, he stepped on dirt about three feet in front of the actual base. The Twins had runners on first and third with nobody out, but Martin was able to limit the damage to a Brooks Lee sac fly.
"He wants to be aggressive, do his job, and field the bunt," said Will Venable. "Just got to have a feel for where Davis is at. He wasn't able to get back to the bag there. So yeah, not the cleanest game."
The collapse came an inning later. With one out, Trevor Larnach doubled to right, and then Martin walked fellow Martin Austin on five pitches. Luke Keaschall then lined a cutter to left, and that's when Sam Antonacci showed his inexperience in left field. He threw to third with no chance to get Martin, allowing Keaschall to reach second on a "double," which put runners on second and third. Martin got Gray to two strikes, but Gray slapped and up and away fastball into left field, where Antonacci once again airmailed the cutoff man and allowed Gray to get to second. Martin tried cutting it off in front of the plate (when he probably should've been backing up the catcher) and redirecting the throw to second, but it was too late, and the Twins had a 4-3 lead.
"You understand being aggressive there and really doing everything you can to cut down that run," Venable began. "But got to do everything we can to not let trail runners advance. It's something that is obviously very important, especially with how infrequently guys are really thrown out."
Gray then took off on Martin, who correctly stepped off, but incorrectly threw to second, and the White Sox were lucky that Gray only stopped at third when Meidroth fired wildly, and his throw bounced back onto the field. Jackson then looped a broken-bat single to right, and the Twins had all the runs they needed in excruciating fashion.
Martin started the fifth, but he couldn't finish it. He issued one-out walks to Josh Bell and Larnach on nine total pitches, and although he won the Martin-Martin battle with a lineout to short, Keaschall's opposite-field single provided the 10th hit and sixth run on Martin's tab to chase him from the game. Somehow, all of those runs were earned because the official scorer never saw the White Sox commit an error during all this.
"He was a little around the zone today," Edgar Quero said of Martin. "He was not feeling pretty good today. But it's part of the game. He's been doing a pretty good job starting for us. Hopefully he'll come out for the next one a little better."
Sean Newcomb closed out the fifth and pitched into the seventh, where Trevor Richards carried it the rest of the way in his second consecutive night of multi-inning relief. They kept the White Sox in it, but the offense couldn't cash in a couple of RISPy situations late.
"That was really their job tonight, to be able to cover us," Venable said of Newcomb and Richards logging bulk innings in the 12th of 13 consecutive games. "They did a great job. At this point, I don't want to say running on fumes, because we've done a good job with our starting pitching in the beginning of this stretch. But it's going to be nice to give these guys a blow, but we're going to give it a push tomorrow."
In the seventh, Luisangel Acuña Jr. reached on an infield single and moved to third on a Gonzalez single. Gonzalez advanced to second on a pitch in the dirt, and both runners moved up 90 feet on Meidroth's infield single. Acuña's run made it a 6-4 game, and the Sox still had runners on the corners with nobody out.
Batting right on right, Randal Grichuk got locked up by an Andrew Morris sweeper. Miguel Vargas followed and had the double play taken away on a wild pitch, but after tussling to a full count over the course of eight pitches, Morris challenged Vargas with 100 mph down the pipe and won, getting a swinging strike three.
Colson Montgomery then came off the bench to pinch-hit for Edgar Quero, but with first base open, it hurt Montgomery more than the Twins when Morris drilled him in the knee with a first-pitch slider. With Sam Antonacci coming to the plate, Derek Shelton called for lefty Anthony Banda, who disposed of Antonacci on five well-located pitches for the third strikeout of the inning.
An eighth-inning threat involving the same players bubbled up with two outs, as Acuña reached on another infield "single" (should've been a Lee error), and then Gonzalez walked. That brought Meidroth to the plate as the go-ahead run, but Yoendrys Gomez entered and struck him out, then set down pinch-hitting Tristan Peters and two former teammates for the four-out save.
As it turned out, Acuña was central to everything with the White Sox offense. He started the third with a walk, stole second and third, then scored when Jackson's throw bounced into left field. Gonzalez followed with a strikeout, but Meidroth restarted the rally with a single, moved to third on a Grichuk double, and both came home on Vargas' single for what appeared to be a comfortable early margin.
But perhaps they were too comfortable, because that inning ended with Derek Hill coming to the plate with runners on the corners and two outs against a lefty in Connor Prielipp, and for some reason he tried a first-pitch push bunt that resulted in an easy 3-unassisted to get Prielipp out of the jam.
Bullet points:
*Acuña finished the game 2-for-3 with a walk, three stolen bases and two runs scored. He's the first White Sox to steal three bases in a game since Juan Pierre in 2010.
*Peters pinch-hit for Grichuk to lead off in the ninth, when it seemed like he might've been better used hitting in the seventh with two on and nobody out.
*Andrew Benintendi wore the golden sombrero tonight, striking out all four times from the seventh spot.
*Antonacci made an outstanding diving catch on a Keaschall flare to end the second, which made up for Acuña firing wide on what appeared to be an inning-ending 6-3 double play. It all went downhill defensively afterward.
