In his major league debut against the Twins last Wednesday, David Sandlin didn't throw a single pitch with a runner on base.
In his second major league start tonight against those same Twins, he faced the bases loaded in each of his last two innings of work, and neither ended well.
"Just plain and simple didn't execute, didn't fill up the zone," said a downbeat Sandlin postgame. "That's on me."
First, Sandlin gave up a grand slam to Tristan "One Day" Gray with two outs, and in particularly aggravating fashion. The Twins had runners on first and third and nobody out after a double and a single, but Sandlin was able to get a force at second while freezing Josh Bell at third despite looking at first base in between, and then a drawn-in Colson Montgomery cut down Bell at the plate on a grounder. Sandlin then walked Luke Keaschall to load the bases for Gray, and although Sandlin threw what appeared to be a curve with decent sharpness on a 1-0 count, Gray dropped the barrel on it and lofted it over the right field wall for a grand slam and a 5-1 lead.
"Once you're not throwing other stuff in the zone, it's pretty easy for them to sit on something," Sandlin said. "They started looking for that curveball later as the game went on, second time through the lineup. I just wasn't shielding it with other stuff in the zone."
No stranger to counterpunching, the White Sox answered immediately with three runs off Joe Ryan when Miguel Vargas hit a two-run blast, and Andrew Benintendi left the yard to right field two batters later to make it a 5-4 game.
"I feel I'm in a really good spot right now, and hopefully it keeps being that way," Vargas said. "We hadn't seen [Ryan] before the last time we faced him. Now that we've faced him a little bit more, now we understand a little bit more what we want to do with him at the plate, and I think as a group, we did a really good job today."
But Sandlin returned to the mound for the bottom of the fifth and immediately found more trouble. He walked Kody Clemens on five pitches, and then gave up a first-pitch single to Bell. Tyler Davis started warming up in earnest, only for the reward of entering with the bases loaded after a walk to Trevor Larnach.
The Twins once again scored four runs, but with a series of smaller swings -- solid opposite-field singles by Austin Martin and Victor Caratini, a long sac fly for Keaschall, and then a popout in foul territory that Vargas flagged down, but turned into a sac fly because Martin outran a strong throw home.
The Twins led 9-4 after their second consecutive four spot, and all but one of those runs ran on Sandlin's tab, so he finished with a overflowing line: 4+ IP, 8 H, 8 R, 8 ER, 4 BB, 4 K, 1 HR. He gave up three singles for one run in the first inning, but faced the minimum in the second and third innings before the roof caved in.
"Really beyond the (13 games in 13 days) stretch that we’re on, just the availability for the day," Will Venable said for why he tried to get a fifth inning out of Sandlin. "In that situation, you want to get him to that fifth inning, got 68 pitches going into that where he’s got a chance to get a couple more outs there, which are huge for us to be able to get through the game, let alone get through the stretch."
It would've been asking a lot for the White Sox offense to win this game, but it had opportunities to turn it into more of a slugfest early. They failed to convert a golden opportunity against Ryan in the first inning, when Sam Antonacci reached on a error and took third on a double, only for both runners to be stranded when Benintendi struck out, Montgomery popped out and Chase Meidroth struck out.
Benintendi spent his next two plate appearances atoning, cashing in a one-out Antonacci double with a two-out single that tied the game at 1 in the third inning, then hitting the solo shot in the fifth. In between, Meidroth led off the fourth with a double, only for the next three Sox go down in order.
After the three-run outburst, the Twins subdued the White Sox until the ninth, when Vargas hit a two-run laser over the left-field wall against Travis Adams to appease the White Sox fans who stayed tuned.
Bullet points:
*Jacob Gonzalez joined Sandlin in second starts to forget, wearing the golden sombrero at the plate. He did manage to both start and turn an inning-ending 3-6-3-6 double play in the third inning. First he fielded a bouncer from Clemens and fired to second in time to get Brooks Lee. Clemens beat Montgomery's return throw to first, and when it glanced off Gonzalez's glove, he immediately headed to second, but Gonzalez somehow managed to chase down the ball and fire a two-hop strike to Montgomery, who applied the tag.
*Ryan won the battle, but the Sox made him sweat: 6 IP, 8 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 0 BB, 9 K, 2 HR.
*The White Sox's five-game winning streak came to an end, but pitching-wise, they couldn't be better equipped to start a new one. Davis Martin is 6-0 this season after a White Sox loss, and thanks to Trevor Richards handling the last two innings, all of the best bullpen arms are at Venable's disposal.
*Speaking of Venable, this is just the 10th time in 60 games where he used only nine position players.
