Down four with the bases loaded in the six inning, Miguel Vargas briefly looked like he had produced The Swing that might unclog the White Sox offense.
Luis Gastelum left an 0-1 sweeper above the knees on the outer half of the plate, and Vargas put good wood on it, launching to left center field. Statcast says it left the bat at 104.3 mph and traveled some 397 feet, and would have left 12 of 30 MLB parks, including Rate Field.
Alas, the White Sox departed home yesterday, and Busch Stadium was not among the other 11 parks. That left enough room for Nathan Church to track it down and make the catch against the wall to leave them loaded.
The White Sox never had that big hit with runners in scoring position. They went 0-for-8 in the clutch with 12 stranded, and instead had to settle for two Chase Meidroth solo shots and an productive-but-still-unsatisfying groundout in the eighth inning, while Anthony Kay and the run prevention unit had a less than stellar night. The result is a four-game losing streak that ties their season's worst, and an AL Central lead that the Guardians whittled down to a half-game after a comeback victory over the Twins.
The White Sox had chances to make a slugfest out of this one. Vargas' agonizing flyout was the second inning in a row where they stranded three, as Tristan Peters pinch-hit for Brenton Doyle after Edgar Quero got clipped by a pitch to load the bases and struck out to end the fifth. Church ran down the longest drive of the night by either team -- a 402-foot drive to dead center by Braden Montgomery -- to prevent a run-scoring double in the seventh.
What could have been a last stand in the eighth also fizzled. Sam Antonacci let a pitch graze his elbow to start the inning, then took third on Kyle Teel's single to put runners on the corners with nobody out. With Meidroth coming to the plate, Oli Marmol opted for Ryne Stanek out of the bullpen, and struck out Meidroth on a foul-tipped fastball well above the zone. Munetaka Murakami pinch-hit for Randal Grichuk (who had a simliarly ugly strikeout with the bases loaded and one out before Vargas' bid in the sixth), but merely hit a soft grounder to first. It scored Antonacci, but the Cardinals were happy to trade a run for an out, and Vargas grounded out to end the inning.
Instead, this game goes down as one that was rough around all edges. Kay gave up a run in three of his four innings, dealing with a steady stream of traffic and missing a couple of big plays behind him.
Iván Herrera scored the first run of the game from first on Alec Burleson's double to right because Braden Montgomery's throw in to Meidroth carried him a couple of steps, and the throw home was a little up the line. In the second, Kay faced runners on the corners with nobody out, but got a grounder to third. Colson Montgomery fired across to Meidroth for one, and when he did that, Leo Bernal broke for home. A good throw would have beat him for a 5-4-2 double play, but Meidroth's throw bounced to Jake Rogers, who couldn't cleanly handle the hop. Likewise, Brenton Doyle could have been able to cut down Jordan Walker on Joshua Báez's single in the third because Walker initially broke back to second on the line drive, but his throw was on the first-base side of the plate.
The Cardinals thrice ran on White Sox outfielders and lived to tell the tale, as Báez scored on Randal Grichuk even though the ball got to Grichuk as Báez touched third. That capped off a three-run fifth that was the decisive inning. Venable had pulled Kay after four innings and 67 pitches in anticipation of Kay's persistent TTOP issues of late, but Trevor Richards entered and did his best impersonation of Kay's third time through, giving up four consecutive one-out hits for three quick runs the Sox could never regain.
Bullet points:
*The White Sox also made a couple outs on the basepaths, as Rogers was doubled off first on Luisangel Acuña's soft lineout in the second, and Doyle was caught between first and second after anticipating a block of a pitch in the dirt that Bernal picked cleanly. Every aspect of the game had a flaw.
*While Antonacci was plunked, he didn't make up any ground on Herrera, who holds a 29-26 edge on the MLB HBP leaderboard. Herrera got hit on the foot by Kay's league-leading 24th HBP.
*Meidroth took Matthew Liberatore deep on the first pitch of the game, meaning the White Sox are now 1-6 when their first hitter homers this season.
*The game was delayed an hour and 70 minutes by rain, or the threat of it.
