If there's any silver lining to the White Sox letting the AL Central slip out of their grasp, it's better to know a day early.
The White Sox's 9-6 loss to the Rockies tonight, coupled with the Guardians' 11-5 victory over the Royals, cemented the division in favor of Cleveland, which also gets the first-round bye as the No. 2 seed. The White Sox have to settle for the third wild card spot, and will head to the state of Texas to play whichever team ends up taking the AL West, but at least they'll have an extra day to get their affairs in order.
Davis Martin opened his evening by dropping Munetaka Murakami's flip to first on what should've been a routine 3-1, and didn't end up getting out of the first. Solid singles by Cole Carrigg, TJ Rumfeld and, after a walk to Connor Norby, Adael Amador put the White Sox behind 3-0, and while Will Venable pulled the plug then in an attempt to keep hope alive, the rest of the evening orbited around that three-run deficit.
When Brenton Doyle homered off his former team by taking José Quintana deep in the second inning, Hunter Goodman returned the favor on a middle-middle Noah Schultz cutter in the top of the third. When Luisangel Acuña of all people led off the bottom of the third by lofting a fly into the first row of the left-center seats to make it a 4-2 game, Ezequiel Tovar did the same before Schultz could close out the fourth.
The White Sox offense perked up later and came close to changing the complexion of the game in the seventh. Miguel Vargas drew a one-out walk and moved to third when Amador boxed Andrew Benintendi's grounder to second. A chopper by Randal Grichuk developed slowly enough to allow Vargas to score and Benintendi to move up to second, which brought Munetaka Murakami to plate as the potential tying run.
And he came about five feet away from actualizing it. Although Warren Schaefer brought in lefty Brennan Bernardino to neutralize Murakami, he dangled a 1-0 curveball off the heard of the plate, and Murakami put a good swing on it. Both outfielders raced to track it down in the right-center gap, and center fielder Carrigg ended up hauling it in on the warning track to keep it a 5-3 game.
Although he had to go to his bullpen in the first inning, Venable's relievers did well enough to get to the ninth inning with a trustworthy option on the mound in Bryan Hudson. Trouble struck early when Jordan Beck lined his first pitch to right for a double, but Hudson had a chance to get out of the inning when the purpose of a sac bunt was defeated by a too-shallow fly to center for the second out.
Alas, Hudson got ahead of Jake McCarthy 1-2 before missing low and/or away om three straight pitches for a walk, and Carrigg inside-outed a single to right to restore that dreaded three-run margin. Then Tyler Davis came in and allowed Goodman to double it with his second homer of the night, landing in the White Sox bullpen behind the best leaping attempt by Sam Antonacci in left.
That one hurt, because Tristan Peters led off the ninth by reaching on a dropped strike three, and after Vargas' third walk of the night, Andrew Benintendi launched a three-run bomb to right. But that only made it a 9-6 game, rather than a 6-all affair, and the Sox didn't have another three-spot in them.
Bullet points:
*Colson Montgomery only had two plate appearances after entering for Acuña, but both hurt. First, he pinch-hit for Acuña to face Ryan Felter with two on and two outs in the sixth and fouled off a first-pitch fastball before swinging over changeups for his 225th strikeout. Two innings later, he came to the plate with runners on the corners and one out in a 5-3 game, but grounded into a 4-6-3 double play. His average dropped below .200 in the process.
*Chase Meidroth led off that eighth-inning threat with a pinch-hit double, so he looked good despite the sore hamstring.
*Schultz gave up the solo shots on a pair of cutters, but at least he stayed aggressive, and ended up throwing 3⅓ innings in relief of Martin on just 42 pitches. Jordan HIcks, Sean Newcomb and Huascar Brazobán combined to throw four scoreless innings afterward, so Venable's best attempt to mask Martin's dud worked out well enough.
*Martin went winless over his last 16 games, posting a 5.75 ERA over that stretch.
