Blue Jays 6, White Sox 5: Danny Mendick runs tying run off board
Despite a lineup so compromised by injury and illness that batting Yasmani Grandal leadoff struck Tony La Russa as a half-decent idea, the White Sox managed to score five runs in a game started by Kevin Gausman, who entered the game as a potential Cy Young favorite.
Two problems:
No. 1: They needed to score six runs, because Lucas Giolito’s slider betrayed him over and over again in the fifth inning.
No. 2: They should’ve scored six runs, but Danny Mendick was cut down at second on what should’ve been an easy Grandal sac fly before Reese McGuire crossed the plate.
So the White Sox sagged below .500 once again, while coming up with new ways to expand the genre of disappointing.
A lot of Sox fans would have left the team for dead after Giolito gave up four runs in the bottom of the fifth, turning a 3-2 lead into a 6-3 deficit. But when Trevor Richards started the sixth in relief of Gausman, the Sox wasted no time applying pressure. Gavin Sheets and Adam Engel singled, and Reese McGuire dropped a double in between Goerge Springer and Teoscar Hernandez in right center to score Sheets. Josh Harrison then drew a walk that loaded the bases.
Up came Mendick, who hit a chopper to the left side. With Engel running home from third, the only out was to second, and both teams were happy to trade a run for an out, especially since the Sox had one more out to spare.
Grandal then appeared to use it with a fly ball to left field. It wasn’t quite deep enough to ever consider a homer, but it was deep enough to rule out a throw home. McGuire jogged home…
…until he had to run home, because he noticed that Lourdes Gurriel’s throw from left field stood a chance at beating Mendick to second. It did, and Mendick was tagged out about a step and a half before McGuire touched home. That run didn’t count, and nobody else crossed the plate for that matter, either.
It wasn’t for a lack of opportunities. Harrison and Mendick started a two-out rally in the eighth, but Grandal grounded out on the first pitch to cap off an 0-for-5 night from the leadoff spot (it should’ve been 0-for-4, but still). Likewise, Andrew Vaughn and José Abreu opened the ninth inning with singles off Jordan Romano, but Jake Burger rolled over a first-pitch slider and bounced into a 5-4 double play that eliminated the tying run from scoring position.
The moral of the story: The White Sox simply aren’t good enough to give away runs that would have crossed the plate 999 times out of 1,000, especially when Giolito has an off night.
Through four innings, Giolito only struggled with a two-batter sequence in the second, when Hernandez doubled off the wall in right center and Alejandro Kirk followed with a homer on a hanging changeup to give Toronto a 2-1 lead. Otherwise, he more or less asserted his usual form entering the fifth inning.
Toronto applied pressure with one out in the fifth, as George Springer dropped a single to right field, and Bo Bichette hopped a double over the side wall to put runners on second and third. Up came Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and while Giolito fell behind 2-0, he struck him out with three unhittable pitches — a slider that hung inside, a fastball the upper inside corner of the zone, and a diving changeup down and in that Guerrero swung over.
The problem was that Giolito’s slider continued to spin on him, and in worse spots. He hung one to Hernandez on a 1-1 count, and while Adam Engel gave it his wall, the ball glanced off his glove for a two-run double and 4-3 lead. Kirk then teed off on a 2-1 slider for his second two-run shot of the game. A Gurriel single chased Giolito from the game, and while Reynaldo López, Aaron Bummer and Kyle Crick combined to keep the Blue Jays off the board, the scorelessness arrived too late.
The White Sox outhit the Blue Jays 13-12, and totaled five extra-base hits. A great night for Vaughn went by the boards. He hit a solo shot off Gausman in the first inning to set the stage for a 4-for-5 night, coming up a triple short of the cycle. Unfortunately, Grandal went 0-for-5 with five stranded ahead of him, and Jake Burger went 0-for-5 with six stranded two batters afterward.
Bullet points:
*While he went 2-for-4 from the ninth spot in his first game replacing Tim Anderson at shortstop, Mendick’s Boner will be the defining memory from this one.
*That baserunning mistake also prevented this game from entering Kendall Graveman territory.
*Nobody pinch-hit for anybody because everybody who didn’t play is ailing.
*Burger had a diving stab at third, and Abreu properly started a rundown with a runner on third, not letting go of the ball until he ran about 150 feet and forced the baserunner to retreat to third.
Record: 23-24 | Box score | Statcast
This team finds ways to lose.
Is Grandal cooked?
It certainly looks that way. He was eventually able to find the power last year but expecting him to fight off the aging curve another year May be too much to ask.
That this game was a close loss was all that could really be hoped for given the lineup. The boneheadery, lack of available pinch-hitters/runners, and lack of a reliable RHP setup man meant that Tony is excused for the baserunning jackassery for all but for the mistake of leaving Giolito in to face Kirk a third time.
At least Pito has clearly shaken off what is by now his usual early season funk, albeit still missing quite a bit of pop. That ball he hit the second time up was a homer last year per statcast, and might have been this year if not to dead center. Up to a 120 wRC+ on the year and climbing, albeit with a SLG a tick below .400. He’s not cooked yet. Grandal and Pollock would do well to follow him.
If Grandal is ailing like his play suggests, once most of the currently walking wounded return, I would like to see him on the IL for a two-week knee rest and give Perez a chance to show what he can do. It’s not like production from the C spot can get much worse… McGuire’s nice night has his wRC+ all the way up to 50!
Adding to the dumbassery of the Mendick/McGuire play was the fact that the team’s hottest hitter was left standing on the on deck circle mouth agape at what had transpired.
That’s damn inspired writing!
I’m interested in how Jim, and anyone else, would allocate the blame on Grandal’s fly ball to left field. It reads like Jim would put it almost fully on Mendick. I think I’d put it somewhere between 50-75% Mendick and the rest on McGuire.
I’d say 90-10. You only notice how hard the guy is running from third on a fly like that when a trailing runner makes a bad decision.
Ozzie pretty much put it all on Mendick on the post game. I find it hard to blame McGuire for not compensating for his dumb teammate.
I blame Mendick. McGuire is supposed to jog home on that ball and did his job. Mendick could feint toward 2nd to draw a throw but actually trying to get to 2nd once a throw was headed there was the mistake. I think people are having trouble recognizing that this is a play we see often because Mendick’s choice was so out of the ordinary.
99% on Mendick, 1% on the base coaches. That play is one where getting the run home is the only thing that matters. The runner on 1st is, as Mendick demonstrated, going to be out by just tagging up directly. Their job is to tag and break for 2nd under 60% power until divining whether the throw comes home or 2nd; if the former, gun it for 2, if not then stay home. Do anything but make a *quick* out and it’s fine.
McGuire is a catcher. You don’t push a catcher, whose profession is brutal on the legs and knees, to hit the gas on the basepaths unless it’s critical and totally necessary. That fly ball deep enough to LF (usually, as was the case here, the weakest arm in the outfield) meant he could score easily; there was no reason to gun it to beat his teammate of all people in a footrace!
Mendick 100%. Love the kid, but that’s boneheaded. Don’t put the tying run in jeopardy. Too bad because it completely overshadows the fact that he stepped up with his bat, for the second time in Tim’s absence.
Although I do like a-t’s assignment of a fraction of blame to base coaches. I just don’t think Boston actually thought he would go, he was probably thinking feint and retreat and by the time he realized it was a go, it was too late to reel him back in.
Boston’s job at 1st is to remind game smart but often adrenaline-addled young men on what to do given the limited number of outcomes possible. Merely advising Mendick to make sure the ball is coming home before breaking loose for second should’ve been sufficient.
You could include SuperJoe a little, but he had no reason to tell McGuire to sprint home given the depth of the fly ball; he couldn’t have realized the danger of what and communicated to McGuire the need for speed in time to avoid that little disaster.
I blame 90% Mendick, and 10% to whoever is in charge of getting this team prepared to play the fundamentals of baseball.
That play is worth sending Mendick back down. He has no value anyway, but if he’s not going to play fundamentally sound baseball he has less than zero value.
With Tim out, he very much does have value as the current starting shortstop.
Frankly I think the team would have been better off with him as the main utilityman over Leury too. One dumbass decision like that doesn’t change a guy’s entire profile.
Someone else could be manning the position. But that would require someone else to be called up.
Super odd assessment for a guy who went 2-4 with 2 RBI and, on the season, is currently outhitting everyone on this team not named Anderson, Vaughn, or Robert.
Boneheaded play, for sure. But he still likely provided positive value even in this game.
His lifetime slash is .243/.301/.355
No……….
Funny how many times the Hawk Harrelson sound clip from the Beckham/Gillaspie collision would work for this team.
“AND WE FIND ANOTHER WAY…YET ANOTHER WAY….THAT’S HARD TO BELIEVE.”
Honestly, it’s not hard to believe any more.
I thought that Beckham referencing that play in the broadcast was pretty freaking hilarious.
I dont even know why we have coaches, cause this remains one of the dumbest staffs and dumbest coached teams in the league. Your players literally cant get the easiest base running situations correct.
Its a 1 run game, and your hottest hitter is on deck, 1 out guys on 1st and 3rd…. Joe McEwing should be talking to Reece about scoring on a sac fly, maybe with a reminder to run thru home not fiddlefuck around look back and wind up 15 feet short of the plate as the other idiot decides to take off for 2nd for some unknown reason given the risk reward, and where is Boston letting mendick know hey thats a real stupid idea we need the tying run to score and we shouldnt be taking the bat out of our best hitters hands.
Incredible mistakes constantly plaque this team and they come from everywhere the manager, the base coaches, the players. Reece and Danny are basically 4A talent level guys you simply cant also make dumb baseball plays when you have that borderline mlb level talent.
This is a major problem this year. I have made a comment on this before. If you can’t play, then off you go to the IL, and put somebody that can play. But perhaps the biggest problem is still physical conditioning. Many players appear to be just sore which sometimes is another way to say “out of shape”.
The White Sox reminds me myself when I start playing in my soccer league after I spent all Winter watching TV. After the first game, I am so sored that I have to skip the next game to recover. Then I play the next game just to leave limping, and so the season goes by between hops in one leg and generous amounts of Dencorub and bandages.
The clown does not pinch hit for anyone anyway.
So his job is basically talk to the press and make silly lineups?
We are doomed.
I am just all atwitter thinking about who may bat leadoff in tonights game!
Trying to channel my inner The Russa, my guess is….Kyle Crick.
Outside our division, only the Pirates have scored fewer runs than the Sox in all of MLB.
Today, it will be likely Mendick
White Sox players cannot play 2 days in a row. They might get stiffed. Can you believe this shit? They, like pitchers, need to take days off in between starts. I have never seen a White Sox team as soft and fragile as this one.