Detroit — The Tigers, if we’re being honest, didn’t do much to deserve a victory Sunday.
And the Chicago White Sox, last in the Central Division, were more than happy to take it, scoring twice in the top of the eighth to claim the victory, 6-4, and the series at Comerica Park.
The Tigers (82-62) have lost nine of their last 13 but maintain an 8.5-game lead over the Royals in the Central Division.
“I’m not going to address ‘something of 13,'” manager AJ Hinch said. “Like, I don’t care. We have to go forward. We lost a series that I felt we should’ve won if we executed a little better on both sides of the ball. Start with an off day (Monday), get to Tuesday and kickstart a new series (against the Yankees) hopefully with a win and continue to stack series wins.
‘That’ll get us where we want to go.”
BOX SCORE: White Sox 6, Tigers 4
After the White Sox loaded the bases against reliever Tommy Kahnle in the eighth, Lenyn Sosa bounced a two-run single off Will Vest through the drawn-in infield to break a 4-4 tie.
An alert back-pick by catcher Jake Rogers, nabbing Kyle Teel off third base, prevented even more damage in the inning.
But this was a slog from the outset.
Tigers’ pitchers walked nine batters and hit another in this game. They did not post a single clean inning. Tigers’ hitters managed four hits, all doubles, two by Wenceel Perez.
“You give 10 free passes either by walk or hit by pitch, and we thought we were getting away with it for a while,” Hinch said. “But in the end we couldn’t. It’s more opportunity, more times rolling through their lineup and you’ve got to deal with top of their lineup. Just not a good day on the mound for us.”
The first of Perez’s two doubles set up a sacrifice fly by Zach McKinstry in the fourth inning that broke a 3-3 tie.
The White Sox gifted the Tigers a pair of runs in the first inning. A double by Kerry Carpenter, sandwiched by walks to Gleyber Torres and Riley Greene, loaded the bases with one out against right-handed starter Davis Martin.
Spencer Torkelson, who had a home run stolen by a brilliant leaping grab by left fielder Will Robertson in the sixth inning, hit a fly ball to shallow center. None of the runners would’ve advanced on the ball, until center fielder Brooks Baldwin uncorked a throw that bounced into the Tigers’ dugout.
Torres and Carpenter scored and Greene was awarded third base. He scored on a sacrifice fly by Perez.
But Hinch had to go to his bullpen too early and too often after starter Charlie Morton struggled to get through three innings.
“We definitely put some runners on when we didn’t really need to,” Rogers said. “And they got some timely hits. I definitely felt we could’ve attacked the zone a little better.”
Tyler Holton got four outs, two with punch-outs, and handed the baton to rookie Troy Melton with one out in the fifth.
Melton, who last pitched Tuesday, got the second out but then uncharacteristically started spraying pitches. He loaded the bases with a pair of walks and a hit-batsman.
Then he went 3-0 on Robertson before getting back into the count and getting him to ground out.
Melton got back on point with a quick sixth inning, but he lost the strike zone again in the seventh. The two hitters he walked in the fifth, Colson Montgomery and Andrew Benintendi, were the same two he walked in the seventh.
Kahnle was summoned and with two outs, he fell behind Robertson, hitting .111 at the time, and gave up a tying RBI single to right.
For Morton, it was the second straight outing he battled his command.
“I just feel like I’m physically inconsistent with the way I’m throwing the baseball right now, especially my heaters,” Morton said. “It just feels like there’s more run in my four-seamer than there has been. A lot more arm-side miss. And then I’m having to battle to get back into counts.”
He needed 33 pitches to get through the first inning, 72 pitches to get through three.
“That’s a lot of pitches in a short time,” Hinch said. “That’s too much. It’s unreliable strike-throwing and that’s not what his norm is.”
With two on and two out, Morton got two quick strikes on lefty-swinging Andrew Benintendi but ended up taking the count full. Benintendi launched the 3-2 curveball into the right-center gap, scoring both runners.
It was the only curveball Benintendi saw in the at-bat.
“He did a good job,” Morton said. “It was a breaking ball down and the first one he saw. He was probably waiting me out on that one.”
Sosa led off the third inning ambushing a first-pitch sinker and sending it 451 feet into the shrubs in center field.
“I mean, it’s 0-0, sinker — I’ve gotten away with that pitch a ton,” Morton said. “He crushed that ball. But it’s the efficiency stuff. I’m 30 pitches in in that first inning and that’s going to make the rest of my outing a grind. I don’t care what it is, you go 30 pitches in the first inning and you’re going to be grinding it out.”
The catch by Robertson on Torkelson’s blast was a game-changer. It would have put the Tigers up by two going into the seventh inning. He tracked the ball along the fence toward the foul pole, timed his jump perfectly and caught the ball beyond the wall and brought it back.
“The height of it, the timing of it, it looked like he hung in the air forever and at a weird angle,” Hinch said. “The wind was funny and the height of the ball was really hard to judge. For him to be a left-handed fielder and be able to catch that ball over his head that high — he had to have lost sight of the ball at some point — that was incredible.”
The Tigers also missed a chance to take a 5-4 lead in the seventh. Rogers doubled and alertly took third on a ball in the dirt with one out. But reliever Grant Taylor struck out Torres and Carpenter to end the inning.
“We’re still in the driver’s seat,” Rogers said. “There’s no panic. But we want to win games, at the end of the day. We need to win games. They got the timely hits today and we didn’t. That’s what we need to do. Obviously we need to keep some runs from scoring and do a better job of that. But we need to do a better job of putting some balls in play and getting some runs across when we need to.”
@cmccosky
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