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Chicago White Sox end homestand on a sour note

It's never wise to live in the past, especially if you are the Chicago White Sox.

While they seemed to swiftly move on from a nightmarish 2015, when scoring runs was a daily challenge, the Sox are starting to resemble last year's team, particularly on the offensive end.

The White Sox lost to the Cleveland Indians 4-3 Wednesday afternoon at U.S. Cellular Field, wrapping up a 10-game homestand at 3-7.

The most disturbing aspect? The White Sox only scored 28 runs.

"It has definitely been peaks and valleys, for sure," said Adam Eaton, who was 0-for-5 in Wednesday's loss. "Offensively, we definitely need to step it up. It has been five, six, seven games, whatever, where we haven't done it, myself included. The whole team top to bottom hasn't picked it up, but it's not for the lack of effort.

"We understand that going into each game we need to score runs and when we don't, it (stinks). We have to score runs. We've got to get guys on and when we get guys on we've got to score them, myself included."

Even when they were roaring out to a 23-10 start, the Sox never seemed to have more than three or four hitters swinging hot bats at the same time.

Strong pitching covered the flaw in April and early May, but that has leveled off while the inconsistency up and down the lineup continues.

So now, when Jose Abreu and Avisail Garcia and Austin Jackson appear to be coming around, other hitters like Brett Lawrie, Jimmy Rollins and Alex Avila are falling apart.

Manager Robin Ventura is used to fielding questions about a lack of offense, but he's starting to run out of answers.

"I think there's a common theme when you just don't score," Ventura said. "You are just not knocking in runs when you have guys on base. It seemed like we were getting opportunities in this homestand and not being able to get the easy ones, a guy on third and less than two outs, not being able to punch that one across and give yourself a better chance down the line.

"That's where you really need to take advantage of it. You need to be able to get those guys in. If you get the big hit, that's great. But you at least have to get those guys in."

The Sox were 0-for-4 with runners in scoring position in the loss to the Indians, and they left 7 runners on base.

"One hit can spark a team," Todd Frazier said. "We hit a home run later in the game, kind of got us going a little, but we have to get guys on before we get two outs. It seems like we get two outs before we get a runner on. Our main focus is to get on base and that's what we're going to try and do these next upcoming games."

Trailing 4-1 in the eighth inning, the White Sox did get a big hit from Melky Cabrera, who delivered a 2-run homer off Cleveland reliever Bryan Shaw.

Frazier scored the White Sox's first run in the sixth inning. With two outs, the third baseman stole second base, advanced to third on catcher Yan Gomes' throwing error and came home on center fielder Rajai Davis' fielding error.

White Sox starter Jose Quintana (5-4) pitched 6 innings and allowed 3 runs on 5 hits.

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