Sox fall to Tampa Bay again, 5-3
The championship season ends five weeks from today. Do you have a sense of where your White Sox will be on Sept. 28?
Judging by the bullpen's back-to-back blowups against postseason-bound Tampa Bay, the Sox just might be staying home.
After their 5-3 loss on a muggy Saturday afternoon at U.S. Cellular Field - the visitors rallied for 4 runs in the eighth off Javier Vazquez and Matt Thornton - the White Sox went to bed on the wrong side of the playoff bubble for the second night in a row.
They woke up Sunday ½ game behind Minnesota in the AL Central and a half-game behind Boston in the wild-card race.
Ozzie Guillen's crew hasn't been in such a position on successive nights since May 16, but that's not why he and other Sox might not have slept too soundly.
Vazquez, after retiring the first 17 Rays and looking brilliant doing it, wound up suffering the loss because he loaded the bases in the eighth and Thornton couldn't strand any of the Rays there.
Thornton faced three batters during his stint - and the Rays' combination of a walk and two singles turned a 3-1 Sox lead into a 5-3 defeat.
"Javy throw great," Guillen said. "The difference in those two games between the Devil Rays and the White Sox was the bullpen. That's it."
"This is a tough game," Vazquez said. "That's one of the toughest games for me in my career - just being ahead like that and then, 'Boom.' "
Vazquez supplied all of the fireworks early as he thrived under humid conditions that had the heat index cranked to 97 degrees most of the game.
He finished the first inning by whiffing B.J. Upton and Carlos Pena with 96-mph fastballs. He was still hitting 96 on the radar gun when Guillen took him out with the bases loaded and nobody out in the eighth, even though Vazquez had thrown just 90 pitches.
"I felt good," he said.
"Javy can go out there and throw 150 pitches if he wanted to," said catcher Toby Hall. "That's the kind of athlete he is. But that's a point in time where you go to your horses."
That's why Guillen brought in the lefty-throwing Thornton to face the lefty-swinging Iwamura - because he needed a strikeout and Thornton averages more than one whiff per inning.
Thornton certainly threw hard enough and often enough to earn a strikeout.
After Iwamura fouled off seven consecutive full-count heaters that all came in at least 96 mph, the Rays' leadoff man watched Thornton's 13th straight fastball stay too high in the zone.
Iwamura's walk forced in Navarro to make it 3-2. Then Thornton worked a 1-2 count on B.J. Upton, but he broke his bat on an inbetween-hopper to shortstop Orlando Cabrera.
It looked like a chance for a double play, but Cabrera apparently was shielded by baserunner Jason Bartlett and could only get a sliver on the ball as it slipped into the outfield grass.
That single drove in Gross with the tying run. Then, with the dark skies suddenly opening up, Carlos Pena roped a 2-run single that sent Thornton out of the showers and into the shower with boos ringing in his ears.
D.J. Carrasco wriggled out of the inning without further damage, but he was no match for the Rays bullpen.
The Sox managed 1 walk over the final 3 innings as Grant Balfour (4-2), Chad Bradford and Dan Wheeler closed them out.
"My gut feeling, I've been wrong the last two days," Guillen said. "My managing ability has started coming out in the last two days, how bad I am.
"When you change the bullpen, that's a great chance for people to second-guess you. If you strike out Iwamura, you're the greatest. Oh, wow. But bad things happen sometime. Hopefully next time, it work out for the team."