Santos allows tying homer in 9th as Sox fall in 10

Was talking to Sergio Santos earlier in the week about his “unofficial” new job as White Sox closer.

Even though he was making the pressurized role look extremely easy while reeling off 20 straight scoreless innings in 16 appearances to start the season, Santos was taking nothing for granted.

“I’ve pitched the sixth, seventh, eighth innings before, and when you mess up there’s still more game to play,” Santos said. “In the ninth, if you mess up it’s going to be noticed a lot more. It’s a lot different.”

Santos is human, and he was bound to stumble at some point this year.

Unfortunately, it came at about the worst moment possible.

Looking like a lock to extend the scoreless streak and go 7-for-7 in save opportunities, Santos was one out away from preserving a 3-2 win for the White Sox.

But after he missed a slider to Russell Mitchell, the Dodgers’ No. 9 hitter, Santos threw a fastball right down the middle.

Mitchell was a little quick, but he hit the 2-1 pitch down the left-field line and it cleared the fence in fair territory.

That pulled Los Angeles into a 3-3 tie, and the Dodgers scored 3 more runs off Santos in the 10th inning and won the interleague series opener 6-4.

To his credit, Santos wasn’t making any excuses after his first bad outing of the season.

“It’s tough, obviously,” he said. “It’s a game we should have won, especially with two outs. I have to come in and do my job.”

Santos did not, and he wasted another solid effort from starting pitcher Phil Humber, who allowed 2 runs on 5 hits in 7 innings.

But Humber was blaming himself for serving up a 2-run homer to Matt Kemp in the first inning.

“We scored enough runs to win tonight,” Humber said. “Obviously, Sergio gets the loss but honestly I feel like if he gives up that home run and it’s 3-0 it’s a different deal. I made a bad pitch in the first inning, a mental mistake more than anything, and I made a bad pitch to a really good hitter and he hit it out.

“Like I said, it goes on Sergio’s record but the way I look at it, that game should have been 3-0 in the ninth inning.”

The big question now is how does Santos bounce back from a rare off night?

“One mistake tied the ballgame, but the question is how he going to be tomorrow?” manager Ozzie Guillen said. “I think tomorrow he’ll be fine. I think he was throwing the ball very good. He’s still throwing the ball very good. Like I say, that’s part of the game, you have to learn from that. You hope, you wish it’ll never happen again. But it will happen sooner or later in his career.”

Santos was upset, but not overly shaken.

“I’ll think about it tonight,” he said. “I’ll go over my pitches, everything I’ve done, and you’ve got to forget about it. It’s baseball now, here comes another challenge. I lost the game for us, and it’s how I bounce back and how I come back from this and pitch tomorrow.”