Plenty of blame for Sox’ losing big lead, game
Had Dayan Viciedo’s opposite-field drive to deep right field carried maybe five feet farther, he would have been the toast of the White Sox’ postgame clubhouse following a long, long day of baseball Tuesday at warm, windy U.S. Cellular Field.
Instead, Tigers right fielder Brennan Boesch kept drifting back until he was on the warning track, where he had enough room to glove Viciedo’s flyball to end the game.
Had Viciedo connected just a little harder, the Sox would have won the game 11-10 and quickly forgotten about blowing a 6-0 lead.
He didn’t, and the White Sox fell to Detroit 10-8.
The loss set off a chain of blame, starting with starting pitcher Jake Peavy.
Peavy carried the 6-0 lead into the sixth inning before being tagged for 6 runs on 4 hits, a walk and a hit batter. He exited with one out, and Will Ohman came on in relief.
“I let my emotions get the best out of me,” Peavy said. “I take full responsibility for letting the inning get to where it got, and the bullpen had trouble keeping it where it was. It was just a bad loss.”
Peavy served up a 2-run homer to Miguel Cabrera and a 3-run shot to Ryan Raburn to let the Tigers back in the game. He was gone after walking Jhonny Peralta.
Enter Ohman.
With the Sox clinging to a 6-5 lead, Ohman hit Delmon Young with a pitch and then yielded a 3-run homer to Austin Jackson. Peavy quickly unraveled in the sixth, and Ohman had to get ready in a hurry. He wasn’t making excuses afterward.
“If I say I’m ready, I’m ready,” Ohman said. “If I say I’m ready, then it’s on me. I came out of there, took my warmup pitches. I had no inclination towards not being ready. I got beat. I cost us the game.”
A.J. Pierzynski matched his career high with 5 hits in the loss, but the White Sox’ catcher was having no part of pinning blame on Peavy and/or Ohman.
“Obviously, it wasn’t all on Jake,” Pierzynski said. “He came out, we still had the lead, and we just couldn’t get it done. Blame me. Blame me for putting the wrong fingers down.”
Or, blame manager Robin Ventura for sticking too long with Peavy, or calling on Ohman at an inopportune time.
Jesse Crain (strained left oblique) came off the disabled list before the game, but Ventura stayed away from the veteran reliever. The bullpen was taxed the entire homestand, so Ventura’s options were limited.
“You’ve seen Jake in the past, he’s able to battle through that,” Ventura said. “You can’t use everybody every day. Even though you want to win this game, you’re still looking at more games in the season. You don’t always get to use everybody every day the way you want to. It’s one of those, we score some runs and (the Tigers) earned it. They deserved it.”
The White Sox almost saved face after fighting back with two outs in the ninth inning and scoring a pair of runs on Alexei Ramirez’s bases-loaded double. That set up Viciedo for a walk-off home run, but it wasn’t meant to be.
“When (Viciedo) hit it, I definitely thought it had a chance,” Pierzynski said. “It’s nice to see him going the other way, Alexei going the other way for a hit. It’s always nice when you have a comeback like that, but you’d like to win the game instead of falling just a couple feet short.”
sgregor@dailyherald.com