White Sox' furious rally all for naught

MILWAUKEE — Trailing 6-0 to the Brewers after kicking and throwing the baseball all over Miller Park, the White Sox' offense single-handedly tried to erase the early season road woes Monday night.

Catcher Geovany Soto made up for a poor throw in the first inning with a 2-run homer in the fifth.

Down 7-2 in the seventh inning, Adam Eaton's RBI single and Jose Abreu's 2-run basehit were promising signs.

And in the eighth, the Sox rallied all the way back, tying the game at 7-7 after Adam LaRoche delivered a pinch single to score a run and Eaton came through with his fourth hit of the game, another RBI single.

It looked like LaRoche and Eaton were going to come home with the go-ahead runs when Melky Cabrera followed with a laser line drive to center field.

“I thought that it was going to be a good hit for us,” Cabrera said through an interpreter.

Instead, Carlos Gomez ran down the drive and made an over-the-shoulder snag to end the inning, and the momentum swung back to Milwaukee.

The Brewers pounced on it, with Elian Herrera hitting a 2-run homer off reliever Zach Duke and pinch hitter Khris Davis adding a solo shot to lift Milwaukee to a 10-7 win.

“The comeback's great,” manager Robin Ventura said after the White Sox fell to 2-12 away from U.S. Cellular Field. “I think that showed a lot of our lineup to be able to battle back and tie it up. At the end there, Dukey, he's human and it's going to happen. It's a tough one just because of the way you battle back.”

Those were Ventura's kind postgame words.

The embattled manager was much more harsh when it came to another sloppy defensive effort, highlighted by shortstop Alexei Ramirez booting a routine grounder in the first inning, right fielder Avisail Garcia making a wild throw in the fifth and rookie second baseman Micah Johnson again looking overmatched in the field.

“We played poorly at the beginning of the game to get us into that situation,” Ventura said. “We've got to catch the ball. We have to do a better job of doing that.”

Starter Jeff Samardzija couldn't pitch over the miscues and allowed 7 runs (5 earned) on 8 hits in 6 innings. Gomez hurt the White Sox with his bat as well, hitting a 2-run homer off Samardzija in the first inning and tripling and scoring on Garcia's error in the fifth.

“You know, it's the way the game goes sometimes,” Samardzija said. “You have to bear down and pick your teammates up. You can't hang a slider to Gomez, regardless of how they got on base. You still have to make your pitches and make good pitches.”

Duke, who played for the Brewers last season, had a 10-inning scoreless streak until making poor pitches to Herrera and Davis.

“It doesn't feel good to give up the lead right after we battled so hard to get back into the game,” Duke said. “Unfortunately, my location was off today. I left a couple of pitches up and they hammered them.”