White Sox 8, Indians 1
Indians fall to 83-61
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That was no fun at all. We can try to dissect it all we want, but this loss boiled down to one horrendous inning. Sometimes, baseball just sucks. But in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter, because the Tigers lost by an identical score to the even more pathetic Twins.
Trevor Bauer and Jose Quintana were locked into quite the pitcher’s duel heading into the 6th inning, as both took advantage of tonight’s generous strike zone. After surrendering a run in the 1st inning, Bauer was lights out and had retired 12 out of the last 13 batters he faced in innings two through five. It was then that the dreaded Third Time Through The Order came due up, and young Trevor had no answers.
Leadoff hitter Adam Eaton walked, and then the wrath of the unreasonably angry BABIP gods came raining down on Bauer and the Tribe. A single up the middle and a bloopy fliner that was nearly caught by Rajai Davis loaded the bases. Two more BABIP-y singles put the Sox up 4-1 and ended Bauer’s night. Dan Otero relieved Bauer and was, uh, not quite on his game tonight. The flukiness continued as Otero surrendered another single up the middle, but the flukiness ended promptly as Otero began serving up fat meatballs. By the time the agonizingly long inning ended, the Sox were up 8-1 and Tribe fans across the interwebs had entered complete meltdown mode. Bauer was charged with six runs total, with Otero responsible for the other two. Joe Colon and Jabroni Mike finished the game off without allowing any other runs, but it didn’t matter by that point.
On the offensive side, there wasn’t much to write about. Brandon Guyer was responsible for the Tribe’s only run on a solo homer in the 2nd. Otherwise, Jose Quintana straight dominated, giving up just five hits in eight innings of work The Indians barely even threatened to score for most of the rest of the game. On a night that saw the White Sox set some kind of world record for dogs at a stadium or whatever, it was the Indians that did the majority of the defecating.
Now, Tribe fans are rightfully frustrated with the way the team has played the last two nights, but once again I feel like we need to call for some perspective. They’ve still got a six-game lead thanks to the Tigers’ loss, and there are still plenty of games left against garbage teams that don’t have starters the caliber of Jose Quintana. The bad news is that Josh Tomlin is starting tomorrow, and everyone knows that three losses in a row is an official sign that the sky is falling.
Get out your heavy duty umbrellas, folks.