White Sox 2, Yankees 1, and it took eleven innings, a placed runner, and a bases-loaded walk from Fernando Cruz to get there. Thursday's series finale between the New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox at Rate Field turned into the kind of pitchers' fight that makes a scoreboard lie about how good the baseball actually was, and it ended with Cruz walking in Tristan Peters in the bottom of the 11th.
Ryan Weathers deserved a whole lot better than this. He worked seven scoreless innings against a lineup that had walked the Yankees off the night before, and the club still found a way to lose.
The Walk That Beat Them
Aaron Boone had Cruz warm and ready after he'd already stranded two inherited runners in the 10th (give him credit for that one). The bottom of the 11th unraveled fast. Cruz opened the inning by intentionally walking Munetaka Murakami, struck out Miguel Vargas, then watched Sam Antonacci single to load the bases. Colson Montgomery struck out for the second out. Then Peters -- the same guy who'd scored the walk-off the night before -- worked a walk that forced in Chase Meidroth, the automatic runner placed at second to open the inning. Two outs, bases loaded, and Cruz couldn't find the zone when it mattered most. Final: White Sox 2, Yankees 1.
Weathers Deserved Better
While the bullpen was busy losing this one, Weathers was busy outpitching everybody not named Sean Burke. Seven innings, zero runs, three hits, three walks, four strikeouts, 106 pitches. Burke matched him on the other side -- six innings, zero runs, ten strikeouts -- and between the two starters, this game had thirteen scoreless innings before either bullpen let anything happen. Neither starter picked up a decision. That's baseball being cruel for no particular reason.
Grisham Delivers, Chicago Answers Right Back
The Yankees finally broke through in the top of the 10th when Anthony Volpe, the automatic runner placed at second, scored on a Trent Grisham single (Grisham finished 2-for-4 with the RBI, easily his best swing of the day). It should have held up. Instead, Chicago answered in the bottom half -- Peters, again the placed runner, came around on an Andrew Benintendi single, and the whole thing reset to 1-1 heading to the 11th.
Both benches leaned on the intentional walk like a security blanket the rest of the way. Seranthony Domínguez, working the 11th for the White Sox, walked Jazz Chisholm Jr. on purpose with two outs to get to Volpe (Chisholm's day: 1-for-3 with two walks, one of them intentional, and a caught stealing -- a mixed bag all around). Domínguez got Volpe on a grounder and escaped clean. Cruz tried the same move an inning later, opening with an intentional walk to Murakami. That one didn't age nearly as well.
Cruz Gets the Ball Again, and It Costs Him
Boone trusted Cruz with the 10th and got away with it -- two runners on, nobody scored, a clean inning on paper even if it wasn't pretty. Sending him back out for the 11th made sense in the moment. It just didn't work, and Cruz drops to 4-5 with a walk-off loss that wasn't even a blown save (there was no save situation once the automatic runner took second -- this was just a plain, ordinary bases-loaded walk-off, about the least dramatic way possible to lose a game that tense).
Zero earned runs allowed by either pitching staff all afternoon. The automatic-runner rule means every run that scored was unearned on paper, and the Yankees still walk out of Rate Field with a loss. Try explaining that box score to somebody who didn't watch it.
That's a split series in Chicago -- the Yankees took the first two, dropped the last two -- and it's on to the Cubs for three starting Friday. Two losses in a row now, and Cruz doesn't get much time to think about this one before he needs the ball again.
Jimmy writes the Bronx Pinstripes game recap after every Yankees game. Beat-reporter pacing, fan's heartbeat. He calls opposing players by last name and has no patience for dead-air innings.
