White Sox' Season Hits New Low, Swept at Home by Arizona Diamondbacks
The Chicago White Sox' 2022 season suffered a new low Sunday, when the team blew a late-lead, and got swept by the Arizona Diamondbacks.
American League Cy Young candidate Dylan Cease was nearly flawless Sunday, giving up just two hits and one walk over 103 pitches and eight innings. The two mistake pitches he made though, proved costly. Both hits he gave up were solo home runs, and the second one — hit by Diamondbacks' third baseman Sergio Alcántara — tied the game in top of the eighth inning.
White Sox' reliever Kendall Graveman took over for Cease at the top of the ninth, walked two batters, and gave up the game-winning RBI double to 25-year-old left fielder Jake McCarthy. Graveman collected his third loss of the season.
The White Sox' feast-or-famine offense once again struggled to cash in when it mattered most, leaving 15 runners on base, and scoring just two runs off seven hits.
With the loss, the Sox fall to 63-65 on the season, and are now 5.5 games back of the American League Central-leading Cleveland Guardians. They face an even steeper uphill climb for the final American League wild card spot, currently owned by the Toronto Blue Jays, who now have a six-game lead on the Sox.
With under six weeks remaining in the regular season, the White Sox find themselves in a precarious position. If the season ended Sunday, they'd finish with the third-best record in the American League Central and the ninth-best record in the American League. In order to win the Central, the Sox will need to surpass the Guardians and the Minnesota Twins. In order to sneak into the wild card, they would need to surpass the Twins and the Baltimore Orioles.
The Sox entered 2022 with World Series-aspirations, and could be in for a reckoning this winter.
