White Sox Prevail Over Tigers in Final Chapter of Season Series
Another Sunday afternoon has come and gone, and thankfully, so has the season series with the Chicago White Sox. At one point, the Tigers and Lions both held leads over Chicago teams, but those advantages promptly evaporated as the day went on.
A 5-2 victory for the White Sox is the closing chapter in a rather one-sided story vs. the Tigers this season.
Capitalize when you can
Opportunities with traffic on the base paths came at a premium for the Tigers in Chicago this weekend. Detroit had four at-bats with runners in scoring position in Game one and only three more in Game 2.
The first inning of Sunday's series finale served up Jonathan Stiever in his MLB debut. The 23-year-old right-hander had never pitched above Class-A ball and was struggling to find command while his pitch count continued to rise.
Stiever's career got off to a less than ideal start when he walked both Victor Reyes and Willi Castro to begin the first inning. Four consecutive three-ball counts led to Stiever's pitch count hitting 22 with just one out and runners on first and second.
Reyes got caught stealing, which helped, but Miguel Cabrera reached base on a single, followed shortly thereafter by Jorge Bonifacio's RBI single to center field. Detroit's 1-0 lead marked their first advantage since the sixth inning of Friday's series opener.
The eerie feeling that has haunted the Tigers in their previous losses to the White Sox this season returned early in the ballgame. Despite pressuring Stiever into a high stress, 36-pitch inning, the rookie wiggled his way out of runners on second and third with two outs when he struck out Daz Cameron to end the inning.
Stiever flipped the script in the second with an 11-pitch inning and settled down from there. He ended up allowing one run on two hits, all of which came in the first of his 3 ⅔ innings. Detroit went hitless from the second through the fifth inning en-route to a six-hit day.
Damage in the fifth
Spencer Turnbull entered Sunday in search of back-to-back quality starts for the first time this season. He tossed six scoreless innings vs. the Milwaukee Brewers on September eighth at Comerica Park and seemed to pick where he left off with a 13-pitch first inning on Sunday.
He used an effective slider 31% of the time, more so than any of his other pitches in his second outing of the season at Guaranteed Rate Field. After conceding one run through three frames, issues arose in the fourth and fifth innings.
As the Tigers have found out this season, the second and third trips through the White Sox lineup can be a formidable task.
Eloy Jimenez crushed a 2-1 slider to left center field in the fourth inning to put Chicago ahead 2-1. Through 150 sliders thrown by Turnbull this season, Jimenez's solo homer was only the second extra-base hit off that particular pitch.
"I feel like I made one mistake," said Turnbull. "The slider to Jimenez was a hanging slider, 2-1, sometimes you get away with it, sometimes you don't. He got it today. But other than that, I felt like I made good pitches.
"I felt like my stuff was really sharp compared to how it's been all year. I was pleased with that. For the most part, I felt like I executed. I had one walk, which is a lot better than it has been."
The lone walk came during a costly fifth inning in which the White Sox utilized the lost art of small ball to kickstart a rally that brought home three more runs to make it 5-1.
The Tigers went scoreless until Jorge Bonifacio brought home Jeimer Candelario in the ninth inning, but by then it was too little, too late.
"You're not going to win many games like that," manager Ron Gardenhire said. "We're not stacking hits together. We seem to get behind early and that's not a good thing for your baseball team and you have to end up trying to fight back."
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