Yankees 4, White Sox 3 (10 innings): Bullpen breakdown stalls momentum

With John Danks suffocating the Yankees after the White Sox grabbed a quick 3-0 lead, this game looked an awful lot like the opener.

Instead, the Yankees flipped the script on Game 2. Ronald Belisario blew a three-run lead in the ninth inning, and Zach Putnam gave up a solo shot to Jacoby Ellsbury in the 10th to give the Yankees their first lead 29 outs into the game. Adam Eaton kept the game alive with a two-out single and a stolen base, but David Robertson rebounded by striking out Gordon Beckham. White Sox fans who showed up for Chris Sale bobbleheads left shaking their own.

Belisario looked like he had things under control when he took over. He started the inning with a Derek Jeter groundout, an Ellsbury single, and a Mark Teixeira strikeout to put him one out within his second save. He lost the shutout when Alfonso Soriano slapped a single over first base for a ground-rule double. Soriano scored on Solarte's opposite-field single to make it 3-2, which put him in the same situation as Thursday.

Problem is, he walked Ichiro Suzuki ... with a runner on first ... on five pitches. That's what really broke him, because that put the tying run in scoring position, that allowed Brian McCann to come to the plate as a pinch-hitter, and that allowed McCann's flared single to bring in the tying run.

Putnam ended up taking the loss in the 10th when Ellsbury's high fly to right on a splitter ended up clearing the fence by five feet or so -- a stab to the gut after Belisario's death by papercuts.

As a result, John Danks Doesn't Know How To Win. You'd think he would, since he threw eight shutout innings. He held the Yankees hitless until Teixeira's ground-rule double with two outs in the fourth inning, and he wasn't really threatened before or after. His biggest problem was some early inefficiency due to deep counts, but he still finished the eight on just 104 pitches, working around a couple of two-out singles to keep the shutout intact.

It seemed like he could've gotten more support given the way the White Sox offense opened this one up. Three straight hits -- singles by Eaton and Beckham, and a double by Dayan Viciedo -- gave the Sox a 1-0 lead before Vidal Nuno could record the first out, and productive outs brought in two more.

The second inning had an equally promising start. Marcus Semien singled, and went to third on Adrian Nieto's chopper through the right side. But Nieto got caught off first thinking the throw from right was going through. He started a rundown, and looked like he escaped it when he ran around Brendan Ryan's tag and stood safe on second. The umpires convened, though, and came away reversing the ruling. They said Nieto was out of the base line, and Robin Ventura came out to argue. He didn't explode, but after an extended run of the "You Guys Are Idiots" body language, he was thrown out of the game for the Sox' first ejection of the year, whether by a player, coach, vegetable or mineral.

The call could've gone either way, but Ryan couldn't have tagged Nieto anyway, because the ball was in his other hand.

I'd have more sympathy for Brendan Ryan if he actually could've applied a tag. https://t.co/HuHbdP3yG7

— South Side Sox (@SouthSideSox) May 24, 2014

Anyway, Leury Garcia struck out and Eaton hit a flyout to center to kill that threat, and the Sox didn't put another runner in scoring position until the eighth. Both times it was Eaton.

The first time around, Beckham bunted him over to second. The free out didn't lead to an insurance run, though, as Viciedo grounded out, and Matt Thornton struck out Dunn.

In the 10th, Beckham got a chance to swing away, and had a chance to tie it up when Eaton stole second on a 1-0 pitch in the dirt. Beckham still seems to struggle with decent fastballs, and that's all Robertson gave him to hit. He took a pitcher's pitch for strike one, and swung through a heater for strike two. Robertson mixed it up with a curve in the dirt, but then came back to full-count fastballs. Beckham tipped a challenge four-seamer to stay alive, but he didn't see a cutter coming, and Robertson froze him to end the game.

Bullet points:

*Disappointing ending aside, Eaton and Beckham had nice games at the plate with three singles apiece.

*Semien also contributed a two-hit game in a rare appearance. The rest of the lineup went 2-for-22, and the Sox as a whole went 1-for-7 with runners in scoring position.

*Semien committed his seventh error when he couldn't handle a topspin-laden shot by John Ryan Murphy in the third. It was initially ruled a hit, but the scorer reversed it to keep Danks' no-hit bid alive for a little longer.

Record: 25-26 | Box score | Play-by-play | Highlights