Twins 8, White Sox 1: Lumber slumbers through homestand

It feels like the White Sox achieved self-parody today.

A White Sox starter gave up a run on the second pitch of the game, and the Twins spent the entire game in front.

Jose Abreu hit a solo homer in the fourth inning to put the White Sox on the board, and the Sox couldn't get a hit afterward.

Now the defense is getting involved, with a combination of bad health, breaks and execution playing a big role in Jose Quintana's undoing.

The Sox finished a 2-5 homestand in fitting fashion by failing to score more than three runs, and this one was the most boring of the bunch. It's one thing to get handcuffed by Corey Kluber and Trevor Bauer, because both pitchers are more than capable of playing the buzzsaw. But they were also shut down by soft-tossing Shaun Marcum during the Cleveland series, they disappeared against Trevor May, and here's Kyle Gibson striking out eight in seven innings after coming into the game with just 19 over 48.

During the game, Hawk Harrelson talked about how the Sox have been losing because they're giving runs away. That happened today, especially during the fourth inning. Shane Robinson led off with a double, which should have been a single, but Avisail Garcia and his bad knee pursued it rather gingerly.

Joe Mauer followed by hitting a line drive to center. Adam Eaton had the line on it, but the ball didn't follow its own path, knuckling under Eaton's glove. It was ruled an error, and while the ball did dip, he also didn't look it all the way in to the glove. The late movement may have made him helpless on the matter, but it's hard to have sympathy for White Sox position players on an individual basis when they're not doing everything they can.

Anyway, Robinson scored, Mauer took second, and that set the ugliness in motion. Trevor Plouffe singled, and so did Torii Hunter when Quintana deflected what would have been a 6-4-3 double play ball. Quintana could have been out of there with a 3-0 deficit, but the Twins tacked on two more.

Quintana departed in the seventh after giving up two soft singles, and Scott Carroll allowed them both to score by giving up Dozier's second homer of the game.

All of those runs were unnecessary, because the Sox offense had nothing before and after Abreu took an outside slider over the wall in right for his seventh homer of the season. The second-most entertaining moment of the game was J.B. Shuck's reaction to taking a pitch on the foot, complete with a bat fling and what I imagine to be high-pitched, tight-mouthed cursing. That was the only White Sox baserunner over the final five innings, as Gibson and Brian Duensing retired 18 of the last 19 they faced.

Anyway, getting back to what Harrelson claimed, this is all to say that I'd like to see White Sox loss where you definitely can't blame the offense. Because right now you can blame them just about every day.

Record: 19-22 | Box score | Play-by-play | Highlights