Good news: The White Sox offense scored nine runs.
Bad news: White Sox pitching allowed 10.
Worst news: The White Sox had David Robertson on the mound in the ninth with a two-run lead, the bases empty, and facing the bottom of the Toronto order.
Robertson just got beat. Josh Thole smoked a liner to right for a double, Jose Reyes did the same to score Thole, and then Josh Donaldson completed his monster day by hammering a fastball over the wall in right for a game-winning three-run walk-off job.
Donaldson went 4-for-4 with two homers, a double, a walk and five runs scored. Maybe Robertson should have walked him to load the bases, but the on-deck Jose Bautista was 3-for-5 with three doubles and five RBIs. Robertson painted himself into a corner regardless, and the Blue Jays finished him and the White Sox off sooner rather than later.
It was an ugly end to an ugly game, although it was also an encouraging night as far as the White Sox offense was concerned. The bats gave John Danks and the bullpen three different leads.
First lead: After Danks gave up a solo shot to Donaldson in the first inning, the Sox came back with two runs on four singles off R.A. Dickey, including a run-scoring base hit by Gordon Beckham. Tyler Flowers should've had an RBI knock himself, but J.B. Shuck held his ground because he didn't know where the center fielder was. He ended up on third, but Carlos Sanchez covered for the bad baserunning with a sac fly.
Second lead: Danks gave up a two-run ground-rule double to Baustista in the third, and on a balk to boot (he quick-pitched Bautista, when he had already established that his sidesaddle delivery was a windup for that situation). Two innings later, Adam Eaton led off with a walk. Melky Cabrera singled (on a shallow fly that shoud have been caught), and Jose Abreu hit a missile out to left for a three-run homer.
Danks turned a 5-3 lead into a 6-5 deficit immediately, but the Sox tied it up on a fielder's choice in the sixth (Cabrera barely beat out a potential double play). Then the Blue Jays took another one-run lead in the seventh as J.B. Shuck misplayed a ball by the side wall, Sanchez couldn't handle his low relay throw, and a run scored from first on a short double.
But that only set up the...
Third lead: After playing a role in the botched relay, Sanchez atoned by hitting a one-out double, then scoring from second on Eaton's single with a clever wide slide around Thole to tie the game. Eaton took second on the throw, and moved to third on Cabrera's infield single. He appeared to be stranded there when Jose Abreu hit into a 4-6-3 double play, but Robin Ventura challenged the bang-bang play, and the replay showed that Abreu beat the throw by a fraction of a second. The go-ahead run scored, and so did Abreu after back-to-back singles by Adam LaRoche and Alexei Ramirez.
It wasn't the cleanest game. On top of Danks giving people reason to be mad at him, and the minor baserunning mistake by Shuck, the Sox blew an earlier relay from right field in the fifth. Ramirez wasn't there to tell Sanchez where to go with the ball as Sanchez had his back to home plate, awaiting the throw from Shuck, and Steve Tolleson scored from first when a throw could've had him.
Nevertheless, Ventura had a two-run lead in the bottom of the eighth and a well-rested Zach Duke and Robertson. Duke looked iffy in the eighth by giving up a leadoff double to Chris Colabello, but he got a pair of groundouts, and Colabello could only advance to third. The Blue Jays called for Russell Martin, and so Ventura went to Robertson, who retired Martin on a routine groundout to second. At that point, everything was finally going according to plan.
Record: 19-24 | Box score | Play-by-play | Highlights