Astros 5, White Sox 3: Leaky Sox lose fourth straight

The White Sox' fourth straight loss and six out of seven couldn't have summed up the frustration of the last week much better. Again, the Sox weren't outclassed, but their inefficiencies kept their heads below water the entire evening.

On the run-prevention side: Mat Latos gave up five runs over 5⅓ innings, and they were all single tallies scored in a variety of ways. He gave up 11 hits, a majority of them the softest possible hits -- and Brett Lawrie probably could've cut down one run in the first -- but two of them solo shots hit very, very hard.  The Sox were able to tie it up after the first inning, but from that point on, he kept kicking the game further out of reach. He may have suffered some bad luck, but he's not good enough to absorb it effectively enough, either.

On the run-production side: The Sox had a number of threats against Doug Fister -- who did not have his good command for a lot of this game -- but little things kept them from capitalizing.

In the first, Adam Eaton started the Sox' attack with a single down the left field line, but unwisely tried turning it into a double and was cut down by Tony Kemp. That TOOTBLAN was magnified when the next three Sox hitters reached (double, RBI single, walk), only to see Melky Cabrera ground into a double play.

In the fifth, Eaton doubled to right center with a runner on first and two outs ... but it was the wrong runner. Dioner Navarro pulled into third so slowly that everybody thought he pulled something. He didn't. He was fine. Then Jimmy Rollins flied out on a nice running catch by Colby Rasmus in center.

Todd Frazier scored all the way from first with one out in the sixth when Melky Cabrera's shot to the gap bounced strangely off the base of a wall for a triple. But Lawrie, who struck out the first two times against Fister, went down swinging against for the second out, and Avisail Garcia grounded out to first.

The Sox kept coming. Down 5-2, Jose Abreu came through with another RBI single to cut Houston's lead to two and leave runners on the corners for Frazier, but he flied out to left on a full count to strand them.

Of course: Abreu came through with two RBI singles after stranding seven the night before, when any such result could've won the game.

And of course: The bullpen pitched 3⅔ scoreless innings when they were trailing by four, rather than when they had a chance to hold a lead. Maybe Dan Jennings shouldn't have gotten out of the eighth after walking the first two batters, but he did get George Springer to hit a grounder to Frazier, who started a 5-4-3 triple play, their second of the season. This one was in a losing effort, though, because that's the way it's going right now.

Record: 24-16 | Box score | Highlights