White Sox 5, Tigers 4: David Robertson gets greedy

David Robertson could’ve earned a win and save in the same day for the second time in his White Sox career.

That wasn’t enough for him. He had to gun for two victories.

He did his part by giving up three solo homers in the ninth inning to erase a 4-1 lead. The White Sox did theirs by manufacturing a run off Bruce Rondon. Adam Eaton drew a leadoff walk, moved to second on Tim Anderson’s sacrifice bunt and coming around on Melky Cabrera’s single past Nick Castellanos. After coming through with the walk-off hit in the suspended game, he scored the winning run in this one.

Robertson blew a three-run lead for the second time in a week, and this time Poor Jose Quintana was the victim. Quintana deserved the win, which would’ve been his ninth of the season, tying a career high. Alas, he’s stuck at eight wins, even after throwing 6⅔ strong innings and departing with a 4-0 lead.

It was confusing to see Robin Ventura push Quintana to his limit with 117 pitches, only to still bring in Nate Jones, who was working his third straight game and fifth out of the last six. You’d think the idea would be to leave as little work as possible for less-qualified relievers. Instead, Jones struck out Mike Aviles to end the seventh, then came back out of the eighth and looked largely ineffective.

Jones gave up the first of four solo homers with one out to Andrew Romine, one batter after James McCann flied out to the warning track. He then gave up a single to Ian Kinsler, then walked Miguel Cabrera after a fielder’s choice to bring Victor Martinez to the plate as the tying run. Ventura visited the mound, but Jones stayed in to face Martinez, and somehow struck him out on his 29th pitch to keep it a three-run game.

Robertson then gave up three dingers of his own. Castellanos started with one, and after Robertson struck out Upton and got Aviles to ground out, he gave up a pair of pinch-hit solo shots — both on 1-2 counts — to Tyler Collins and Jarrod Saltalamacchia.

That ruined what looked like a rather peaceful afternoon. The Sox started the day with Eaton’s walk-off single in the suspended game, then jumped out to a quick 4-0 lead off Anibal Sanchez as Eaton continued his reign of terror. He opened the bottom of the first with a single, which was followed by Anderson’s single. Cabrera then grounded into a double play, but Jose Abreu shot a single to right to get something out of the rally.

One inning later, Eaton came to the plate with two on and two out and golfed a 2-1 slider into the Detroit bullpen for a three-run homer. Eaton had a monster afternoon, going 2-for-3 with a homer, two walks, three runs and three RBIs.

Abreu challenged Eaton in the pick-to-click department, going 2-for-3 with a walk and the RBI single. Unfortunately, Upton pulled his home run bid out of the White Sox bullpen, briefly fooling Jason Benetti, and not-so-briefly fooling the White Sox’ game operation department, which set off fireworks for a deep flyout.

Record: 48-50 | Box score | Highlights