White Sox Torn by Tigers, 11-5

It looked like it was going to be your typical White Sox romp over the Detroiters, and why not, after taking 18 of the last 20 against them.

Tim Anderson shot Tyler Skubal’s first pitch to left for a double and moved to third on a Gavin Sheets grounder, which brought up José Abreu.

Abreu then scored on a Leury García fielder’s choice, which should have been a double play, but, hey ... Detroit.

So, two-zip, which is how it stayed until the fourth, when Dallas Keuchel walked Jonathan Schoop and Miguel Cabrera, which brought up Eric Haase. Haase lined a rocket to center that Billy Hamilton tried to dive for but missed, failing to get his body in front, for a three-run, inside-the-park homer. Not that inside-the-park was Haase’s only option, since he had a three-run outside-the-parker later.

Which brings us to:

Dear kindly Mr. Detroit Tigers Person in Charge, sir:

Please be so kind as to trade Mr. Eric Haase to a team in the National League, or, even better, Japan. We would be very happy to pay shipping and his salary for the next five years or so. He has now hit nine home runs on the season, and five are against the Chicago White Sox, for whom we cheer, and we find that very discouraging.

Thank you,
White Sox fans

OK, back to the game. The Tigers lead was brief, as Anderson and Abreu reprised the first inning to make it 3-3, bringing up noted slugger Leury.

That was No. 2 on the season, just 28 shy of Shohei Ohtani.

You will notice that all the heavy lifting this game was by old-timers, the rookie bomb squad went 1-for-11, that a single by Andrew Vaughn.

Problem is, Keuchel, who had had a 24-pitch fourth, opened the fifth giving up two singles, a walk, and two more singles, to put the Tigers back on top, 6-5. Keuchel ended up ceding seven earned runs in four-plus innings, the last one coming after Ryan Burr came on and got two strikeouts. After that, there were two horrible calls by Tom Hallion, which led to walks loading the bases and then forcing in a run to make it 7-5. It also forced some apparently unkind words from pitching coach Ethan Katz, who got a ridiculous ejection for his opinion.

Not that the forced-in run made a difference. Jace Fry, up from post-IL rehab, tossed a very nice 1-2-3 sixth with two K’s, but reverted to being Jace Fry in the seventh, going walk, infield single (not a good play by Anderson) and bringing up Haase, whom the Tigers had not been kind enough to ship to Japan, and it was 10-5.

Schoop added a 440-footer for the final score, but it didn’t matter, because the White Sox only had two baserunners after the fifth against one of the worst bullpens in baseball — both erased in double plays. Only thing of note is that Schoop hit it off of Matt Foster, making it the fifth straight appearance in which Foster has given up at least one run.

The rubber game of the series is at 12:10 p.m. Central tomorrow. Hannah LaMotta has the game coverage, with Six Pack TBD.

It’s Lucas Giolito against Matt Manning, who has an 8.16 ERA, so maybe we can set off some 4th of July fireworks.