Chicago White Sox 2022: Booty Cheeks

Do you want the good news or the bad news?

Bad news? Coming right up! A White Sox team that hit five home runs yesterday barely scraped across two runs against a 54-89 Detroit team.

You want even more bad news? The Cleveland Guardians completed a comeback win against the Minnesota Twins. The White Sox will enter Saturday four games back of first place, and five in the loss column.

Weird and annoying news? Some buffoon decided to sit behind home plate in a black-and-white, checkered body suit and waving his arms while Lucas Giolito was on the mound. Here’s what that looked like:

There was some good news, with regard to Tim Anderson. He took swings during batting practice and made some solid contact. An exact timeline on when/if he will be back with the team by the end of the season is still unclear.

The 2022 trend of making pedestrian pitchers look like Cy Young candidates continued against righthander Matt Manning. In just his 11th start of the season, Manning held the South Siders to a mere three hits. Two of those three hits were thanks to Elvis Andrus. Over his seven innings of work, Manning walked no one and struck out five.

Meanwhile Lucas Giolito, who opened the season at Comerica Park back in April, continued to look lackluster. Gio went deep in counts to Tigers hitters, which resulted in a 28-pitch first inning. Even though Lucas gave up just one run, it took 96 pitches to get through 4 ²⁄₃ innings. The frustrating part of the one run Lucas gave up, was the way in which he gave it up. Gio was ahead on both Javier Báez and Eric Haase, 1-2, before giving up a single to Báez and walking Haase. Both of these runners got on base with two outs, and put Spencer Torkelson in position to bring home Báez with a single.

Báez would have been a second earned run after he hit a two-out triple in the bottom of the fifth, but Jimmy Lambert saved the day and struck out Eric Haase to end the inning. The second run of the game was a solo shot by Jonathan Schoop off of Lambert, a line drive right over the left-field wall. It was nothing special and, honestly, the way Schoop has been hitting all season, props to him.

The White Sox seemed to be trying to lose this game. But in the eighth inning, something changed their minds. Josh Harrison led off with a double, which was followed up with a single from, you guessed it, Andrus. José Abreu hit a double down the third-base line, and it would be enough to score both Harrison and Andrus.

The Tigers attempted to get their runs back in the bottom of the inning, but were unsuccessful. Joe Kelly entered the game and Báez immediately hit a double. “El Mago” would get to third on an Haase ground out, and when Torkelson struck out swinging for the second out, things got a little weird.

Weird in the White Sox favor, though. The pitch that Spencer Torkelson swung at to strike out bounced off of Yasmani Grandal’s shin guard, Javier Baez took off for home, and Joe Kelly the ball back to Yasmani Grandal who tagged Javier Baez out at the plate to end the inning.

Neither team could scratch a run across in the ninth inning, so fans were forced to consume bonus baseball. It wasn’t good. Luis Robert would pinch-run for Yasmani Grandal to start the top of the 10th on second base. Can you guess what all three White Sox batters did? Sure you can. OK, OK: They struck out.

Liam Hendriks was tasked with the bottom of the 10th inning, and he did not deliver. Willi Castro laid down a sacrifice bunt to push the free runner at second to third, and was safe after the throw from Hendriks to Harrison covering first was off-line. Riley Greene struck out swinging for the first out, but a long sacrifice fly from Victor Reyes would be the final blow.