Just Desserts

Never did a team deserve to lose more than the White Sox did last night in Minnesota. Two runs in, runners on second and third, top of the first inning and nobody out. So, what did Yasmani Grandal, Jake Burger and Oscar Colas do? Why, strikeout, groundout, groundout. With Lance Lynn pitching, the lead lasted all of two batters, until Byron Buxton went deep. The tie lasted until two outs in the second, when Michael A. Taylor, he of the .171 BA at the time, homered. After that, Lyn retired thirteen f the next sixteen batters. OK, so? So, Twins’ starter Pablo Lopez regrouped to retire the next twenty-three Sox “hitters.” Oh, the Sox tied the score in the ninth with a homer from Luis Robert Jr., but they deserved to lose in the tenth, which they did. The “hitters” went back to making outs, after which manager Pedro Grifol pulled a bonehead move by bringing in Jesse Scholtens, a contact pitcher. One bunt and one error by third baseman Hanser Alberto later, the Twins won, 4-3. A fan’s suggestion to Grifol—save your fastball pitcher for extra innings; a strikeout keeps the runner from advancing. In other words, Scholtens in the ninth and Reynaldo Lopez in the tenth, the opposite of what happened. But, hey, GM Rick Hahn said Grifol ran a great camp in Arizona. Like it showed last night.