There was a brutal defensive mistake, a home run, a hit-by-pitch and an ejection — all in the first inning.
There was a little bit of everything Friday at Guaranteed Rate Field — except a Chicago White Sox victory.
The Sox dropped their ninth straight, losing 3-2 to the Tampa Bay Rays in front of 16,681. They are 13 games under .500 at 7-20. The Sox continued their worst start to a season since 1950, when they also were 7-20.
The Rays went ahead in the ninth on a solo homer from Isaac Paredes against reliever Kendall Graveman.
“It’s tough,” Graveman said. “I have to do my job tonight. Battled our tails off to get to that point. Team is fighting and didn’t think I necessarily executed bad. But he was better than me in that moment. Tip your hat to him. But at the end of the day this comes down to results.
“I mean, it don’t matter about execution. You make a great pitch and not get the results you want, or you can make a terrible pitch and get a good result. I’m over the execution part. Just get results.”
The results continue to go against the Sox. Friday’s game settled down after the wild first inning.
The Rays had runners on the corners with one out in the top of the innings when Brandon Lowe hit a popup to shallow center field. Second baseman Lenyn Sosa and shortstop Lenyn Sosa raced back to try to make a catch. Sosa caught the ball and hesitated getting it back it back to the infield.
Randy Arozarena, the runner on first, noticed no one was covering second and wisely took off with first baseman Andrew Vaughn running nearby. Sosa threw the ball to Vaughn at second and the runner on third. Yandy Díaz headed home for a short sacrifice fly.
“You can’t make fundamental mistakes against championship teams,” Sox manager Pedro Grifol said. “Two guys went for the ball, one called it. And then nobody was covering second base. So again, mental mistakes against championship caliber teams you don’t win like that.”
Grifol said fundamentally: “If two guys go for it, shortstop has priority and second baseman covers the bag, and you got both places covered. It’s pretty simple. Last-case scenario, you throw a ball to home plate and preserve the runner at third base.”
The Sox shook off the mistake quickly with Vaughn homering in the bottom of the first. Rays starter Zach Eflin hit Luis Robert Jr. on the next pitch. Warnings were issued and Grifol argued, leading to his ejection.
“I don’t agree with that rule,” Grifol said. “I don’t agree with they hit our guy and we get warnings. I don’t agree with (the) hit. Never have, never will. As long as I’m in this game and beyond when I’m in this game, I don’t agree with that. That’s just not the way I was brought up in this game.
“I don’t think that we should ever be penalized for using the inner part of the plate because their guy hit our guy. I don’t believe in that. It’s part of the rules. You got to play by them. But I don’t have to believe in it.”
Jake Burger homered leading off the second, his team-leading seventh, giving the Sox a 2-1 lead. The Rays tied it in the fourth on a two-out RBI single from Manuel Margot.
Sox starter Lucas Giolito kept the game tight, allowing the two runs on eight hits with six strikeouts and no walks in 6⅔ innings.
“What he did (Friday) was pretty damn special, and that’s what makes him Lucas Giolito,” Grifol said.
Randy Arozarena denied Burger’s bid for a second homer, making a leaping catch at the left-field wall in the eighth. Paredes connected on Graveman’s second pitch of the ninth to put the Rays ahead for the first time.
The Sox had two on and two outs in the ninth, but Robert popped out to short to end the game. The Sox left 10 runners on base and were 0-for-9 with runners in scoring position on the way to their first nine-game losing streak since July 9-23, 2017 (that stretch started before the All-Star break).
They have lost 11 of 12 and 14 of 16.
“I hate losing,” Giolito said. “I know we’re all trying, but we’ve got to do it. We’ve got to turn this thing around.
“It sucks. There aren’t too many words to describe it. S—– I have faith in these guys, faith in myself. We’ve just got to try and put it together.”
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