A win here, a win there won’t do it. A series here, a series there would be more like it.
The White Sox need to accumulate victories at a healthy rate to shrink the grotesque record that fell to 32-44 after losing the rubber game of their series against the 46-28 Texas Rangers by a 6-3 score Wednesday night.
As bad as things look, they still trailed the first place Twins in the AL Central by 5 1⁄2 games.
“Very strange,” first baseman Andrew Vaughn said before the game. “The Central is there for the taking for us.”
If only the Sox played like they want to take it. They need to get hot. And don’t tell manager Pedro Grifol they simply need to win series.
“Because winning a series means you conceded a game somewhere,” he said.
The Sox had a chance to sweep the Yankees in New York two weeks ago but settled for two out of three.
“We win the first two games and you start hearing like, ‘Well, we won a series.’ No. We want to win this game, too. We want to win all three,” Grifol said. “OK, great, we won a series. That’s not the mentality I want us to have as a team. I want to win every ballgame. If it happens that we win a series or it happens that we sweep a team, then so be it.”
With Michael Kopech (3-6) lasting four innings and 86 pitches and exiting with a 3-1 deficit after hanging a slider to Ezequiel Duran for a two-run homer in the fourth, and then right-hander Jimmy Lambert allowing a three-run homer to Jonah Heim in the fifth, the Sox saw their chances for taking two of three dwindle.
Kopech entered with a 1.72 ERA over his last five starts.
Luis Robert Jr. sprinted home from first on an Eloy Jimenez double in the first against lefty Martin Perez, Vaughn homered leading off the sixth and Seby Zavala scored Clint Frazier with a sacrifice fly in the sixth.
Grifol likes what he sees of his hitters of late, but it hasn’t been enough. Vaughn’s homer was the team’s 13th in their last 16 games, but the Sox have been on a solo homer binge. Thirty of their last 41 came with no one on base.
“We’re trying to hit the ball in the air and we’re doing a better job of that,” Grifol said. “We’re hitting some homers. We’re just not hitting homers with men on base. We have to do a better job of controlling the strike zone, we have to do a better job of, once we get to 2-2, 3-2 and they’re not good pitches to hit, leave it to the next guy. The next guy can put the ball in the seats and you can be on base. We’ve got to do a better job with two strikes.
“I do believe we’re trending in the right direction, just the awareness side of it and the preparation side of it. These guys know what it takes to win. We’ve just got to go out there and do it.”
Right-hander Touki Toussaint, who had pitched for the Guardians’ Triple-A club this season, tossed four innings of scoreless no-hit relief. He struck out four and walked two.