The Chicago White Sox faced off against the Cleveland Guardians on Tuesday night to kick off a very important three-game stretch. With Dylan Cease going on the mound for the home team, you had to go in liking their chances.
Unfortunately, things didn’t go the way of the White Sox. Cease did his job as he only allowed one run in six innings to give his team a chance to win. Unfortunately, when they got the game to extra innings, they did not take care of business.
There are some hitters to be happy with from this game like Elvis Andrus, Jose Abreu, and Eloy Jimenez amongst others but they came just a bit short of doing enough to win the game before extra innings rolled around.
After burning through a lot of their bullpen, the decision was made to use Jake Diekman and he gave up a bunch of runs that allowed Cleveland to make the gap too great to overcome. Although there were multiple attempts at a furious comeback, they fell a couple of runs short.
Going to the postseason is incredibly unlikely now for the Chicago White Sox.
This loss was double bad because not only did it put the White Sox 5.0 games back in the division, but it also secured the season series for the Guardians which is the new tiebreaker. Essentially, without there being a game 163 now, it is like they are 5.5 games back.
It would have been easy to just roll over and let it go after August ended but the White Sox fought until the end. They are still going to fight but this lead feels like too much to overcome. You never know what happens but it seems obvious that this season will end on a very sour note.
The reason that this season feels extra sour as opposed to a year where they just lose in the playoffs is because they aren’t even going to make it. There were ‘World Series or bust” expectations on this team and they came out and had the year that they did.
Changes need to be made following an end like this. This season was a disaster and multiple people need to pay for it. Until they are mathematically out those conversations can wait but it will happen soon enough.
Defeating the Cleveland Guardians in game one would have put them in a great spot to finish off this year but the game that was played can be described as “2022 in a nutshell”. Hopefully, they finish strong and are ready to be much better in 2023 because this was a disgrace.