3 series illustrating the struggles in a season leading to change for the Chicago White Sox – The Denver Post

The Chicago White Sox were eager to show 2022 was an aberration.

Instead, they took a huge step back.

Friday’s 12-4 loss against the Oakland Athletics at Guaranteed Rate Field was the latest example on the field in a season gone wrong.

Starter Dylan Cease allowed eight earned runs and walked five in 4 1/3 innings. The team made two errors in the second inning and another in the fifth. After surrendering five home runs in Thursday’s loss to the A’s, the Sox allowed two more Friday as they fell a season-worst 29 games under .500.

Asked afterward about the errors, manager Pedro Grifol went beyond saying, “the whole thing is frustrating.”

“We’ve got to get better,” he said. “That’s plain and simple. It’s not for lack of trying. These guys are out there doing their work. We’ve just got to get better.

“There’s no excuses.”

The Sox will lose the season series to the A’s, who have the worst record in baseball.

Expected to contend, the Sox find themselves with the third-worst record in the American League, resulting in a major sell-off at the trade deadline.

More changes came with the team firing executive vice president Ken Williams and general manager Rick Hahn on Tuesday.

“Ultimately, the well-worn cliché that professional sports is results-oriented is correct,” Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf said as part of Tuesday’s statement.

Here are three series that illustrate the team’s struggles this season.

April 21-23 at Tampa Bay

The Sox were three outs from a momentum-turning victory in the April 21 series opener at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla.

But three big swings from the Rays turned the game into a crushing defeat. The Rays scored three in the ninth against reliever Reynaldo López to beat the Sox 8-7.

With the Sox leading 7-5, the Rays’ Christian Bethancourt homered to right to lead off the bottom of the ninth. Yandy Díaz singled. And Brandon Lowe ended the game with a two-run blast to right.

The next night, the Sox twice fought back from deficits before suffering another walk-off loss. Randy Arozarena did in the Sox, driving in pinch runner Vidal Bruján with a single to right to give the Rays a 4-3 victory in 10 innings.

Rays starter Zach Eflin and relievers Yonny Chirinos and Pete Fairbanks retired the final 17 batters in the series finale as the Sox fell 4-1.

They dropped the next three in Toronto — getting outscored 20-2 — as part of a 10-game losing streak from which the team would never recover.

May 8-11 at Kansas City

The Sox had won two of three against the Minnesota Twins, their first series victory of the season, and at the Cincinnati Reds when they traveled to Kansas City.

Any hopes of continuing the momentum stopped when the Royals scored eight runs in the sixth at Kauffman Stadium and throttled the Sox 12-5 in the series opener to spoil Grifol’s return to the place he was a coach the previous 10 seasons.

The Sox won the next night 4-2 but dropped the final two of the series by scores of 9-1 and 4-3.

In the May 11 series finale, the Sox scored twice in the eighth to tie game at 3.

But López walked Nick Pratto leading off the ninth. Pratto moved to third on a one-out single from Matt Duffy. Freddy Fermin squared around on the next pitch and placed a perfect bunt in front of the plate. Pratto scored to hand the Sox the walk-off defeat.

“We got outplayed in the series,” Grifol said after the loss. “Flat out.”

June 30-July 2 at Oakland

Thanks in part to a subpar division, the Sox were only 4 1/2 games out of first as they visited the lowly A’s at Oakland Coliseum for their final road series of the first half.

The Sox dropped the opener 7-4 and then suffered perhaps their most brutal defeat of the season, falling 7-6 in 10 innings on July 1.

The Sox held a two-run lead in the eighth.

The A’s tied it on a balk and an infield hit and won it in the 10th when Tyler Wade scored from second on a fielding error by second baseman Elvis Andrus.

The Sox salvaged the series finale but dropped five of six when they returned home to play the Blue Jays and St. Louis Cardinals.

A 3-6 start after the All-Star break left them 12 games out of first and left no doubt the Sox were going to be sellers at the trade deadline.

And Tuesday signified an even larger shakeup.

“Obviously at the end of the day, we didn’t do our job on the field,” reliever Aaron Bummer said Tuesday. “Forever grateful for those two men.”

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