The White Sox turned a 3-1 lead into a 4-3 walk-off loss to the Guardians on Friday night, and then left Cleveland angry about more than the score. Anthony Kay said he thought he could give the White Sox six, seven or even eight innings, but he was pulled after four strong frames in a game delayed 1 hour and 55 minutes by rain.
That is why this one lingered. Miguel Vargas’ three-run homer in the fifth put the White Sox ahead, and for a while Kay looked like the one thing they could trust on a messy night. Then the game resumed, the Sox carried that lead into the seventh, and everything started slipping.
Kay said the club believed the tarp came out too quickly after Vargas homered. He said there were still 20 to 30 minutes of light rain that could have been played through, and that he stayed in the dugout for about 15 more minutes before the tarp was pulled. His view was blunt: the timing felt like gamesmanship. He said the tarp went out before Vargas had even finished rounding the bases, and he called that move unfair because it helped force him from the game before he could keep going.
The inning after the delay, Will Venable went to Seranthony Dominguez, who faced three batters and walked two around a strikeout. Austin Hedges then drove a deep ball that let Rhys Hoskins score from second, and Steven Kwan followed with a blooped single that brought home Brayan Rocchio. Sam Antonacci was charged with an error on the play, and Venable said the field was a mess after the rain. He pointed to the ball carrying deep into the grass and to water that had been dumped in the area where the next play broke down, leaving the defense to chase a wet infield-outfield transition that was never going to be clean.
That is the part that will hang over the White Sox more than the final inning. Teams are not supposed to have a hand in weather stoppages; that call belongs to the umpires. But the Sox left with the feeling that the tarp was pulled at the wrong moment, on the wrong field, and after that they still had to survive two more innings and extra baseball. They never even advanced Luisangel Acuna, and in the 10th the Guardians ended it with two singles off Sean Newcomb before Kahlil Watson delivered the walk-off single. It was the second straight night the White Sox said they were walked off, and on Friday the loss came wrapped in the kind of weather dispute that does not fade with the box score.
