There are losses that sting because you got beat, and losses that sting because you did it to yourself. Wednesday night at Rate Field fell into the second bucket for the New York Yankees, who found two separate ways to hand a game to the Chicago White Sox before finally losing it 6-5 in the 12th inning on Edgar Quero's RBI single.
Start with how this began, because it makes the ending harder to take. The Yankees put up a four-run first, Paul Goldschmidt singling in Ben Rice and Jones launching a three-run shot, his third home run of the season, into the left-center bleachers. That's exactly how you're supposed to start against a team you should beat, and for a while it held up.
The standout performer is easy to name: Cam Schlittler was the best pitcher on the field and walked away with nothing to show for it. The 25-year-old righty retired the first 11 hitters he faced and worked into the seventh, allowing two hits and a walk while striking out eight over 6 1/3 innings. The White Sox didn't touch him until Andrew Benintendi's RBI double in the seventh. Goldschmidt has already floated the Cy Young conversation about him, saying, "If he continues this, he might win the Cy Young, and that's great. But I'm really excited to see how he progresses." On this night, at least, the kid deserved better than a no-decision buried under a bullpen fire.
This is where the game turned, and it's the part that should bother the Yankees' dugout most. New York carried a 4-1 lead into the eighth and watched it disappear on back-to-back swings: Sam Antonacci and Munetaka Murakami went deep in consecutive at-bats off Paul Blackburn to tie it. A three-run cushion, gone in the time it takes to round the bases twice. That's a leverage inning that got away, not bad luck.
Remarkably, the Yankees got a second chance and blew that one too. Anthony Volpe's pinch-hit sacrifice fly nudged New York back in front in the 11th. All they had to do was hold the lead. Instead Murakami scored on catcher Ali Sanchez's errant pickoff throw, the kind of self-inflicted wound that turns a winnable extra-inning game into a coin flip. By the 12th, Jordan Hicks had loaded the bases and Quero drove in Tristan Peters to end it. Ryan Yarbrough took the loss.
The timing is what stings most. After the game the Yankees sat 2 1/2 games behind Tampa Bay in the AL East, having entered the night with a real shot to close ground before the trade deadline. New York had won the first two games of this four-game set, 9-5 and 3-2, and looked ready to bury a White Sox club that had been scuffling. A three-game sweep would have said a lot about who's chasing whom. Instead the series tightened to 2-1, and the front office should take away less that they need one more bat and more that they can't keep giving away leads in the seventh and eighth.
Chicago deserves credit too. The White Sox had lost four of their last five entering the night and still held a 1 1/2-game edge over Cleveland atop the AL Central, a margin that's barely moved for days and will keep shifting. Murakami, who reached base for the 15th straight game with a seventh-inning walk off Schlittler, was in the middle of everything, and the bottom of that Chicago order refused to go quietly. A team treading water grabbed a night it badly needed.
For New York, though, this one falls squarely on them. The Yankees didn't lose because Chicago was better. They lost because they had this game in hand twice and let it slip both times. Schlittler gave them ace-level work. The lineup gave them an early four-spot. The rest of the roster gave it all back. If this club is going to run down Tampa Bay, nights like this one are the difference, and Wednesday goes in the wrong column entirely.
