CHICAGO — No one would call the Yankees an invincible team, but they certainly ran into something unmovable on Monday night.
The result? Helping the White Sox avoid infamy.
A big win might have been expected, pitting a team that entered the night with the best record in baseball against a team with the worst record in the major leagues (16 games back) and trying to avoid matching the 1962 Mets’ 120 losses.
But it was the White Sox who suffered the biggest defeat, handing the Yankees a humiliating 12-2 defeat in front of 22,815 fans at Guaranteed Rate Field.
The Yankees (70-50) wasted numerous opportunities to do damage early, going just 2-for-18 with a run in scoring position and leaving 16 runners on base, while the White Sox (29-91) had 18 hits and scored a season-high 12 runs.
“Yeah, they’re one of the worst teams, if you will, but they’re still major leaguers,” said Alex Verdugo, who tried to bunt in the bottom of the fourth but was out with zero outs, ruining any chance of a comeback. “We still have good days. … We’ve got to do a better job of getting on base and capitalizing on the runs we get on base. We stomped on them early. We gave them a little momentum by getting them out of a jam and they carried it today.”
Luis Gil went four innings, getting 12 outs on 98 pitches (the bullpen was already thin on this night), and struggled with his pitching, giving up four runs.
The White Sox then rallied for seven runs in the seventh inning off Eniel de los Santos to seal the game and give their fans a rare night of fun.
“Every time we lose, it’s a missed opportunity. We play with so much on the line every day,” coach Aaron Boone said. “So losing sucks. If we win, it’s really good, it’s exhilarating. But either way, you turn the page. At the end of the day, credit to them. Everything they hit tonight was a hit. I thought we played hard. … We just couldn’t penetrate, we couldn’t hit the ball out of the ballpark, we just couldn’t stop them.”
To make matters worse, Jazz Chisholm Jr. left the game with an injured left elbow after diving headfirst into home plate in the seventh inning, what was supposed to be the highlight of the night for the Yankees.
Chisholm is scheduled to undergo an MRI on Tuesday.
Most of the Yankees’ best chances came early against White Sox rookie left-hander Kai Bush, the latest left-hander to shut down Boone’s lineup.
Bush walked seven batters and allowed six hits in 4 2/3 innings, but gave up just two runs to earn the win.
After Verdugo and Juan Soto were walked, Aaron Judge hit an RBI double to give the Yankees a 1-0 lead.
But Bush avoided further damage by getting Giancarlo Stanton, Austin Wells and Gleyber Torres to hit pop flies on a combined six pitches each.
In the second inning, Bush walked Verdugo to load the bases with one out, but then got Soto out on a pop out and Judge on a fly out to the warning track, falling a few feet short of what would have been a grand slam for his 300th career homer, but it was averted.
Bush found himself in trouble again in the fourth inning, walking Anthony Volpe and DJ LeMahieu.
But Verdugo bunted and got popped out before Soto got the hit stripped on a diving stop by first baseman Gavin Sheets.
“He threw it high and I didn’t want to bunt, but I was already out so I got kind of lazy and just made it a pop fly,” Verdugo said.
The White Sox then intentionally walked Judge to load the bases with two outs, which worked perfectly as Bush struck out Stanton on three pitches to get out of the jam.
Gill struggled with pitch counts for the second straight inning, throwing 34 pitches in the first inning alone and giving the White Sox a 2-1 lead before trailing 4-1 in the fourth.
Chisholm scored from second base (injured) on an infield hit by Volpe in the top of the fifth to make the score 4-2, but that was as close as the Yankees would get to scoring.
“You have good days and you have bad days,” Gil said through an interpreter, “and today was just not a good day for us overall.”
