A rookie swings, and a division flips
Petey Halpin walked to the plate in the sixth inning on Wednesday night with two runners on and a division lead sitting there. He hit the ball out of Progressive Field. Three runs, one swing, and Cleveland had the American League Central to itself for the first time since the Fourth of July.
The Guardians beat the Chicago White Sox 6-3 to take the third and deciding game of the series. Jo Adell ripped a two-run single. Jose Ramirez doubled one in. Parker Messick worked six innings of three-run ball for his 12th win of the season, and Cade Smith got four outs for save number 37.
Half a game. That is the margin, and Cleveland is on the right side of it now.
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Chicago’s grip finally slips
The White Sox had held at least a share of first place since July 4. Seventy-four days on top of the division, ended by a rookie in his first September. Chicago has now lost seven of its last nine games, which turns a comfortable month into an anxious one very quickly.
Tommy Pham came off the injured list earlier in the day and hit a three-run homer in the fifth. For about twenty minutes that was the story of the night. Halpin answered in the sixth and the lead was gone.
Chicago still sits 2 1/2 games clear of Baltimore for the third American League wild-card place, so the whole season does not rest on this division. It just feels that way after dropping a series at the exact moment it mattered.
What the last fortnight looks like
Cleveland has built this on pitching more than slugging. Messick, now 12-9, has been the steadier arm in the rotation down the stretch, and Smith’s 37 saves tell you how many of these games have been decided by a run or two in the ninth. Ramirez keeps doing Ramirez things, and Adell has given the lineup a second dangerous bat behind him.
The White Sox need more than one big inning per night. Pham’s homer accounted for all three of their runs, and the rest of the order managed nothing off Messick when a hit would have kept them top of the division.
Half a game separates the two clubs with under two weeks of the regular season left. Neither side gets to relax.
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