MINNEAPOLIS — Chicago White Sox shortstop Brooks Baldwin jumped on a first-pitch high fastball from Bailey Ober in the sixth inning of Saturday’s game at Target Field.
Minnesota Twins center fielder Byron Buxton and right fielder Max Kepler raced to the wall, but neither had a play as the ball landed in the seats in right-center for the first home run of Baldwin’s major-league career.
The hit gave the Sox a brief jolt, tying the game.
But Kepler provided power in the seventh with a go-ahead solo home run, and the Twins added three insurance runs in the eighth on the way to defeating the Sox 6-2 in front of a sellout crowd of 38,289.
The Sox suffered their 19th straight loss, extending a franchise record.
They joined the 2021 Baltimore Orioles, 2005 Kansas City Royals and 1975 Detroit Tigers for the fourth-longest skid in Major League Baseball since 1950. The Philadelphia Phillies lost 23 straight in 1961, the Orioles lost 21 straight in 1988 and the Montreal Expos lost 20 straight in 1969.
“It can’t go on forever, you know,” starter Garret Crochet said. “I feel like, showing up to the field we’re expecting to break the streak and it’s just like, f—, tough loss, you know?”
At 27-86, the Sox are 59 games under .500 for the first time in franchise history.
“I feel like for the most part we’ve been in most of the games we’ve lost,” Crochet said. “Not just in this streak but throughout the year. Typically one play or one inning is the difference. That’s really all there is to it.”
Crochet allowed one run on one hit with two strikeouts and four walks in four innings.
“Felt like my stuff was playing well,” Crochet said. “Not throwing a lot of strikes and I dug myself a hole from that. But, yeah, the stuff was really good.”
The four walks matched a career high, which was established May 25, 2023, in a relief outing against the Detroit Tigers at Comerica Park. Three of the four walks Saturday came in the third inning. He escaped a bases-loaded jam without allowing a run and then finished his day with a 1-2-3 fourth.
“In the third inning I had some close misses but for the most part I wasn’t in the zone,” Crochet said. “Fourth inning, I was in the zone. Simple as that.”
Crochet threw 77 pitches as the Sox continued to manage his workload. He has thrown four or fewer innings in five straight starts since July 6, averaging 67 pitches per start in that span.
“This outing was very similar to the one he had here before (on April 24), where they just hit a ton of foul balls,” manager Pedro Grifol said. “Fastball-cutter was a little bit up in the zone today, so they were able to clip those pitches, 19 foul balls, he had a 34-pitch inning (in the third), which kind of ran his pitch count up.
“We had him today right around 75 (pitches), but once he had that one inning where his pitch count got up there, he was going to be done after four.”
The one run he allowed came via a solo home run by Ryan Jeffers in the second. The Sox tied it on a two-out RBI triple by Korey Lee in the fifth, the team’s first hit.
The Twins regained the lead in the bottom of the fifth, but Baldwin evened the score again with the home run in the sixth.
“My first couple at-bats, (Ober) was trying to challenge me with fastballs every pitch,” Baldwin said. “I went up there expecting a first-pitch fastball and put a good swing on it.
“I’m usually a guy that likes to be on the first-pitch heater and I’d been a little late the first couple at-bats. I basically went up there and told myself, ‘Don’t be late’ and put a good swing on it.”
Kepler gave the Twins the lead for good with his solo homer with two outs in the seventh against Touki Toussaint. The Twins strung together a walk and four consecutive singles with two outs against relievers John Brebbia and Jared Shuster during a three-run eighth.
The Sox, meanwhile, finished with three hits for the second straight night while joining the 1916 Philadelphia A’s (24-88) as the only teams in MLB history to lose 86-plus times in the first 113 games of a season.
