It’s tough to decide which was worse Saturday: the White Sox relief pitching or manager Terry Bevington’s decision-making.
With the Sox leading 4-3, Bevington allowed starter Wilson Alvarez to labor into the eighth inning. Alvarez gave up three consecutive doubles before Bevington–to a shower of boos–yanked his starter. By then it was too late. Baltimore had taken a 5-4 lead, and the Sox would not recover, losing 13-4 before a robust 36,772 at Comiskey Park.
Alvarez (14-6) backed up his skipper’s decision, saying his 110 pitches hadn’t made him weary. “I wasn’t tried,” he said. “I left the ball over the plate, that’s why I got in trouble.”
Bevington didn’t second-guess himself either, pointing out that the Sox “did have trouble shutting them down after I did take him out.”
Trouble would be understatement.
After replacing Alvarez, Larry Thomas recorded two quick outs. Then Eddie Murray walked, prompting Bevington to replace Thomas with Matt Karchner.
Things got ugly in the ninth as Karchner surrendered three walks, two singles and a double. Bevington then yanked Karchner in favor of Jeff Darwin. But Darwin served a meatball to Murray, and the switch-hitter cranked it out for his 19th career grand slam, which ties him for second all-time with Willie McCovey behind Lou Gehrig’s 23.
Asked about his decision to stay with Karchner, who retired two of the eight batters he faced, Bevington snarled: “I’m not going to sit here and explain every single move.”
But then he did: “We have other games to play and we need pitching for other games coming up.”
The loss wasted a strong effort from Frank Thomas, who had a two-run homer and RBI single against Mike Mussina (14-7), who went 7 2/3 innings.
