DETROIT — A sweep would have been nice. In fact, it might have been necessary.
But the White Sox, after clobbering the lowly Tigers 11-5 Sunday, settled for taking two of three over the weekend at Comerica Park, which means they will host the first place Guardians of the AL Central for games Tuesday through Thursday trailing by three or four games, pending the outcome of Monday’s Twins-Guardians series finale.
The Sox (76-71) have an off day Monday to rest and think about the Guardians, who they need to sweep to claim the tiebreaker. They have 15 games left.
No one in the Sox clubhouse will put themselves on the spot and say they need to sweep Cleveland but they know what’s at stake.
“We’ve got to win, definitely,” said AJ Pollock, who slugged one of the Sox’ three homers Sunday. “We’ve got to win the first one, and then we’ve got to win the second one and then after that, we’ve got to win the third one.”
Pollock chuckled at what he was saying. It sounded like he was saying “sweep.” It also sounded like acting manager Miguel Cairo’s “one game at a time” approach.
“Can’t sweep if you lose the first game,” Pollock said. “So you’ve got to win that first game and then yeah, you’ve got to keep pressing the pedal down.”
Pollock, Andrew Vaughn and Eloy Jimenez put the hammer down on the Tigers (55-91) Sunday by homering, and Vince Velasquez pitched four innings of one-run ball as a last minute starter Sunday. Johnny Cueto remained ill after missing his scheduled start Saturday and Velasquez followed Davis Martin’s six innings of one-run ball with reliable fill-in duty.
“To come up and pitch four innings without knowing that he was pitching, it was big for us,” Cairo said. “It was awesome.”
Moments after the final out, the Guardians lost to the Twins for the first time in a five-game series. The fifth game is Monday.
“Today was big for us,” Velasquez said. “Every win is precious. This is a good way to take the series from Detroit and go back home and do some damage against Cleveland, right? This road trip itself has been very driven in the right direction and it steps right for us to do some damage against Cleveland at home. We’ll see how it turns out.”
The four-game road trip began with a one-stop Sox win at Cleveland Thursday.
“I don’t think we want to apply that pressure [of saying we need to sweep this week],” Velasquez said. “We know what we got to do. If we come out with a bang like we did today, if we keep playing fundamental baseball, keep applying pressure, trying to take the extra base this something to obviously retaliate against them. ... Cleveland has done it against us.”
Each Sox homer had an exclamation point attached. Pollock hit a tying shot against Tigers starter Drew Hutchinson, Vaughn hit his first career grand slam against Foley and Jimenez launched a 450-foot blast against Garrett Hill.
The Sox are 27-5 when they hit two or more home runs and 12-2 when they hit three.
Jimenez also doubled and singled, and Yoan Moncada and Gavin Sheets each had two hits. Jimenez’ three-hit and seven total bases raised his hitting line to .355/427/.601 with 12 homers and 36 RBI since the All-Star break.
After walking the first batter he faced and then giving up a home run to Willi Castro, Velasquez pitched in with a scoreless second, third and fourth innings. Tanner Banks (2-1) was credited with the win after striking out five in three innings of one-run ball in the final third of the game.
The focus then shifted to Cleveland (79-67) which has won 10 of its last 13. The Sox have won 13 of 18.
“So, you know, it’s going to be a good battle,” Vaughn said. “Just got to go out there and play our game. Pitch well, hit well, play defense.”
