Yanks make wrong kind of history with loss to struggling White Sox

CHICAGO -- A big inning seemed inevitable as the Yankees showcased patience early in Monday night’s contest, clogging the bases with traffic like the adjacent Dan Ryan Expressway at rush hour. The woeful White Sox had lost 24 of their last 25 games, and this apparent South Side mismatch would eventually tilt -- or so it seemed.

• Chisholm injures elbow, headed for further tests

Here was just one example on a night filled with wasted opportunities: With two men on and none out in the fourth inning, Alex Verdugo bunted on his own, popping out harmlessly to the pitcher. The Yankees wouldn’t score that inning, and soon they would land on the wrong side of a lopsided laugher, falling 12-2 at Guaranteed Rate Field.

“It’s baseball. Yeah, they’re one of the worst teams, if you want to put it that way,” Verdugo said. “But these guys are still big leaguers. They can still have days where they’re clicking. We saw it a lot today: a lot of their guys, 3-for-4, 3-for-4. So these guys can still have good days.”

There haven’t been many bright evenings for this White Sox team, which remains on pace to eclipse the 1962 Mets (40-120) for the worst record in modern Major League history. Interim manager Grady Sizemore’s first victory marked the team’s first in 15 Monday games; perhaps only Garfield has detested that calendar date more.

Sure, baseball is a sport where any team can win on any given day, and yet -- by any reasonable measure, the Yankees should have drubbed the White Sox handily. Consider this: The Yankees had a +368 run differential advantage over the White Sox entering Monday’s game (Yankees at +117, White Sox at -251).

According to the Elias Sports Bureau, it has been nearly 85 years since a team lost a game by 10 or more runs despite that large of a run differential. The Phillies (-258) trounced the Reds (+161) by a 13-1 score on Sept. 19, 1939, at Cincinnati’s Crosley Field. (The Reds went on to be swept by the Yankees in the World Series that fall.)

Whether or not this Yankees team can power its own October drive remains to be seen, and in the grand scheme of 162 games, its fate will not likely hinge upon nine awful innings in Chicago. Yet after the Yankees appeared to turn the corner with 10 wins in their last 14 games, Monday’s contest represented a disappointing thud.

“We couldn’t punch through, we couldn’t hit the ball out of the ballpark, and we couldn’t stop them,” manager Aaron Boone said.

Rookie left-hander Ky Bush was hardly sharp, seeing the first three Yanks reach base, including Aaron Judge’s run-scoring double.

Bush clamped the damage there, then pitched with a lead as right-hander Luis Gil coughed up a pair of runs in the home half of the first inning, saved from further damage when Verdugo threw out Gavin Sheets at home plate from left field.

In all, the Yankees would manage 11 walks and nine hits, yet were held to two runs -- Judge’s first-inning knock and Anthony Volpe’s infield hit in the sixth, which scored Jazz Chisholm Jr. from second base and later prompted the infielder/outfielder to exit with a left elbow injury. New York fell to 13-18 against left-handed starters.

“We couldn’t get that hit, obviously,” Boone said. “And they kept us in the yard. But offensively, the at-bats were fine.”

Verdugo had the green light on that fourth-inning bunt attempt, and as ill-advised as it might have seemed, the Yanks could have been sitting pretty by that point. In the second, they loaded the bases against Bush, who got Juan Soto to pop out and induced Judge to fly out to right field.

Looking for his 300th career home run, Judge’s drive was well-hit, but not deep enough -- according to Statcast, it would have been a home run at only one Major League stadium, the one in the Bronx.

Gil had to grind through four unimpressive innings, needing 98 pitches while permitting four runs, including Korey Lee’s solo homer.

“Sometimes you’re trying to create weak contact,” Gil said through an interpreter. “Unfortunately, tonight, everything was going the right way for them.”

Tim Hill allowed a run in the fifth on one of Sheets’ three run-scoring doubles, and the White Sox pounded Enyel De Los Santos for seven runs, highlighted by Brooks Baldwin’s three-run homer in the eighth.

“Those guys can still have good days,” Verdugo said. “We’ve just got to do a better job of coming out, cashing in those runs that we had on base, kind of step on them early. I think with them getting out of those jams, we gave them a little bit of momentum. They ran with it today.”