CLEVELAND – Something, or someone produced a sound like a wall being punched inside the White Sox postgame clubhouse.
The potential reasons for it–after Tuesday night’s game flipped from a gutty 6-5 comeback win to clinch a vital series victory over the second-place Guardians, to a crushing 7-6 loss keyed by Brayan Rocchio’s second walk-off hit off Grant Taylor of the season–are innumerable.
“It sucks,” said David Martin, who allowed two runs, one earned, in 5 ⅓ innings. “We did a lot of really good things tonight, but baseball doesn’t always reward you for doing everything right.”
The final pitch alone, set up by a walk to light-hitting catcher Patrick Bailey to put the winning run aboard after Nathaniel Lowe already singled, contained multitudes.
Taylor got ahead 0-2 on Rocchio, the author of three prior walk-off hits this season, with a pair of breaking balls. He followed with a 101 mph sinker well above the zone, but fairly middle. Rocchio hit it not especially hard, but high and far into the left field corner, where it floated just out of Sam Antonacci’s diving grasp. MLB’s player tracking showed the converted infielder taking a short loop inward, before righting his path and racing to the corner, a half-second too late.
Sam Antonacci postgame pic.twitter.com/jpQ2vzstSe
— James Fegan (@JRFegan) September 16, 2026
“Pretty dog[-expletive], to be honest,” Antonacci said of his route. “Got to clean it up. It’s the big leagues. You can’t make those types of routes.”
“That’s not on Sammy, that’s a tough play,” said manager Will Venable. “A big play, but not the reason that we lost that game.”
Instead, Venable wondered about the pitch: a triple-digit fastball in a chase location, but still a fastball to a hitter who burned Taylor on the same pitch, earlier this season.
“You’ve seen Rocchio and even heard from him how he’s selling out to fastballs against Grant and had him 0-2 with a couple of breaking balls, tried to sneak one by him,” Venable said. “Really good hitter, made contact, and obviously saw the results.”
“I wouldn’t say he sold out to it,” said catcher Kyle Teel, asked about the fatal pitch. “Two strikes on him, it’s the right pitch call. Grant’s throwing 101 mph. It is what it is. I liked the pitch call. I think Grant put it in a solid spot. If we spin him there and we throw three [breaking balls] in a row, he could clip that one too.”
The ninth inning wiped away a comeback from an early 3-0 hole, as Chris Murphy was bloodied for a pair of homers in the team’s league-leading 31st usage of an opener. Martin may have been fine without the help, but a one-run loss had him kicking himself for an errant pickoff throw that skipped away from Munetaka Murakami in the fifth as Rocchio–who else?–raced home from third.
Even after the second-straight night of the Sox offense running up the pitch count on a Guardians starter before hanging a crooked number against their bullpen in the sixth, behind RBI singles from Chase Meidroth and Miguel Vargas, the slim margin made Murakami’s 0-for-4, four-strikeout (one walk) night impossible to hide.
“It’s not like moving him in the lineup is going to magically fix his swing,” Venable said. “As you look at how we’re compiling our lineups and want to give yourself the best chance, he’s still a part of that.”
Just as difficult as what was lost for the Sox, is what lies ahead.
A single game for the division lead on Wednesday afternoon, started by Guardians ace Parker Messick, with Taylor, Sean Newcomb and Hagen Smith all used for multiple innings on successive nights.
Tuesday was the game they were set up to win, to guarantee leaving Cleveland in first place, and for a host of reasons all aggravating in their own right, it slipped away.
“You can’t just say, ‘Oh, it’s okay. We’ll brush it off,’” Martin said. “Feel it as long as you want to feel it and accept it. And then come back tomorrow, hungry.”