White Sox Face Biggest Series of the Season in Detroit

Dropping a series to the Cincinnati Reds is a tough pill to swallow for Chicago White Sox fans, especially when it feels like the White Sox outplayed them almost the entire way.

Tuesday night's game was one of the more frustrating losses of the year. The White Sox led 4-0 early and got seven innings of one-run ball from Sean Burke. The bullpen needed to get just six outs. But a series of softly hit singles and bad batted-ball luck for the White Sox led to a three-run eighth inning by the Reds to tie the game. The White Sox would go on to lose in extra innings.

On Thursday, another rough start from Davis Martin, followed by an early ejection and rain pouring down during the MLB debut of Tanner McDougal, led to a nightmare performance from Chicago's pitching staff. And despite the offense's best efforts to crawl back into the game, the White Sox just ran out of time, losing 9-8 with runners on base when the final out was made.

That's baseball. Sometimes all of the lucky breaks go the other way. Sometimes, even when you're playing well, you can come up short. But for a White Sox team that's now 62-58 and seemingly limping toward the finish line of the regular season, losing a series like that feels inexcusable.

Chicago is 8-11 over its last 19 games, slowly fading back toward the .500 mark and slowly losing its lead in the AL Central. But this weekend, the White Sox have a chance to completely flip all of that momentum with the biggest series of the year coming in Detroit.

The Tigers are definitely the team the White Sox most need to worry about right now. After the White Sox swept the Tigers at Rate Field back at the end of May, Detroit was sitting at 22-38 and seemed to be out of the race for good. Since then, the Tigers are 38-23, crawling back to 60-61, currently sitting in a playoff spot in the American League, and now just 2.5 games back in the AL Central despite trading both Tarik Skubal and Casey Mize at the trade deadline.

Detroit's plus-90 run differential is the best mark in the American League this season. The last time the White Sox played them in Detroit, they got swept to even the season series at 3-3.

These next three games could make or break the AL Central race. If the White Sox can win the series, they'll expand their lead over Detroit back up to 3.5 games while maintaining an advantage for the tiebreaker. If the White Sox can sweep the Tigers, they'd lead Detroit by 5.5 games and make up all the ground that they've slowly lost over the last few weeks.

But if Chicago can't win the series, the Tigers will creep even closer. Getting swept by Detroit means the White Sox will be out of first place for the first time since July 3.

It's not like the schedule is getting any easier, either. On Monday, the White Sox head back to Chicago, but this time they go to Wrigley Field to play the Chicago Cubs in part two of the Crosstown Classic. The Cubs have been playing their best baseball of the year recently and are currently trying to run down the Milwaukee Brewers in the NL Central. That won't be an easy series.

But the intensity of the schedule the rest of the way makes every divisional matchup that much more important.

How we feel about the White Sox will change greatly over the next three days.

We may look back on this series against the Tigers in August, once we see how the AL Central race plays out, and realize that this is where it was all decided.