Detroit — Accountability matters. It’s one of those intangibles you can’t measure in an algorithm, but over the course of a long baseball season can keep a team cohesive and moving forward.
The Tigers were beaten 5-2 by the Chicago White Sox Saturday, on a chilly afternoon at Comerica Park. Afterward both starting pitcher Casey Mize and shortstop Javy Báez, though neither at blame for the loss, offered mea culpas.
“I just made too many mistakes, honestly,” said Mize, whose four innings of scoreless work was bookended by two, two-run bursts. “Too many mistakes led to runs.”
Mize gave up a two-out, two-run single in the first inning, a ground ball up the middle by Eloy Jimenez, a ball that deflected off Báez’s glove.
“I fell behind 2-0 (on Jimenez),” Mize said. “I shouldn’t be 2-0.”
BOX SCORE: White Sox 5, Tigers 2
Mize allowed just two hits from that point through the fifth and stranded former Tiger Josh Harrison at third base after he led off the fifth with a triple.
“I thought Casey battled his butt off,” catcher Eric Haase said. “He wasn’t as sharp as he’d like to be. Casey is a perfectionist and he expects a lot of himself. But bottom line, he kept us in the ballgame and we couldn’t complete it.”
Manager AJ Hinch agreed, which is why he let Mize, who was at 72 pitches, start the sixth inning.
“I thought he earned it,” Hinch said. “Other than the first inning he’d been able to navigate pretty efficiently. We need our starters to take on a lot of innings.”
The White Sox certainly made Mize work for his outs. They only swung and missed five times and they hit the ball hard. The average exit velocity on 20 balls put in play was 96.7 mph.
But the Tigers were only down by two runs entering the sixth. Then Jose Abreu singled and catcher Yasmani Grandal unloaded on a 93-mph fastball sending it 408 feet into the seats in left field.
“I was trying to get the four-seamer away and I ran it completely across the plate,” Mize said. “Just too many mistakes.”
The four runs would be enough, largely because White Sox starter Dylan Cease was doing what he always does against the Tigers — dominating them. He allowed two hits and struck out eight.
He’s now 9-0 against Detroit in his young career with an ERA just over 2.0.
“He’s really good,” Hinch said. “He’s pretty calm out there, pretty effective. He was landing his breaking ball more in the zone than he normally does. He was able to get strikeouts with his breaking ball and on a cold day like today, that’s pretty impressive.”
Cease, who was popping his four-seam fastball at 96-97 mph, got nine misses on 15 swings at his slider and 15 called strikes. He struck out Báez in the fourth, getting him to waive at three straight sliders.
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“He was pretty tough,” Báez said. “He was locating and mixing his pitches pretty good.”
Once the Tigers were able to get Cease out of there — after a leadoff single by Austin Meadows in the sixth — they started to scratch back into the game. They ambushed right-handed reliever Reynaldo Lopez and quickly cut the White Sox lead in half.
Were it not for an error of aggression by Báez, though, the damage could have been more significant.
Jeimer Candelario doubled home Meadows, moving Báez, who singled, to third. With nobody out and Miguel Cabrera at the plate, Báez tried to score on a ball in the dirt that bounced just a few feet away from catcher Grandal.
“To be honest, I got too aggressive,” said Báez, who had two singles. “I thought the ball went farther. But you’ve got to realize, you can’t be the first out at the plate. Plus Miggy was hitting and he ended up drawing a walk.
“It was just my mistake.”
Grandal pounced on the ball and made a quick throw to Lopez covering. Báez was clearly out, so much so that Hinch didn’t ask for video review.
“It’s an aggressive mistake,” Hinch said. “It’s hard to judge that one. That’s probably the toughest one as far as how far the ball got away from Grandal. The pitcher did a good job beating Javy to the plate.
“The result was not what we wanted but it was an aggressive mistake, a bang-bang play. I like the fact that he read it. A foot farther and he’s safe.”
With Báez, though, the last thing a manager wants is to take away his instincts and aggression on the bases.
“It’s about making mistakes and then making the adjustment,” Báez said.
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Hinch didn’t want Mize to take any blame for this one, either.
“Casey is going to be frustrated because of the way the outing ended,” he said. “But after the first couple of runs he kept us right in there. We just didn’t do enough to win the game and they did.
“It had nothing to do with Casey. Just had to do with the way the game went.”
chris.mccosky@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @cmccosky
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