Twins end sweet first half of the season on a sour note in loss to White Sox

CHICAGO – A season that began with a rousing Jose Berrios shutout reached its midway point Friday night with a Jose Berrios performance that might have been just as good, his manager said. One big difference: the final score.

OK, make it two big differences: This one was for a first-place team.

"I don't want to call it [bad] luck, but the results he got did not match the performance that we saw tonight," Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said after Berrios gave up six runs, only three of them earned, over 7⅓ innings and absorbed a 6-4 loss to the White Sox at Guaranteed Rate Field. "He threw the ball like one of the best pitchers in baseball tonight."

The Twins retained their eight-game lead in the AL Central despite suffering their second consecutive loss, and first to the White Sox since last August, seven victories ago. Their fourth two-game hiccup this month prevented them from matching the 54 victories that the 1970 Twins piled up by midseason en route to an AL West crown, but it's unlikely anyone is complaining, not with an eight-year streak of non-contention for a division title they hope to eradicate three months from now.

That doesn't make this loss any less irritating, though. Miguel Sano homered twice, the Twins (well, Berrios) successfully protected a weary bullpen from having to shoulder much a day after an 18-inning loss, and the White Sox used seven pitchers against the league's highest-scoring offense. Yet a pair of Chicago home runs, each preceded by an Ehire Adrianza error, cost the Twins a winnable game.

"[Berrios] made literally just a small handful of pitches that he probably would want back," Baldelli said. "He dominated most of the at-bats during the game. It was a very impressive outing for me."

The credit for the Twins' rise to the top of the division belongs mostly to their record-setting offense, but Berrios has not exactly been a footnote, either. The 2018 All-Star dropped to 8-4 Friday, his fourth unsuccessful attempt at a ninth victory, yet his ERA remains among the top seven in the AL at 2.89.

This time, though, his work was spoiled by a hitter to whom Berrios shows Pedro Martinez-like respect. "I always said he's my dad," the righthander said of Chicago catcher James McCann, who hammered a first-pitch fastball more than 400 feet in the first inning, making him the first big-leaguer to hit three career home runs off the Twins star. McCann is batting .400 (6-for-15) against Berrios, dating back to his days with the Tigers.

"He's always killed me," Berrios said. "But I remember the thing another player told me — 'You can't beat him. Forget it, because you're not always going to play him every day. Go on to the next day.' "

Or in this case, the next inning. Berrios gave up four singles to give up two more runs in the fifth inning, but stopped it from getting worse by forcing back-to-back tappers to the mound. And his night ended in the eighth when Eloy Jimenez rocketed another two-run homer.

Still, Berrios' ability to go so deep into the game, even pitching with a nagging blister problem, meant the bullpen threw only three pitches Friday, by Mike Morin.

"I don't feel good because I don't think so much about me, because the team lost," said Sano, whose fifth two-homer night of his career was a good sign on the heels of his 1-for-13 troubles vs. Tampa Bay this week. "Berrios has been doing a good job, and he made a mistake on one pitch, but that happens. Because he's not perfect."