White Sox robbed by insane catch as 9th-inning rally falls short

MINNEAPOLIS -- Target Field has been a house of horrors for the White Sox lately. But on Tuesday they put a big scare into the Twins before falling just short.

Byron Buxton’s diving catch of Andrew Benintendi’s drive into right-center field was the final out of another frustrating night for Chicago, as the Twins held on for a 4-2 victory in the opener of a three-game series.

The White Sox entered the ninth trailing 4-1, even though they’d been generating traffic on the bases all night. Facing Twins closer Jhoan Duran and his 102 mph fastball is a tall task for any team, let alone one that entered the ninth with the lowest OPS in the Majors (.581). But the bottom of the Sox order came through to make the ninth inning much more dramatic than the Twins are accustomed to in this rivalry.

First, Lenyn Sosa beat out a grounder to third base for an infield single. Brooks Baldwin then worked a six-pitch walk. Pinch-hitter Matt Thaiss followed with a nine-pitch at-bat that resulted in another walk to load the bases with nobody out.

After a visit to the mound, Duran settled down and struck out Joshua Palacios for the first out. Nick Maton then hit a bouncer to the right side of the infield. Twins second baseman Edouard Julien made the play to first base for the second out, but a run scored and the other two runners moved into scoring position for Benintendi.

It's safe to say he was the last batter the Twins wanted to face in that situation. Benintendi entered the game with a .978 OPS and nine home runs in 137 career at-bats at Target Field. But he was 0-for-9 with four strikeouts in his career against Duran. Something had to give.

Benintendi worked the count to 2-2 and fouled off a four-seam fastball at 101.8 mph. Duran followed with a 101 mph four-seamer, and Benintendi was ready for it. He drove it into the gap, but he picked the wrong spot to put it. The oft-injured Buxton is one of the game’s best center fielders when healthy, which he has been thus far in 2025. And the former Platinum Glove-winner raced to his right and made a tumbling grab to prevent the tying runs from scoring.

“He’s throwing 102 and a 99 mph splitter, so I was trying to get something up to hit,” Benintendi said of his approach to facing Duran. “The guy made a nice play. When I hit it, with the jump he got, I knew he was going to catch it, just the way he was tracking it. Yeah, I thought he had it the whole way.”

It was a fitting end to another game in which the White Sox batters struggled with runners on base. Chicago ranked 29th in batting average with RISP going into the night (.176). The club added to its struggles by going 0-for-8 with a sacrifice fly in those situations on Tuesday. And of the nine men the White Sox left on base in the game, seven were stranded on second or third base.

“These guys have been working incredibly hard and they’ve put themselves in a good position to take good swings,” manager Will Venable said. “It’s going to turn here. We’ve got to keep continuing to fight.”

Silver linings can be hard to find when a team has started as slowly as the White Sox have, but Benintendi liked the message the hitters sent in the ninth inning.

“It’s not over ‘til it’s over,” Benintendi said. “When you’re facing that guy in the ninth down three, it’s easy to kind of fold and just say, ‘We’ll get ‘em tomorrow.’ But we put ourselves in a position to tie it up, and we just didn’t get it done.”