White Sox stun Tigers with improbable comeback

So far, so good for the White Sox in their three-game set with the Detroit Tigers. The South Siders have taken the first two games, and they prevailed, 7-6, in dramatic fashion Wednesday night at U.S. Cellular Field.

Detroit appeared to be cruising toward victory, up 6-3 in the eighth inning. Heck, the Sox had two outs and nobody on in the bottom of that eighth inning, but six straight hits off Tigers reliever Joba Chamberlain turned the game around.

Micah Johnson and Adam Eaton hit back-to-back singles to set the table for Melky Cabrera, who couldn't have picked a better time to hit his first home run in a Sox uniform. Cabrera turned on a 2-1 slider from Chamberlain, knocking it over the right-field wall for a three-run blast that tied the game at 6.

Surprisingly, Detroit didn't seem inclined to remove the rattled Chamberlain from the mound. The rally started anew with a single by Jose Abreu, who advanced to third on a single by Adam LaRoche. That set the table for Avisail Garcia, who put himself in an 0-2 hole by swinging wildly at a couple of Chamberlain sliders. But after a couple foul balls and two pitches out of the zone, Garcia found a 2-2 slider to his liking and lined it into into center field for an RBI single that gave the Sox a 7-6 lead.

Garcia also played a key role in protecting that lead in the top of the ninth inning.

With one out, Sox closer David Robertson gave up a single to Nick Castellanos. James McCann followed with another single to right, and pinch runner Andrew Romine scampered from first to third. Garcia fired the ball in quickly to try to get Romine at third, which wasn't going to happen, but Garcia hit the cutoff man, shortstop Alexei Ramirez, who cut the throw and fired to first to get McCann, who had rounded the bag too aggressively. 

After Abreu put the tag on McCann, the tying run was still on third in the person of Romine, but two were out. Robertson retired Jose Iglesias on a routine grounder to Johnson to secure the win and his fifth save in as many opportunities.

With the win, the Sox (10-14) are still five games behind Detroit (17-11) in the AL Central, but hey, it's better than being seven games back -- as the Sox were when this series began.