SAN FRANCISCO — Dominic Fletcher was certain he had beat the tag.
The Chicago White Sox right fielder attempted to score from first on Lenyn Sosa’s double to left-center with two outs in the third inning of Tuesday’s game against the San Francisco Giants. The relay throw beat Fletcher to the plate and he was ruled out when Curt Casali applied the tag.
Fletcher immediately pointed to the Sox dugout, asking for the team to challenge the call. They did. After a review, the call was overturned — resulting in a tied score.
But then aided by an error, the Giants broke the tie in the bottom of the third. They led the rest of the way, beating the Sox 4-1 in front of 28,766 at Oracle Park.
The Sox were limited to three hits while falling 67 games under .500 (30-97) for the first time in franchise history.
“(Starter Davis Martin) did a good job keeping us in that game,” interim manager Grady Sizemore said. “We just didn’t get enough hits for him tonight. He kept us in there, pitched well, just wasn’t our night.”
The Sox are the second team in Major League Baseball history to lose 97-plus times over the first 127 games of a season. The 1916 Philadelphia A’s were 28-98-1.
Fletcher’s sprint from first to home tied the score at 1.
“We weren’t getting a lot of hits and it was going to be a close game so you have to be aggressive,” Sizemore said of the decision to attempt to score on the two-out hit that paid off.
Casali began the bottom of the third with a chopper to third that Miguel Vargas couldn’t handle. A walk and single followed the error, loading the bases for Heliot Ramos. Martin walked Ramos, bringing home Casali to give the Giants the lead.
“There’s never margin for error,” Sizemore said. “You have to play clean baseball and take advantage of opportunities and usually (it’s) the team that doesn’t hurt itself that comes out on top.”
Ramos collected another RBI with a single in the fifth against reliever Fraser Ellard. That run was charged to Martin. The right-hander allowed three runs (two earned) on four hits with five strikeouts and two walks in 4 1/3 innings.
“Just one of those days, one of those starts where you had to grind through it, push through it,” Martin said. “Stuff was not as sharp, not executing correctly. (So you have to try) staying ahead of guys, finding the pitches that are working that day, discarding the pitches that are not working.
“Instead of following the game plan, a little more, ‘OK, what can we throw for strikes today?’ And then just trying to make the adjustments between innings.”
He made the pitches to hold the Giants to one run in the third, getting a popup and double play to escape further damage.
“The pitch to Ramos (for the walk) was a good pitch, something I’ll live with,” Martin said. “Looking back at it, it was a great slider, he had a great take on it. It’s big-league baseball, it happens.
“Just taking a lap, kind of breathing, realizing I have great stuff and if I execute these pitches, we’ll get out of here. And (catcher) Korey (Lee) called some great pitches, got us in some great spots and executed those two pitches when we needed to.”
Martin exited after 82 pitches. This was his fifth major-league appearance (fourth start) since returning from Tommy John surgery.
“He’s on a count,” Sizemore said. “We have to be mindful, coming back from an injury like that. We don’t want to push him too hard. We try to keep him at a set limit and go from there.”
The Sox didn’t get much going offensively. The only hit, besides Fletcher’s single and Sosa’s double in the third, was a single by Gavin Sheets in the seventh. Giants starter Robbie Ray allowed one run on three hits with nine strikeouts and no walks in 6 2/3 innings.
“His fastball was good,” Sizemore said of Ray. “He got a lot of swing and miss, foul balls on the heater, made his off-speed effective, threw a lot of strikes.
“He was getting strikes with the fastball, the guys didn’t seem to get good swings on him.”
The Sox finished with 12 strikeouts. Giants reliever Ryan Walker struck out the side in the ninth to clinch the 14th consecutive series loss for the Sox.
