MIAMI — The Chicago White Sox were three outs away from their first road series win since early May.
Instead, they watched former teammate Jake Burger sprint around the bases after hitting a walk-off, three-run home run to give the Miami Marlins a 7-4 victory on Sunday in front of 12,268 at loanDepot park.
The Marlins scored four runs in the ninth to hand the Sox another crushing loss.
“The ninth has been my role this year and those situations I have a job to do, and I haven’t been doing it well,” closer Michael Kopech said. “There’s no easy way to say that. It’s tough for me to say but it’s the truth. I’ve got work to do to get better.”
The Sox had a 4-1 lead after six innings and were ahead 4-3 entering the ninth.
Kopech walked Vidal Bruján to begin the inning.
“Coming into a one-run game like that, a leadoff walk is not acceptable,” Kopech said. “Walking the leadoff guy was a tough position to be in, but it’s not a situation that’s foreign to me. I’ve done it before and been able to work out of it.
“After that, it just comes down to executing and I didn’t do a great job of that.”
Bruján went from first to third on a sacrifice bunt by Nick Fortes when the Sox didn’t have anyone covering third base. Manager Pedro Grifol said catcher Korey Lee should have made his way to the bag.
“That’s just awareness, it won’t happen to him again,” Grifol said.
Jazz Chisholm Jr. hit a shallow fly to left field, which wasn’t deep enough for Bruján to score. Tommy Pham made the catch for the second out.
Josh Bell worked a full count and then hit a slicer to deep left field. Pham nearly made a leaping catch, but the ball hit the wall for a game-tying double.
“He came really close to it, man,” Grifol said. “He showed some serious athleticism there. He got up, really up and he covered some ground in the air. I thought he caught it, at one point. But it didn’t happen.”
Kopech got behind in the count 2-1 to Jesús Sánchez, and the Sox decided to intentionally walk him.
“(Sets up) a force play, we were behind in the count, and it’s a better matchup (against Burger),” Grifol said of the intentional walk.
Burger hit a 99 mph high fastball on a 1-1 count over the wall in left-center to send the Sox to the brutal defeat.
The Sox have lost 10 consecutive road series — their last series victory away from Guaranteed Rate Field was May 3-5, when they won two of three at St. Louis. The Sox (26-66) are a season-high 40 games under .500 for the second time this year.
“We had (a) 3-0 lead yesterday with (Garrett) Crochet on the mound (and lost 4-3), and today we had a 4-1 lead in the seventh, 4-3 lead in the ninth,” Grifol said. “We’ve lost our share of those, and they all hurt, but when you’ve lost a few too many, they start to really hurt.
“We need to turn it around and see if we can be on the other end of that, which we haven’t that much.”
