CHICAGO (AP) -With his team trailing in the fifth inning, Matt Garza was fidgety.
He was having trouble warming up on a slippery mound, so the White Sox grounds crew came out to rake the dirt. Garza tried again to warm up, but still had trouble with his footing. Then, another round of raking.
Garza was out of sorts Sunday and so were the Tampa Bay Rays. Instead of completing a three-game sweep, they lost 5-3 to Chicago as their starting pitcher struggled with his mechanics and location.
Now, the team that made a stunning jump from 96 losses to 97 wins will try to close out this series on Monday.
Wrigley Field before this season and has helped develop the fields at several other ballparks.
White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen joked Saturday that he would have Bossard’s crew install “a swimming pool” around first base to negate the Rays’ speed on the bases, but there was no need for chicanery.
Rain delayed the start of the game by 35 minutes, but instead of the base runners, it was the Rays’ pitcher who seemed to struggle with his footing. Even a pigeon pestered Garza, parking itself between the mound and home plate before the pitcher shooed it away.
The conditions didn’t seem to bother Chicago’s John Danks, who came up big again after throwing eight shutout innings in the AL Central tiebreaker against Minnesota. This time, he allowed three runs in 6 2-3 innings, but it was a different story for Garza.
Staked to a 1-0 lead after Akinori Iwamura beat out a roller toward first with two outs to drive in Dioner Navarro in the second, Garza promptly let it slip, slide away.
An 11-game winner in his first full season, the right-hander gave up an RBI single to A.J. Pierzynski in the third and three more runs in the fourth as the White Sox grabbed a 4-1 lead.
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