CHICAGO -- Ron Gardenhire thought it was gone. Oswaldo Arcia thought it was gone. The collective gasp told you that the 24,529 in U.S. Cellular Field thought it was gone.
But Arcia's long fly ball dropped out of orbit a couple feet shy of the left-field fence, and into Alejandro DeAza's glove, sealing a frustrating, here-we-go-again loss for the Twins, this one 5-4 to the White Sox on Saturday.
For the third game in a row here, all the Twins' runs were scored by bashing souvenirs into the seats, with Arcia and Justin Morneau each blasting their third home run of the series. But in Friday's doubleheader sweep, the long balls were accompanied by steady pitching from the starting pitcher. On Saturday, with Mike Pelfrey on the mound, they weren't.
Pelfrey became the first Twins pitcher to lose 10 games this year, giving up five runs over five-plus messy innings, in large part due to five walks. He gave up only four hits, one a solo home run by Jordan Danks, but most discouragingly, he provided new evidence that he's backpedaling toward become the same slowpoke strike-averse pitcher he was in April and May.
And nobody knows it more than Pelfrey.
"Three starts ago, I pitched (six strong innings) in Anaheim, and I said, 'Hey, there we go,'" said Pelfrey (4-10), who has recorded only one victory since May 5. "And now the last three starts have been atrocious. This game's all about consistency, and I'm fed up with going out there and throwing 100 pitches in four innings. I'm tired of being atrocious, terrible."
Yeah, it's no fun for the Twins, either. Pelfrey went to 3-2 counts to three of the first five hitters he faced, and needed 33 pitches to escape the first inning, when he managed to hold Chicago to one run despite loading the bases with one out. Pelfrey put runners in scoring position in four of the six innings he appeared in, and his pitch count kept expanding.
"Too many pitches early, again," Gardenhire said. "(He had) 47 after two innings and it was going nowhere really quick. It's not like he's not trying, we all know he's trying, but you still go, strike one -- and the next thing you know, it's 3-2."
The White Sox scored two more runs in the second inning, one on Danks' blast and another on Chris Colabello's dropped fly ball in right field, for a 3-0 lead. But the Twins pushed the reset button for Pelfrey with four runs in the third, three coming on Morneau's sixth home run of August.
Pelfrey seemed energized, peeling off a quick 1-2-3 inning in the fifth. But then he gave up a single and issued a walk to the first two batters in the sixth, the last hitters he faced.
"He gets two quick strikes (on Danks), then walks him," Gardenhire said. "And that's a big walk."
Turned out to be, because the White Sox tied the score with a sacrifice bunt and sacrifice fly off Anthony Swarzak, then watched Conor Gillaspie drive in the go-ahead run with a sinking liner to left field that Arcia tried to catch as he slid. The ball rolled out of his glove, and Pelfrey was on the hook for the loss.
The Twins went 1-for-8 with runners in scoring position, including a first-and-third situation in the sixth when Chicago reliever David Purcey struck out Joe Mauer and got Morneau on a one-hopper. They still had one last shot in the ninth, when Arcia believed he had tied the score, only to fall a few feet short.
Pelfrey took the blame, but Gardenhire made it clear -- "absolutely, absolutely" -- that Pelfrey's spot in the rotation is safe, even though it's now been more than a month since his last victory.
"I appreciate him saying that," Pelfrey said, "but in this game, you've got to perform."