Chicago White Sox: Detroit Tigers Slam the Door in Very Public Fashion

Any hopes of the Chicago White Sox making a run in the AL Central this season lay in last weekend's series in Detroit. A sweep was preferred over a mere series win, and a sweep was what transpired.

Unfortunately, it was the Tigers who brought out the brooms.

Detroit put an emphatic dagger into any postseason hope remaining for Chicago, doing it in front of a national television audience to boot. Sunday's 18-2 embarrassment at the hands of the division leaders signaled the symbolic end of a team who could only show its potential on paper this season.

All in? Try all done.

Detroit bats pummeled the White Sox for 35 runs in the three-game debacle. They clubbed John Danks on the way to an 8-1 victory. They savaged Gavin Floyd and the bullpen in a 9-8 comeback win that just about ended all hope.

Then, in ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball, the Tigers came out and stepped on Chicago's throat.

Mark Buehrle couldn't make it out of the fourth inning as Detroit pounded him for eight runs. Call-up Shane Lindsay was lit up for seven runs in the sixth. The Tigers cleared their bench, and Chicago cleared their October calenders once and for all.

In what was a defining weekend for the 2011 White Sox, the team is once again a sub-.500 ballclub. I'll remember two big things from the broadcast:

1. The announcing crew wondering if this was the most lopsided game in Sunday Night Baseball history.

2. Alex Rios coming to bat and his league rankings in various categories came up on the screen. After "on-base percentage," it simply said, "Last."

We are left with the remainder of the season to see guys like Lindsay and Eduardo Escobar get audition time with the team. A doubleheader in Minnesota on Monday is a fine place for that to begin.

Blame will be assigned in any number of places, injured veterans will now get a lessened workload and these last 24 games will play out with a lot less intensity. Maybe it's just as well. Perhaps this club hung around the fringe a little longer that we thought and needed to be put out of its misery.

The Tigers certainly took care of that, and the whole nation saw it happen.