CHICAGO -- Here’s one thing to remember about the White Sox following their 10-0 drubbing at the hands of the Cubs on Friday night at Guaranteed Rate Field.

They are an American League playoff team, despite six straight losses and a 1-7 record in their last eight games. But if their performance looks like it did in the opener of the final regular-season series, they won’t be a playoff team beyond next week.

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“Today … it was handed to us, right?” White Sox manager Rick Renteria said. “It wasn’t because we wanted that to happen, but that’s what happened.”

“Really, I think it’s just following the process,” said White Sox starting pitcher Dylan Cease, who allowed five runs in 4 2/3 innings and suffered the loss. “We’ve had a good season. The last week hasn’t been good, but other than that, we don’t need to panic, we don’t need to lose confidence. We have a lot of good players. It’s just about bringing it to the park.”

Friday’s setback, coupled with the latest walk-off win from Cleveland (34-24) over Pittsburgh and the Twins’ loss to the Reds at home, left the White Sox (34-24) tied with the Tribe and one game behind Minnesota (35-23) in the American League Central. Minnesota wins the tiebreaker over Cleveland based on head-to-head results, and while the White Sox split 10 with the Twins, they own the tiebreaker by virtue of a better division record.

The Twins would win a three-team tiebreaker based on the best overall record against the other two. But with the Indians winning eight of 10 against the White Sox this year, Renteria’s crew actually is in third place at this point, and current postseason projections have them as the No. 7 seed.

Yu Darvish held the White Sox to three hits over seven innings, while a Cubs team with 10 total runs scored over its previous seven games hit five home runs on Friday. That included Willson Contreras’ second of the game off infielder Yolmer Sánchez in the ninth, with Sánchez making his first career pitching appearance.

But it was Contreras’ first home run of the night -- an opposite-field three-run blast against Cease in the third followed by an almost seismic bat flip -- that seemed to cause issues later in the game. Reliever Jimmy Cordero hit Contreras in the back with a pitch in the seventh, leading to an umpires’ conference near the mound and Cordero’s ensuing ejection.

Renteria and pitching coach Don Cooper also were ejected. Cordero said during his postgame Zoom his sinker just got away, a point confirmed by Renteria, although Renteria claimed not to see Contreras’ bat flip. Contreras disagreed with that unintentional assessment.

“That's something that, if you're going to hit me, OK, that's fine. Hit me,” Contreras said. “But you have your guy that has done it before, and nobody says anything, really. Like I said, I think their leader feels disrespect.

“He's still living in the back-in-the day state, like in old-school baseball. We're in 2020. Like Mike Trout said, let the kids play. We're just having fun. That's part of the game right now.”

Contreras seemed to be referring to White Sox shortstop Tim Anderson, who not only has done it before bat-flip-wise, but he has also earned deserved attention for bringing fun to the game. These ejections and the hit batsman incident might get the most attention, as the Cubs evened their season series with the White Sox at two games apiece and reduced their magic number to one to win the National League Central.

There’s far greater issues for the White Sox. Sure, they can still win the division, and everything starts anew come Tuesday in the Wild Card Series. But the White Sox lost four straight in Cleveland, including three late-inning heartbreakers, and they didn’t exactly show a big response to those struggles on Friday.

That loss has to be put away, per Renteria. The lopsided final also has to be acknowledged.

“Nobody is happy about how that ended up playing itself out. It puts you in a situation where you are embarrassed. That’s as easy as I can put it,” Renteria said. “We have to be strong and play the game, and I think they will be a little bit more fired up to go play tomorrow.