White Sox striving to eliminate baserunning miscues

CHICAGO -- The most important part of Tyler Flowers getting thrown out going from second to third on Alejandro De Aza's one-out grounder in the hole between shortstop and third base in the eighth inning of Saturday's 4-3 loss to Arizona was that nobody, including Flowers, was accepting of the mistake after the game.

Adam Dunn was thrown out in the same situation during a game in Cleveland last weekend.

"That's why the guy is in the hole, you want to make him make that long throw," White Sox bench coach Mark Parent said. "That's just a Little League play.

"We messed it up last year, we addressed it again this spring numerous times. [Flowers] felt as bad as Dunner felt, as bad as [Josh] Phegley felt last year. I mean it's just embarrassing. That's a play that's embarrassing."

Parent felt the baserunning mistakes would be cleaned up for a team that has played overall good baseball during the first 38 games this season. He also pointed out that the baserunner has to read that sort of play with it out in front of him.

"It seems like when we're down, we have guys -- just like last year -- trying to do too much instead of just do what you're supposed to do. Let the scoreboard dictate," Parent said. "We don't need to give up outs on the bases. It's one base at a time.

"That was different in terms of being down last night and being around [Addison] Reed, we knew we could steal a base, so I let Alexei [Ramirez] run [in the ninth]. But other than that, when you're down like that, you really don't want to give up, you just want to have a lot of baserunners and then drive guys in."