CHICAGO – Brad Ausmus has had plenty of opportunities over the past five days to complain about the Detroit Tigers’ schedule.

As of Friday afternoon, he had yet to use one.

The message from Ausmus’ chair in the visiting manager’s office during the team’s most grueling stretch of the season was: We’ll deal with it.

But after the Tigers’ 8-2 loss to the White Sox on Friday night, after another mid-morning arrival in a new city and after sitting around at Guaranteed Rate Field for nearly 8 hours to play baseball, Ausmus wanted to get something off his chest.

He hinted at it with this early summation of the loss: “Give some credit to the White Sox pitchers, give some credit to the schedule we have. We’ll try to get about 5 hours of sleep and come back tomorrow and play two more.”

It is Ausmus’ job to stick up for his players, who once again looked flat.

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So, after watching them play sluggish for another game during perhaps the team’s defining stretch – people accusing him of making excuses be damned – his candor emerged.

Asked if he was unhappy with the schedule, Ausmus said, “Yeah, I’m not real happy with it, to be honest with you. We got in at 4 a.m., we were supposed to have a doubleheader. They canceled the game because of the weather and we don’t start the game until 8:30 and now we gotta get up in the morning again. So am I happy with it? No. I think it’s awful, actually. I think it’s a terrible schedule.”

The Tigers were scheduled to play a straight doubleheader on Friday afternoon but rain postponed the first game, which was to begin at 4 p.m. The second game was delayed nearly an hour and a half by rain.

The second game was rescheduled for this afternoon, part of a straight doubleheader.

“You can’t control the weather but I think it would have been prudent to play the second game tomorrow in August,” he said. “That would have made a lot more sense to me.”

The game is a make-up from April 5, which was postponed because of rain. As the home team, the White Sox have the final say – with MLB approval – for the make-up date.

Ausmus is not wrong about the schedule. He is also not wrong about the White Sox side of things, who had an off-day on Thursday.

“I wouldn’t expect them to do us any favors,” he said.

Contact Anthony Fenech: afenech@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @anthonyfenech.