2008 State of the Sox

April 2: Indians 7, White Sox 2

The crack of the bat!

The piff of the ball hitting the dirt around home plate a split-second after!

The thwap of a throw beating a runner to first!

Those are the sounds of baseball.  White Sox baseball.  Against Fausto Carmona, who, in the Sox's defense, looked pretty good outside of some sporadic control issues.  Carmona induced 16 groundouts to only one flyout, and three of those groundouts were of the double play variety.

Twin killings pretty much killed any chances the Sox had of taking control of this game.  Orlando Cabrera drew walks twice -- he's off to a nice start in that department -- and Jim Thome erased him and himself by bouncing into two 5-4-3s.

Alexei Ramirez had the other one -- unfortunately, his 6-4-3 came with a runner on third as well.

The Indians seized the lead against Javier Vazquez, who had his strikeout stuff, but his 2006 stuff as well.  He walked four in five innings, throwing 103 pitches.  He didn't help his case in the second, when he loaded the bases on two walks and a hit batters to bring Grady Sizemore to the plate.  As he is wont to do, Sizemore drove in two with an opposite-field single.

Vazquez also walked in a run in the fifth, so an inauspicious debut for him and Mark Buehrle to say the least.

A.J. Pierzynski had a nice game, at least.  Before Ramirez's double play, he nearly hit into a double play himself, but beat it out by a step.  His legs served him well in his next time up, when he singled and advanced to second on a wild pitch that didn't get all that far away from Kelly Shoppach.  He scored on Joe Crede's single -- which would've been a double play ball if he didn't move up on the pitch in the dirt.

He also added his first homer of the season off Jorge Julio in the ninth inning.  That was somewhat bittersweet, though, since Jermaine Dye struck out swinging with the bases loaded in the eighth, when the Sox had a chance to make it a game:

Some firsts:

Jermaine Dye allowed his first triple of the season, though not a classic triple.  Though a faster outfielder could have caught it, an outfielder shorter than the 6-foot-5-inch Dye may not have even gotten a tip of the glove on it.  With Grady Sizemore running, it wasn't an affront to defense like other ones he's allowed.

Alexei Ramirez had a first outfield assist, throwing out Asdrubal Cabrera trying to stretch a single into a double.  His first hit came two innings later, on a broken bat single off Julio.

Mike MacDougal's first outing of the season began with a leadoff walk and a double off a hung slider.  He gave up three runs in his first inning of work, and held the Indians scoreless in his second.

Matt Thornton broke a bat, but the barrel of the bat rolled into his mitt before the ball did, resulting in a two-out RBI single.  I'd never seen that before.

Record: 0-2 | Box score | Play-by-play