2006 State of the Sox

April 21: White Sox 7, Twins 1

After a year in which Johan Santana went 5-0 against Chicago, the White Sox got their revenge Friday night.  Mark Buehrle, who went 0-2 head-to-head against Santana, outdueled the best pitcher in the American League for his third straight victory, the Sox’s sixth straight victory, and their 10th in their last 11.  

Just like in his previous two starts, Buehrle was sharp, fast and efficient.  Lew Ford’s solo homer in the eighth inning was the only time the Sox lefty found himself in a jam, and it was over in a hurry.  He was using all his pitches, and had a lot of success working away from righties with off-speed stuff.  He was keeping hitters off balance, getting a lot of pop-ups, and, surprisingly, strikeouts.  

Buehrle entered the game with only 10 strikeouts in 24 innings, well below his career rate.   But with six Ks in eight innings against the Twins, he was the pitcher that we’re more accustomed to seeing tonight.  Only Tony Batista looked like he saw Buehrle well throughout the game, singling and drawing a difficult walk.  And this is from a 40-year-old who’s making a comeback from Japan, and once had a 40-homer season without cracking a .300 OBP.  Go figure.

On the other side of the game, you could see the top of the lineup slowly adjust to Santana throughout the night.  In the first, Santana struck out the side.  The second time through, Pods and Iguchi made contact, albeit in the form of weak popouts; Thome struck out again.  

The third time was the charm against Santana.  Pods made good contact on a flyout to right (with two strikes, mind you).  Iguchi then roped a single into left, and Thome followed with a blast just left of center to give the Sox a 2-0 lead.  The homer was Thome’s eighth of the season; he’s scored a run in all 16 games, and his only two hits off Santana are homers.

Overall, the Sox had some really nice at-bats from Santana.  A.J. Pierzynski, usually a dead duck against any lefties – not just the best in the league – made Santana work.  In the two at-bats where he didn’t lay down a sac bunt, he made Santana throw eight and nine pitches, respectively, knocking a single in the latter AB.  Pods also wouldn’t let the Twins ace off easy, taking 15 pitches in his first and last appearance.  For our two lefties to hang in there with two strikes against Santana like that is impressive.

Santana may have had his best outing of the year, but after the first inning in which he struck out the side, he wasn’t fooling anybody.  The Sox made him throw 120 pitches through seven, he only struck out three more batters the rest of the night, and there was solid contact all around.  Even Brian Anderson got a couple nice swings in off Santana, going 1-for-3 while Santana was in the game.

And you could tell just how well the Sox were seeing Santana when he left the game, because they were jumping all over Juan Rincon when he entered the game.  The Sox scored four runs off Rincon, and he left the game without even retiring a batter.  Thome and Paul Konerko had back-to-back singles to start it off, and Jermaine followed with a liner to the gap to score Thome. 

Then, while Konerko was pulling into third, Juan Castro fired an errant throw into the Sox dugout.  I guess he was trying to get Konerko, but an NFL ref might’ve flagged him for intentional grounding, because there really wasn’t a receiver in the area.  And Castro is keeping the younger, more talented Jason Bartlett in Triple-A.  Big thanks to Gardenhire for that.  Dye and Konerko ended up scoring on the error, making it the equivalent of a three-run inside-the-park homer.

Gardenhire swapped Rincon for Matt Guerrier, but it didn’t make a difference.  The Sox racked up four hits off him, and Brian Anderson knocked in a run with a sac fly.  The sac fly was huge because he most likely should’ve struck out looking, but he took advantage of his second life for his third RBI of the year.

Record: 11-5 | Box score | AP Recap