2006 State of the Sox

May 1: White Sox 8, Indians 6

These didn’t look like the Indians who took two of three from the Sox.  These looked like the Indians from the days of Pedro Cerrano, Roger Dorn…hell, even whatever Scott Bakula’s character was named in the third one.  They were that bad.

Unfortunately, the Sox weren’t much better, yet they managed to come out on the right side of an ugly, ugly ballgame.  This game probably should’ve been a true blowout since the Sox had a 7-0 lead at one point, but some shaky bullpen work made it much closer than it had to be, and the Sox stranded a buttload of runners as well.

This game dragged terribly.  The Phillies-Marlins game was 8-5, the Phillies used six pitchers, and yet their game was an hour shorter than this one. 



First, the Indians miscues.

No. 1:  Ronnie Belliard drops Victor Martinez’s throw on the back end of a double steal, which probably would’ve nailed Tadahito Iguchi.  Instead of one on and two outs for Paul Konerko, it’s two on and one out. 

No. 2:  Instead of pitching around Konerko with a 3-0 count and A.J. Pierzynski on deck, Cliff Lee gives Konerko a belt-high meatball on the outer half of the plate.  Konerko drives it over the right-field fence for a 3-0 lead.

No. 3:  Cliff Lee gets cute and plunks A.J. Pierzynski.  He reaches second on a Rob Mackowiak single, advances to third when he plows into Aaron Boone for the third time in his life and gets an interference call in his favor, and scores when Brian Anderson’s ground ball goes between Boone’s wickets.  I love when they give A.J. a free base.

No. 4:  Brian Slocum allows a leadoff single to Scott Podsednik in the sixth, then slows the game down to a crawl trying to pick him off.  By the time the dust cleared, Slocum attempted nine pickoffs and threw two of them away.  So he gives up two runs thanks to two errors due to not focusing on the hitter.  He also walked two batters in between the pickoff attempts.  An inning that should’ve lasted six or seven minutes lasted over 20.

The Sox didn’t play perfect ball by any means either – Scott Podsednik had another stupid play in left that led to an unearned run and Brandon McCarthy had his third consecutive shaky outing, allowing a grand slam to Travis Hafner, but fortunately Javy Vazquez was on his game to turn that early scoring outburst into a cushion.

Sox hitters missed plenty of opportunities to blow the game open  -- Juan Uribe had two hits but left eight runners on base, including grounding into a 1-2-3 double play with the bases loaded – and Joe Crede had failed to hit a sacrifice fly one batter before.  In the ninth, Tadahito Iguchi struck out after Pods stole second and third.  Thankfully, Jim Thome blasted a line-drive single through the shift to score Pods to push the lead to 8-5.  That extra run helped, since Neal Cotts let the first two baserunners on to scare Sox fans some more. 

Bobby Jenks struck out the side to end the game, only allowing one runner to score on a broken bat single.  He went fastball-fastball-curve on all three hitters he struck out, and nobody could pick it up.

Pods had four hits and four stolen bases on the night, but the error, as well as his getting picked off once offset some of the good vibes.  He didn’t have to pay for the pickoff because Broussard’s throw to second bounced off Pods’ hand for an error.  On the other hand, Rob Mackowiak’s night was something special – three hits, two walks, and an outfield assist by gunning down Broussard trying to stretch a single off the right-field wall into a double. 

Record: 18-7 | Box score | Play-by-play