The Sox returned to .500 with a victory over the Detroit Tigers today, meaning tomorrow isn’t only a brand new day – it’s a brand new season.
Okay, it’s a brand new season in which we start the season in third place behind the Tigers and Indians, but you get what I’m saying.
Jose Contreras proved his disastrous first inning against the Indians was a fluke, as the old Count never surfaced in this start. He was on top of hitters from the get-go, changing arm slots and throwing more sliders than usual, and he didn’t begin to labor until the eighth inning. Through seven, he had only thrown 85 pitches and didn’t walk anybody. He gutted his way through the eighth inning before handing the ball over to Bobby Jenks.
Contreras’ eight innings of one-run ball means the Sox have racked up four quality starts in a row. Only Jon Garland has yet to deliver a strong outing this season, and he’ll try for the sweep against the Tigers tomorrow.
The Sox offense managed to scrape together enough runs despite not bringing their bats against Nate Robertson. Robertson pitched well against them last year, but he doesn’t have dominating stuff. For one reason or another, the Sox have difficulty hitting him hard as of late.
Except for Jim Thome, of course, who’s hitting everybody hard these days. Thome slammed another homer for the third consecutive game and his fifth of the season. Add in another double, and he’s now slugging an even 1.000 for the season.
The reason he’s seeing so many pitches is that Paul Konerko is starting to swing the bat, too. Paulie went 2-for-4 today with a key single that drove in two runs and gave the Sox a 3-0 lead. After starting the season 1-for-13, Konerko is 8-for-18 with three multi-hit games in his last five.
Thome and Konerko had four of the six Sox hits. Jermaine Dye added a single, and Scott Podsednik led off the game with a double for his second hit of the year to bring his average up to .067. Unfortunately, he had a brain fart running the bases and was thrown out easily trying to advance to third on Tadahito Iguchi’s grounder to short (see above pic). There have been no indications that he’ll be heading to the DL anytime soon from management, but his head hasn’t been in the game the past couple of days.
The good news is that the Sox only stranded five runners, meaning they took advantage of the one good scoring opportunity they had all game. Unfortunately, the lack of runners is due in large part to a brutal performance by the 8-9-1 part of the order. Juan Uribe, Brian Anderson and Podsednik are well under the Mendoza Line so far.
Bobby Jenks helped the Sox to win their first one-run ballgame of the season by allowing a two-run homer to
Future Sox Killer Chris Shelton in the ninth. But if Brian Anderson didn’t misjudge Magglio Ordonez’ flyball before Shelton’s at-bat, it would’ve only been a solo shot, if he homered at all. So while we can’t say Jenks nailed down the save, we’ll instead say he sat on the save until it couldn’t breathe anymore and stopped kicking.
Record: 4-4 |
Box score |
AP recap