Jermaine Dye is a bum! He must’ve forgotten he was the World Series MVP, going 0-for-5 with two strikeouts! And what about Matt Thornton? He oughta be fined big time for allowing a homer to Timo Perez, of all people!
Despite the grossly disappointing performances by those two, the Sox somehow managed to take the second game from the Cardinals to win their fourth consecutive series.
Mainly by scoring 33 runs in the first two games.
In truth, there just wasn’t a lot to complain about. The Sox rocked Jason Marquis, scoring at least one run in every inning he pitched, and often more than that. He allowed 13 runs in five innings, giving up four homers – one apiece for Paul Konerko, Jim Thome, Joe Crede and Juan Uribe.
I didn’t listen to the audio feed, but I assume Ed Farmer had his fill of what he calls “rally-killing homers.” The Sox went out in order after each big fly.
Fortunately, the often strung hits together before going deep. They started the game with four consecutive hits, capped by Konerko’s homer – turning a quick 1-0 Cardinal lead into a 4-1 ballgame. They had five in a row in the second inning, including an RBI single by Scott Podsednik, a two-run double by Tadahito Iguchi, and a two-run shot by Thome. Thome went 4-for-4 and finished a triple short of the cycle. In fact, everybody but Dye had a hit.
If it couldn’t get worse for the Cardinals, Jim Edmonds had to come out of the game when, in an attempt to rob Crede of his homer, he bounced off the wall, fell on his back and slammed his head on the warning track. He contributed a homer earlier in the game, one of the two Mark Buehrle allowed.
Buehrle got off to an ugly start in which he caught too much of the plate, allowing three quick runs. Eventually he calmed down to throw seven solid innings, although not a quality start, to become the staff’s third eight game winner. Most encouraging were the five strikeouts with zero walks – the first time he’s had that many since an
April 21 start against the Twins. The Sox gave him a big lead, he threw strikes (72 out of 100), and the game took of itself.
The St. Louis bullpen looked a lot better than it did last night, throwing four scoreless innings and racking up four strikeouts while only allowing two hits. But one of those was by Ross Gload, who has now hit in six straight games coming off the bench. Gload is eight for his last 11. We were questioning how much playing time he’d get being slotted behind Konerko and Thome, but if the Sox keep hitting like this, he’ll have a spot on this team.
Record: 46-25 |
Box score |
Play-by-play