It wasn’t such a big hit the first time around, but there’s still time to
sign my petition to try to force Mark Buehrle to stop throwing meatballs after defensive lapses.
Buehrle allowed the most runs in his career as the Sox failed to sweep the Cubs on another day when the wind was blowing out, giving up 11 (10 earned). The Cheat has
some good numbers on how his tendency to unravel compares to his peers'.
The wheels came off in the first when Ronny Cedeno, the second guy up, laid down a bunt between first base and the pitcher’s mound. Buehrle hesitated, and thus couldn’t cover first (though Cedeno likely would’ve beaten it anyway). After that, the Cubs hit the next seven balls hard, with two of them turning into outs. The ones that didn’t turned into seven runs, erasing a quick 2-0 lead the Sox built on an RBI double by Jermaine Dye, and a single by A.J. Pierzynski.
Much like his seven-run first-inning debacle against the Twins, the Cubs jumped all over his first pitch, which was often a fastball over the heart of the plate. Matt Murton, Neifit Perez and Carlos Zambrano all hit consecutive first pitches for a double, double and a homer. By the time Buehrle struck out Juan Pierre to end the inning, the Cubs had sent 10 batters to the plate using only 24 pitches.
The same thing happened in the fifth, when Aramis Ramirez reached first on Alex Cintron’s error to start the inning. Meatball Mark returned, giving up four hits by the next five batters, including a three-run shot by Neifi Freakin’ Perez to blow the game back offense after the Sox had scratched together a few runs to make it close.
After some actual quality pitching by David Riske, Cliff Politte came in and looked like 2006 Cliff Politte. His first inning of work turned an 11-7 game into a 13-7 one when he gave up a leadoff homer to Angel Pagan (the first of his career), and an RBI double to Jacque Jones. The Sox came back with three of their own, but Politte let down fans again when after retiring the first two batters, he gave up a single and then a second homer to Pagan to put the game too far out of reach.
At one point, Ozzie came out to talk to Politte, putting his hands on his shoulders while having a heart-to-heart talk, and left by patting him on the back. I’m not sure what was said, but the body language made it seem like Ozzie knew Cliff doesn’t have it anymore, and just wanted to see him do his best. I’d be surprised if we saw Politte on the mound again within the next month; in fact, he just might be outright DFA’d.
The pitching couldn’t throw a bone to an offense that didn’t stop trying, and just about everybody contributed in one way or another. Juan Uribe hit a key three-run homer off Carlos Zambrano to cut into that big lead, Joe Crede made it a ballgame again with a two-run shot in the eighth, Jim Thome hit another pinch-hit homer, Paul Konerko had a big RBI single, Ross Gload came off the bench with another ninth-inning single…it was a great collective effort spoiled by a complete lack of execution by the pitching staff.
Record: 53-28 |
Box score |
Play-by-play