I missed the entire Vazquez portion of the evening, but I lucked out because
they aired this episode last week. The one where he goes through the first five innings unscathed before giving up crooked numbers in the sixth inning, losing a two-run lead in the process. Feel free to fill me in on what Vazquez did wrong exactly, but the results were back-to-back homers by Michael Cuddyer and Justin Morneau.
The two runs charged to him in the seventh makes it 10 innings in a row where he's allowed multiple runs when opponents have scored. Unfortunately for Javy, he was one batter away from coming out unscathed when Neal Cotts allowed a three-run homer to Joe Mauer to blow open the ballgame. Mauer had not hit a homer off a lefty in 287 career at-bats, and once again Neal was all too ready to serve up a homer to a guy against whom he had a supposed match-up advantage.
Cotts has now served up more homers to lefties (4) than righties (3), despite facing fewer lefties on the season. Not only that, but they've come at terrible times. He surrendered the
game-winning homer to Jacque Jones against the Cubs, which was only his second hit off a lefty all season. Cotts also gave up
a three-run homer to Travis Hafner which gave the Indians the lead and spoiled Vazquez starts. Guess what southpaw is the only one to give up
a homer to Ben Broussard this year? Cotts!
I'm pretty sure Cotts is a better pitcher than Matt Thornton, but I'm beginning to doubt which one I'd rather have in a tight ballgame with two outs. Only the Hafner homer was excusable, even if it was excruciating to watch.
Vazquez didn't have much room for error, thanks to another stunted Sox attack with which they scored all their runs via the homer. Paul Konerko, Juan Uribe and Brian Anderson went deep (Anderson on an 0-2 pitch with two outs in the bottom of the ninth off Kyle Lohse), and that was it.
The offense failed to score twice with a runner in scoring position and less than two outs, with the second time particularly hurting. Uribe homered to lead off the fifth, and Anderson followed with a double. He advanced to third on a successful sacrifice bunt by Scott Podsednik, but Tadahito Iguchi popped up and Jim Thome flied out to end the inning. Instead of pouring on another run, the Sox offense kept the Twins in the game, and Minnesota was all too happy to take advantage of it.
Record: 59-39 |
Box score |
Play-by-play