Man. The outcome of this game was merely a collage of sterotypical performances played out to caricatural lengths.
We had:
1) The White Sox versus a lefty: C.C. Sabathia entered this game undefeated (3-0) against the Sox in five starts, with a 2.86 ERA and a .219 batting average allowed.
It's safe to say he improved rates in every single category after tonight. Captain Cheeseburger threw eight innings, allowing four hits and striking out 11. Josh Fields whiffed in all three at-bats, and nobody had two hits. Only once did the Sox have two baserunners in the same inning.
2) Javier Vazquez: Vazquez has looked better as of late, but this start was straight out of the first half.
Javy allowed runs in only two innings, but the Tribe scored three runs in each of them. The sixth inning was especially spectacular -- he walked Jason Michaels with two outs (on borderline calls that didn't go his way), then hung a slider for Victor Martinez to put runners on the corners. Another meatball to Ryan Garko one batter later, and it's a six-run game.
Of course, the rest of Javy's numbers looked great. Only six hits in seven innings, two walks opposed to 12 strikeouts.
3) The case against Brian Anderson: Obviously I don't think there's much of one, but his unsuccessful diving attempt allowed two runs to score -- this on the heels of a game in which he committed an error.
Ozzie's actually giving him playing time now (today was his sixth start in a row), and it'd be nice to see him beef up his resume instead of possibly adding question marks to the strongest part of his game. At least he had a hit.