On a night when the Sox wore green for Halfway to St. Patrick's Day, the Pale Hose needed the luck of the Polish to pull this one out. Perhaps we can call September 8 "St. Stanislaus Day."
At any rate, A.J. Pierzynski's walk-off homer, along with Matt Thornton's clutch relief appearance, bailed out an apparently banged-up Bobby Jenks and helped the Sox to hang with the Twins for another day.
Jenks sounded (I only had the radio feed) terrible, allowing four straight doubles and three runs without retiring a single batter. Ed Farmer said his fastball was in the 91-92-m.p.h. range, and the Indians had no problem catching up to it.
Thornton cleaned up his mess, thank God. He walked Victor Martinez, then induced a double play off the bat of Ryan Garko. He then blew away Shin-Soo Choo on three pitches to keep it a one-run game.
As it would turn out, neither closer could retire a batter. Eric Wedge sent Tom Mastny to the mound to finish the game, but that didn't happen. Paul Konerko roped a single to left, and Pierzynski attempted to bunt him over. He missed. He then missed on his next swing. After fouling off a curveball, Mastny came with something harder and A.J. was ready for it. He golfed a shin-high fastball into the right-center bleachers for the game-winner.
Pierzynski not only ended the evening -- he helped to get the Sox started when he hit a bases-loaded single in the first to tie the game at 1. The Sox failed to capitalize further, as Rob Mackowiak (playing third) struck out, and Ryan Sweeney grounded out to prevent them from posting a crooked number early.
Juan Uribe went deep to give the Sox their first lead of the night, and he had a tremendous night as well. He had three hits, and helped to start a two-out rally in the sixth when he singled, stole second and scored on Alex Cintron's single for a 4-2 lead. The steal was his first of the year.
Konerko himself had a game with four hits, including an RBI single. The Sox needed every ounce of offense from those four because the other five positions in the lineup went a combined 3-for-20. Ryan Sweeney is now hitless in his last 10 at-bats, so I'd say that experiment needs to end.
Freddy Garcia pitched well enough to win, and resembled old Freddy a little bit more. I don't know how fast he was throwing, but he wasn't grabbing as much of the plate. He had four walks, but eight strikeouts, and avoided giving up a homer for the first time in five starts. He couldn't retire Grady Sizemore either, as he scored the two earned runs Freddy allowed and ended his evening a homer short of the cycle.
Record: 81-60 |
Box score |
Play-by-play