August 6: Angels 9, White Sox 5
John Danks didn’t have his good stuff. That resulted in three homers, including no-doubt shots to Jeff Mathis and Vladimir Guerrero.
He also didn’t have his head in the game. The Angels — like they did last year — figured him out early and ran wild. Danks gave up a double steal in the first inning, then a pair of steals to Chone Figgins in the second.
He also had a couple things working against him:
Bad luck
*Paul Nauert might’ve erroneously called Erick Aybar safe on a bang-bang play at first after a nice bunt. He’d come around to score.
*Paul Schrieber didn’t give Danks a call on a 2-2 fastball on the outside corner to Bobby Abreu. Abreu homered to opposite-field on the next pitch. It seemed like Schrieber was squeezing him, but Pitch f/x doesn’t seem to indicate that.
Bad defense
*Gordon Beckham took a risk and lost, fielding a carom off Danks with his bare hand and firing to first. A good throw, and the inning’s over. Instead, he threw it way left, and it skipped past Paul Konerko and the Angels took a 2-0 lead.
*Jermaine Dye forgot how many outs there were. He caught a shallow fly ball with a genuine chance to throw out Chone Figgins at home, but instead jogged several steps toward the dugout before cutting off his brain fart. Too late.
Jayson Nix did his best to get the Sox back in the game, hitting a three-run homer on the first pitch off Ervin Santana.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t come through a second time. With one out in the third, the Sox loaded the bases on a walk, single and Paul Konerko taking a pitch to the kidney. Mark Kotsay drew a walk to make it a 6-4 game, but Nix watched a slider over the heart of the plate for the second out. Chris Getz could not pick him up, chopping back to the mound to end the inning.
Sox rallies seemed to run out of steam after that. Dewayne Wise picked up a run with a ninth-inning homer.
Making matters worse, Octavio Dotel threw only 12 of 26 pitches for strikes, and wasted a rare pickoff by giving up an RBI single anyway. Also, a kid got nailed by Howie Kendrick’s bat.
Record: 56-53 | Box score | Play-by-play
