September 15: White Sox 6, Mariners 3
This game had the hallmarks of a team White Sox fans have seldom seen this year.
The offense rallied from an early 3-0 hole, finally supporting a quality start, thanks to some timely hitting. And they held it thanks to some excellent middle relief work.
A.J. Pierzynski, who hasn’t done much with runners in scoring position, changed the game with his best plate appearance of the year.
Pierzynski came to the plate to face Mark Lowe with runners on second and third and two outs. Lowe got a 2-2 count on him, and thus began the battle. Three fouls, a ball and a foul later, Pierzynski finally found one he could square up. He slashed one to left, and that would be good enough to score both runs as Bill Hall airmailed the throw.
The throwing error allowed Pierzynski to reach second, and Paul Konerko cashed him in with his second double of the night, a beautiful liner to the right-center gap.
Ozzie Guillen called on a combination of Octavio Dotel and Matt Thornton to take care of the seventh and eighth, and they teamed up to work around an error (see below) with maybe the most beautiful pair of outs the bullpen has provided all year.
Dotel had runners on second and third with one out and Jose Lopez at the plate, and Dotel got ahead 0-2. He tried one slider that Lopez fouled off, and then came back with fastballs. Lopez kept fouling them off, but eventually Dotel got one Lopez kept in play, and it ended up in Mark Kotsay’s mitt on the foul side of first base.
Guillen then called on Thornton to face Griffey, and he simply blew him away. Two fastballs looking, one fastball swinging, thank you very much. Thornton retired all four men he faced.
The Sox added an insurance run in the ninth. After a hit-and-run that Alexei Ramirez executed to get Chris Getz to third, Getz came around to score on a wild pitch.
The run came in handy, as Bobby Jenks allowed the tying run to come to the plate, even with a three-run lead. He did get screwed when Angel Hernandez didn’t believe that Jenks won a footrace with Ichiro Suzuki for what should’ve been the third out, but after a single, he struck out Lopez with a ball in the dirt to end the game.
Freddy Garcia ended up getting the win, one he deserved after shaking off a shaky start. He allowed all three runs over his first three innings of work. The first came on a solo shot by Ken Griffey Jr., right after he hooked one home-run diestance ball just foul. It was almost like Garcia was helping General Soreness hit No. 626.
Garcia then gave up a two-out double and single to fall behind 2-0 after two, and an RBI groundout after a double steal to stretch it to 3-0 after three. He did strand Franklin Gutierrez on second, though, and settled down after that.
The offense then began to chip away. Pierzynski scored the first run after leading off the fourth with a single. He moved up on a Paul Konerko walk and a passed ball/wild pitch, and Mark Kotsay drove them both in with a double. Kotsay advanced to third on a deep Jermaine Dye fly, but he’d be stranded there after Carlos Quentin lined out to third and Chris Getz grounded out.
Dye failed to score a runner from third with less than two outs in the fifth, striking out on three pitches. That’s what made Pierzynski’s sixth-inning at-bat such a big one.
Despite the satisfaction from this comeback, a few indicators of the same ol’ Sox remained:
*A ball fell between Carlos Quentin and Alexei Ramirez for a non-error error, putting the pressure on Octavio Dotel. It should’ve been Quentin’s ball, but Ramirez sent mixed signals with his pursuit.
*Scott Podsednik had another problem with the wall on a fly to deep right, which ended up as a Mike Carp triple. Garcia pitched around it.
*Pierzynski ran into yet another out on an unsuccessful attempt to stretch a single into a double.
On the other hand, Gordon Beckham made two beautiful stabs to his right, and defensive replacement Alex Rios made a deep fly over his head look like a piece of cake.
Record: 72-73 | Box score | Play-by-play