State of the Sox 2009

September 23: Twins 8, White Sox 6

Good news:

1. Jermaine Dye hit a pair of homers, his first in September, and his first multi-homer game since August of 2008.

2. Tyler Flowers ripped a double off the right field wall, his first major-league extra-base hit. He then scored.

Bad news:

1. Bill Welke might’ve made the worst strike call of the season, on a Joe Nathan curve ball that was caught in the opposing batter’s box. It turned a 2-1 count into a 1-2 count on A.J. Pierzynski in the ninth inning, and he struck out on a high fastball. After which, he tried to get ejected. Didn’t work.

2. Mark Buehrle’s back to being a first-half pitcher.

3. The Sox committed three errors.

4. With the bases loaded and a 3-2 count and the Twins clinging to a one-run lead, Nick Punto hit a line to center that Alex Rios pulled up on. It would’ve been an incredible catch had he left his feet, simply amazing — but he didn’t even give it a chance. The final margin? Two runs.

Record: 73-80 | Box score | Play-by-play

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

September 13: Angels 3, White Sox 2

This was your garden-variety hard-luck loss.

Mark Buehrle pitched well, especially with a small strike zone from Angel Campos that frustrated both sides. He allowed only five hits and two walks, but Torii Hunter’s homer in the seventh made the difference.

What didn’t make a difference?  Numerous at-em balls hit by the Sox. They out-hit the Angels 9-5, made Scott Kazmir and the Anaheim bullpen work harder (they threw 163 pitches over nine, compared to 109 over eight by Sox pitchers) … and they couldn’t get anything on the board besides two first-inning runs via a Carlos Quentin single.

The Sox stranded nine runners compared to the Angels’ two.

Record: 71-73 | Box score | Play-by-play

September 7: White Sox 5, Red Sox 1

It took nearly a month and a half, but Mark Buehrle finally picked up his first win since the perfect game.

He definitely worked hard enough for it.  Only two of his seven innings were of the 1-2-3 variety, and he stranded runners in scoring position in the fourth, fifth and sixth innings.

The fifth inning nearly could have broken him. He retired the first two hitters before Alex Gonzalez and Jacoby Ellsbury hit back to back singles. Dustin Pedroia worked a tough walk, and that set the table for White Sox nemesis Victor Martinez.

Buehrle got ahead 1-2 on Martinez, and won the battle when Uncle Victor hit a can of corn to Alex Rios in center. After halting that two-out rally, the rest of Buehrle’s day was smoother. He ultimately limited the damage to a bloop RBI single by Kevin Youkilis in the first.

He received enough support, both by the offense and bullpen.

The Sox touched up Josh Beckett for all three runs he allowed in the third inning. Jayson Nix didn’t move on an inside curveball to lead it off, and Scott Podsednik followed with a single to center. After a sac bunt by Alexei Ramirez, A.J. Pierzynski hit a tapper to short soft enough to score Nix to tie the game.

Mark Kotsay then inflicted more damage upon his former team. He followed a Jermaine Dye four-pitch walk with soft single to center to score two runs.

Kotsay tried to make it a 4-1 lead when Jeff Cox sent him home on Carlos Quentin’s double to left, but home plate umpire Marc Crawford ruled Kotsay out. The throw beat him, but it appeared Kotsay made a great slide to avoid Jason Varitek’s tag. Crawford did not reward Kotsay for his effort.

Thankfully, the Sox didn’t need that run. Tony Pena entered the game in the eighth inning after Buehrle allowed a leadoff single and retired all three men he faced, including two by strikeouts. He did cause the heart to stop when he allowed a long foul ball to Jason Bay that would have tied the game, but instead he walked out with a rare hold.

Quentin gave the Sox a little more breathing room in the bottom of the eighth with a two-out homer off Hideki Okajima, a liner that rocketed off the back of the Sox bullpen.

Record: 69-70 | Box score | Play-by-play

August 30: Yankees 8, White Sox 3

The White Sox appeared to have a good thing going in the third inning, as they greeted Joba Chamberlain with three straight singles. Alexei Ramirez slashed one to left-center, stole second, moved to third on Jayson Nix’s single, and scored on Scott Podsednik’s single back through the box for a 2-1 lead.

Then, for whatever reason, Nix got greedy. Melky Cabrera’s throw back to second escaped Robinson Cano, rolling away toward the mound. Nix took off for third, but Cano got to the ball and fired a rocket to Alex Rodriguez in time to get Nix at third. He’d committed a cardinal sin, getting thrown out at third with nobody out.

That basically killed the Sox offense. Podsednik stole second to get a runner back in scoring position, and only Mark Kotsay would get past first base the rest of the day. Yankee pitchers retired the next eight, and the Sox’s only other form of offense would come with two outs in the ninth, when Jermaine Dye homered off Phil Coke to narrow the lead to 8-3.

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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

August 4: White Sox 5, Angels 4

Scott Podsednik won this game the Ed Farmer Way: With a bloop and a blast.

The former took place with two outs and two strikes in the seventh. John Lackey had gained strength as the game went on, and had retired 15 hitters in a row (including a dropped third strike on Jayson Nix, who reached after the pitch skipped to the backstop).

Lackey threw another great pitch — a fastball tailing off the plate.  Podsednik, using a method halfway between unorthodox and complete accident — popped it up with a half-swing.  It landed just inside the left-field foul line, and thinking it even surprised Podsednik, because he wasn’t running full-speed around first, and barely made it into second with a slide toward the outside half of the bag.

That extra bag was huge, because Gordon Beckham ripped a fat curve to left to score Pods and tie the game at 4.

He took care of the blast in the game’s last at-bat, following another unlikely double. Nix hadn’t had a great day at the plate, ripped a 1-2 slider from Kevin Jepsen to the left-center gap.

Jepsen’s slider had given Carlos Quentin and Chris Getz fits earlier in the inning, but apparently, he lost the touch. He threw two more unimpressive sliders to Podsednik, and after taking the first one, he lined the next one deep into the right-center gap for his third walk-off hit of the season. Beckham and Dewayne Wise have the other two.

The game’s conclusion was immensely more satisfying than its beginning after Jose Contreras lost the plate.

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June 10: Tigers 2, White Sox 1

John Danks returned to form, but Justin Verlander was already there.  So were the Sox bats.

The Detroit ace outdueled the White Sox southpaw with nine strong innings to Danks’ seven, going the distance for the second time this year while sending the White Sox to another disappointing loss.

And the game might’ve turned on another blown call.

With runners on first and third and one out in the sixth, Danks started Brandon Inge with an inside fastball that breezed by Inge’s elbow.  Problem was, Brian Runge said it clipped him, and that loaded the bases.  Danks ended up walking in a run thanks to the packed sacks, and while he struck out Adam Everett (who hit a solo homer) and Dane Sardinha to end the inning, the Tigers had all the runs they needed.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a close loss without the Sox blowing a couple chances.  Or more accurately, Alexei Ramirez.

Brian Anderson stood on third base with one out in the sixth after leading off with a double, and advancing to third on a sacrifice bunt by Scott Podsednik.  Up came Ramirez, who popped up a 1-2 curve, failing to score Anderson.  Jermaine Dye struck out looking to end the inning.

In the eighth, Ramirez had a chance to redeem himself with Chris Getz standing on third and two outs, but he had perhaps the worst at-bat of anybody all year.  Three curveballs, all out of the zone, all miserable swings.

And speaking of miserable swings, Paul Konerko had to leave the game after jamming himself badly enough to bruise his hand on an inside heater.  Josh Fields had to take over, and he ended up swinging through two fastballs to end the game.

A mammoth Jim Thome homer provided the Sox’s only run.

Record: 27-33 | Box score | Play-by-play