State of the Sox 2009

September 30: White Sox 1, Indians 0 (Game 2)

Mark Buehrle suffered through a difficult second half, but he ended his season on a fine note.

Buehrle threw six efficient shutout innings, needing only 79 pitches for his 13th victory of the season. He didn’t allow a baserunner before he recorded two outs in an inning, and he didn’t walk a batter.

He frontloaded his start with tension. The Indians put runners on second and third after a single and double, but Matt LaPorta grounded out to second to end the inning.

That groundout started a run in which Buehrle retired 18 of his last 19 batters, with only Trevor Crowe reaching on an infield single.

Paul Konerko provided the only run off an excellent Justin Masterson, beating a single back up the middle to score Dewayne Wise in the fifth inning.  The Sox had stranded a runner on third with less than two outs on two occasions prior to Konerko’s knock.

Konerko then followed it up by stealing second, his first of the year. It was odd considering Konerko failed to score from second, setting up one of the aforementioned failures.

Masterson ended up striking out 12 Sox, a career-high. But it wasn’t enough, as Tony Pena served as a one-man bridge to Matt Thornton, who closed it out with a 1-2-3 inning.

Record: 77-82 | Box score | Play-by-play

September 18: Royals 11, White Sox 0

Mark Buehrle had never walked three consecutive batters before.

That’s how the Royals’ first run crossed the plate, and that’s all the offense they needed as the Sox lineup — with no Jermaine Dye, Alex Rios or Carlos Quentin — managed only three singles.

And only one of them left the infield. Luke Hochevar was simply too much.

Miguel Olivo — who has 14 walks to 119 strikeouts this season — drew the bases-loaded walk, and tossed two homers and five more RBI on top of his evening.

Jhonny Nunez gave up four runs and couldn’t get out of the eighth. Dan Hudson gave up his first big-league homer to John Buck in the ninth.  Awesome.

Record: 72-76 | Box score | Play-by-play

September 16: Mariners 4, White Sox 1

On the first pitch of the game, Ichiro Suzuki laced a double to left-center.

Yet it was the second pitch — a strike to Franklin Gutierrez — that carried the bad omen. Floyd did a baby hop off the mound, and would do it on just about every other pitch.

He managed to strike out Gutierrez on a good curve, but he had trouble missing bats the rest of the night. His slider lacked movement, his fastball was a tick slower, and the Mariners hit him all around the yard.

Floyd lasted only three innings, and left the game with a sore left hip.  So there you go.

It was a minor miracle that the Sox only trailed 3-0 by the time Floyd left, although Jermaine Dye made a great throw from right to end the first inning by catching Adrian Beltre trying to stretch an RBI single to a double.  A Mike Carp solo homer off D.J. Carrasco would be the only one allowed by Sox relievers in five innings of work.

But it didn’t matter, because the Sox didn’t want to hit a man with glasses.

The begoggled Ryan Rowland-Smith, making his first-ever appearance, shut down the Sox despite an unimpressive selection of offerings.  Really, the only pitch that he had was a straight change that didn’t have a lot of movement. But the Sox, who were trying to pull the fastball, couldn’t stay back on the off-speed stuff long enough to make it hurt.

Gordon Beckham’s solo homer in the eighth inning was the only form of offense the Sox could mount. A couple other promising rallies were cut short.

In the second, the Sox had two on and one out after a pair of singles. Carlos Quentin then ended the inning on the first pitch he saw, rollowing over on an outer-half fastball for a 6-4-3 double play.

Quentin then singled in his next at-bat on a bloop to right, but he thought it would get away from a sliding Ichiro. He ended up corralling it rather easily, and Quentin was dead meat between first and second.

The Sox had the first two hitters reach in the seventh, and they advanced one base on Quentin’s deep fly to right. But Alex Rios, who had two singles, tapped out to the catcher, and Jayson Nix struck out swinging to end the threat.

One bright spot: Carrasco struck out Ichiro on a ball in the dirt, and the ball caromed off A.J. Pierzynski’s shinguard and up the first base line. Because Ichiro didn’t react right away, Carrasco could take his time on the throw to first, recording the rare K 1-3.

Record: 72-74 | Box score | Play-by-play