2007 State of the Sox

August 22: Royals 7, White Sox 6

Yup, Jose Conteras has reverted back to his 2004 form.

He has his velocity back, but any time a baserunner gets on, he's a different pitcher.  During his dominant stretch, he managed to ignore the runners that did get on, and as a result, he allowed fewer of them.

This time, the Royals ran him ragged.  Aggressive baserunning led to three of the Royals' four runs in the first inning.  Mark Grudzielanek went from first to third on David DeJesus' hit-and-run single, and scored on a sacrifice fly.  DeJesus stole second after that and scored on Ross Gload's base hit.

A two-out walk led to two more runs for the Royals in the second.  Jerry Owens may have been able to prevent the third run from scoring, but somehow Jason LaRue, after that free pass, went from first to third on a single up the middle.  Owens had a shot, but didn't seem to give a throw the thought.  A couple of singles later, a couple more runs crossed the plate.

They didn't stop running after Contreras departed, either.  DeJesus bunted successfully on Mike Myers with two outs, but didn't have to run very hard the rest of the way, scoring on Billy Butler's two-run homer.

In the eighth, Toby Hall threw high trying to gun down Alex Gordon on second with a runner on third.  Emil Brown crossed the plate easily, and thus the Royals scored six out of their seven runs thanks to their legs.

At least the Sox offense made this interesting, thanks to Josh Fields' three-run homer in the ninth, an absolute blast.  Unfortunately, Paul Konerko struck out with a runner on first to end the game.

Konerko homered for the second straight game, but the bad outweighed the good today.  Along with the strikeout, he lost track of Gordon on second base in the eighth inning, allowing him to tag up on a routine foul out to first.  Then again, Fields lost track of the number of outs in the sixth, nearly throwing home with two outs on a grounder to third before changing his mind and getting the out at first by a step.

Record: 56-70 | Box score | Play-by-play