2007 State of the Sox

September 9: Twins 5, White Sox 2

It kinda sucks when you pitch deeper into the game than Johan Santana, allow the same amount of earned runs and still come nowhere close to sniffing victory.

Such is the life of Jon Garland, who pitched eight strong innings with only a loss to show for it, thanks to four unearned runs.  Alex Cintron, who drove in the only run with an RBI single before Jim Thome hit his 498th homer in the eighth inning, was the culprit, committing two errors on choppers hit by the same guy.

I'd actually blame Garland more for Cintron's first error, because he could've been out of the inning had he not walked Nick Punto before Jason Bartlett came up.  Punto, if you didn't know, owns the lowest OPS of any everyday player in Major League Baseball, by far.  When he came to the plate against Garland in the third inning, he was hitting exactly .200.  When Punto got a fastball on a 3-1 count, he tried to bunt.  This is how bad Punto is right now.

But... Garland walked him.  And then Cintron couldn't handle a difficult high hop on Bartlett's groundball.  And then Jason Kubel singled to right to tie the game at 1.

The second Cintron error was inexcusable -- there were two outs, and Garland had retired Punto on a grounder that was too weak to turn into a double play.  Bartlett's chopper was far easier this time, too.  Cintron just didn't look it into his mitt.  It caromed off his palm, and then Kubel followed with a three-run homer to pretty much decide the ballgame.

It was only the fifth inning, but since Johan Santana was on the mound, the Sox weren't going to come back.  They touched him up for a run in the second when Jermaine Dye doubled, then scored on Cintron's single.  Cintron even stole second, but he must have thought the throw got past Rodriguez, because he got up and started running -- only to realize about seven feet in that Rodriguez had the ball.  It wasn't a good day for Cintron.

The Sox only threatened one other time, loading the bases with two outs and Paul Konerko at the plate in the fourth inning.  Konerko took the first pitch he saw and ... flew out to left.

Garland nearly got out of the game unscathed in terms of earned runs, but Justin Morneau hit a line drive to left field with a runner on first.  Josh Fields was shaded towards center, and made a great effort to get back there.  Unfortuantely, he and the ball reached the fence at the same time.  Fields went smashy smashy, the ball got away from him and Morneau ended up on third.

Record: 61-82 | Box score | Play-by-play