With a gametime temperature of 30 degrees, whipping wind and an umpire with a strike zone that expanded and contracted from inning to inning, both teams were just lucky nobody was hurt or thrown out.
As it stood, the game turned out as stupid as the weather, with an ugly ending to boot. Joe Crede nearly came up big against the Indians again when he hit a deep flyball with two outs and two on, and the Sox down 8-7. Instead, Jason Michaels ended the game with an awkward, sitting basket catch on the warning track to give Cleveland the win and the series.
It capped the ballgame in a fitting way, considering the Indians left the bases loaded in both the eighth and ninth innings while stranding 15 runners, and Sox pitchers walked 10 batters.
Jon Garland and Jake Westbrook both struggled in their starts. That didn't surprise, since both pitchers prominently feature sinkers, and they weren't working today. Jim Thome opened up the game with a three run homer after Scott Podsednik and Darin Erstad reached, and the Indians came right back in the second, taking a 4-3 lead by hitting for the cycle with their first four batters, capped off by Andy Marte's first homer of the year.
It didn't help that the cold caused shrinkage to Larry Vanover's strike zone, which drew complaints from both A.J. Pierzynski and Victor Martinez. Garland allowed 11 baserunners in 5 1/3, but everybody else struggled mightily as well. Neither Andrew Sisco, Mike MacDougal or Matt Thornton escaped without allowing further damage.
Sisco came in to face four lefties and allowed three of them to reach, allowing a single to Grady Sizemore, a walk to Trot Nixon and a double to the switch-hitting Martinez. Oddly enough, he retired Travis Hafner with a liner, the only out Hafner made in six plate apperances.
Enter MacDougal, who ended the inning by striking out David Dellucci with the bases loaded, after Meiklejohn walked Casey Blake. MacDougal would start the seventh with two strikeouts, but then he walked Andy Marte. Matt Thornton came in to face Sizemore, who promptly homered off him to give Cleveland the lead.
The next inning, Thornton got into further trouble when Hafner doubled, Martinez singled and Blake received an intentional walk to load the bases. Finally, David Aardsma provided some decent relief by striking out the side on 11 pitches. Either Comcast's gun was slow, or Aardsma's slider threw hitters off. His fastball, clocked at 90-92 m.p.h., teamed up with the slider to throw Cleveland hitters off. If they weren't behind on the fastball, they were either ahead or frozen by his second pitch.
Aardsma looked just as good in the ninth, when he struck out the first two he faced for five in a row. But then even he got in trouble, when Nixon doubled over Paul Konerko's head (thanks to the cement blocks Konerko calls feet), and Hafner and Martinez drew walks. He needed an adventurous catch by Scott Podsednik against the wall to get out of the jam.
Nixon, Hafner and Martinez combined to go 7-for-11 with
seven walks. Mercifully, Nixon was the only one to tally a run.
Sox pitching blew a nice outing for the Sox offense. Tadahito Iguchi tied up the ballgame with his first homer of the season, set up with a two-out single by A.J. Pierzynski, while Joe Crede returned the lead to the Sox with a two-run, two-out single of his own, all off Westbrook.
Podsednik, on the other hand, was thrown out by Victor Martinez,
the worst-throwing regular catcher in the baseball last year, trying to steal second in the fifth inning.
Record: 0-2 |
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