Mark Buehrle finally earned victory No. 100, but the bullpen once again put the milestone into peril. After eight fantastic innings, Buehrle left with a five-run lead, and yet the tying run still came to the plate in the ninth. Add this one to the
list of games that should've never been that close.
Dewon Day retired the first batter he faced by jamming the heck out of Carlos Lee, but then proceeded to throw eight straight balls to put two on. Boone Logan relieved him and walked the only batter he faced on five pitches.
So in came Bobby Jenks for the third straight game, and he promptly threw a 55-footer that skipped by Toby Hall to bring in a run. But Jenks would settle down and retired the next two batters via a groundout and a backwards K to end the game.
The bullpen's "effort" nearly wasted a fine start by Buehrle and, relatively speaking, an offensive explosion. Buehrle used his fastball exceptionally well, and the only mistake he made was Mike Lamb's seventh-inning homer, the only run Buehrle allowed. He only got into trouble once when he had runners on the corners and nobody out. But Carlos Lee misread a soft pop-up to a backpedaling Juan Uribe, and Uribe fired to first for the 6-3 double play.
Along with the poor baserunning, El Caballo also brought back some memories when he committed an error the inning before. With Paul Konerko on second, Luis Terrero hit a soft single to left. Lee was ready to come up firing towards home, but took his eye off the ball. It skipped past him, and when he tried to stop, he lost his footing and spilled. Terrero was running hard all the way and made it into third.
Konerko and Terrero would also add homers later in the game, and Juan Uribe also went deep to give the Sox three homers in a game for the first time since
April 27. Konerko ended up falling a triple short of the cycle (imagine that), and Andy Gonzalez also went 2-for-4 for the first major-league hits of his career.
Record: 27-32 |
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