Game 115: ChiSox lambaste Tigers
posted in Chicago White Sox |I think we can agree, what the White Sox did to the Tigers can best be described as a whuppin’. Most importantly, the White Sox had the score advantage, 5-0. They had the hits advantage, 15-3. (And at one point, it was like 13-0). Oh, and Jose Contreres used only three more pitches in nine innings than Justin Verlander used in 5. Yeah, it was that kind of game.
I got a bad feeling immediately. It took Contreres just seven pitches to get out of the first inning, and Curtis Granderson used four of them. In the second inning, Magglio Ordonez and Craig Monroe both found their pitch on the first offering. Both grounded out. In between, Carlos Guillen walked and Dmitri Young struck out. The Tigers were shut out until late in the sixth inning. It was getting perilously close to an AP alert crossing the wire.
They stunk. There’s not much more you can say about it. The Tigers couldn’t get the hit. Couldn’t even find the patience to try, most of them. Even when someone connected with the ball, it was an out. Meanwhile, the White Sox had a .550 average for balls in play to go with two home runs (as pointed out by Detroit Tigers Weblog). So okay, that differential, some of that was probably just the flight of the baseball for a particular day. But the Tigers still didn’t play very smart. Oh, and they compounded it with two errors, one by Verlander himself.
That makes three straight losses. Detroit lost 3 of 4 in early July, but you have to go back to June 4-7 to find a three-game losing streak. The White Sox were involved in that one too. How much so? The June 7 game was Verlander’s last loss before the latest one. The longest Tigers losing streak of the season is four, which occured in the last week of May.
So yeah, we’re not really used to this losing thing this year. I rather don’t enjoy it.