Game 150: Magglio, Rogers and Tigers, oh my!
posted in Chicago White Sox, Random, The Stretch Run |Ooooh-Eeeee-Ohhhhh, Magglio Ordonez homered twice against his former team in one of the biggest games of his Tiger career. Once to left field, once to right. And the Tigers walloped Chicago, 8-2, to pull closer to clinching a playoff berth.
Ordonez wouldn’t have had the opportunity to beat his team without such phenomenol pitching from Kenny Rogers, and Rogers wouldn’t have thrown six shutout innings without such great defense behind him in the infield. Neifi Perez played his shift to shallow right field nicely, Carlos Guillen and Brandon Inge made some key stops for double plays. It was just great baseball to watch. The Tigers played inspired. We needed to see that and, as fans, enjoyed every minute of it, minus possibly the ones there was a Sox runner on third. Of course, that made the douple plays all the better. Rogers, if you wonder, has now given up three earned runs in 33 innings against the Sox.
There were so many exciting places in this game, well, I scared my cat in the first inning alone on Craig Monroe’s home run. Good thing he wasn’t around for the triple play Carlos Guillen hit into. Just to throw my two-cents in, it wouldn’t have happened if the runners weren’t on hit-and-run. But it was such an unlikely event to occur, I don’t realy blame Jim Leyland for it. Some decisions work. Some decisions give the White Sox their lone highlight for the night. Brandon Inge hit a 3-run homer in the ninth, and the Tigers seem to be mashing the ball again. They have 80 runs for the month in 16 games for an average of 5 per game. It’s still not a consistent five, it’s either nice games or low games. But the bats have been coming around a lot more often again, and the homers have frequently flown.
With the win, Detroit’s playoff odds went up greatly, as you’ll see on the sidebar. All the Tigers really had to do in this series was avoid the sweep. They avoided the sweep beautifully and have a chance to win the series and actually add ground on the White Sox. Of course, we wouldn’t be happy with just one win. We want to take the next two as well, and frankly, Chicago doesn’t look like the same team as before. But they bounced back against us in Detroit in August, so I take nothing for granted. Both teams have 12 games left. Detroit is six games ahead. That’s an awesome feeling after the roller coaster of the past few weeks. In fact, it looks like we all might be White Sox fans when they go into the Metrodome late next week.
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