White Sox Tue May 18 2010

Sox Win Two One Game Series Against Detroit: Sox Win 6-2

By Daniel Strauss

It was a great day for the Sox. Not only did the Toronto Blue Jays beat the division leader, the Minnesota Twins, by nine, but the Sox scored a handy victory against the Detroit Tigers making them the victors in their one game series against Detroit. Luck was with the South Siders today, that's for sure. The original plan was for a two game series against Detroit with Detroit ace Justin Verlander pitching against John Danks today. Fortunately the weather put the kibosh on those plans and Freddy Garcia, who was supposed to start yesterday, (the game, for anyone who cares, that I was supposed to watch but was rained out and canceled, something me and my friends were informed about after we bought our tickets which can't be reused at a makeup game) went up against Rick Porcello, a Detroit pitcher who has been having some trouble lately. Porcello is currently sporting an ERA around 6.00. Lucky for the Sox.

The baseball gods were also generous during the game. Garcia pitched six innings in which he let in just two runs. One came from a homer by Johnny Damon, the other came from a single by Brandon Inge that let all-star rookie Brennan Boesch score. The rest of the time Garcia pitched beautifully. After six innings the White Sox continued the elegant pitching with scoreless relief by J. J. Putz and Sergio Santos. Santos got into some trouble with the bases loaded but was able to pitch a popup that the Sox infield could handle. Surprisingly, Manager Ozzie Guillén let Bobby Jenks close the game and Jenks closed well. If Jenks pitching well this year in a game against Detroit isn't lucky, I don't know what is.

The real winner of the game was Juan Pierre who played admirably in the outfield and also scored in the first off a single from Paul Konerko, doubled in the fourth allowing Carlos Quentin and Mark Teahen to score, and then scored off a single by Omar Vizquel in the fifth. Surprisingly, the scorers for the White Sox did not include Paul Konerko and Alex Rios --the usual scoring base for the 2010 White Sox; A.J. Pierzynski and Carlos Quentin in addition to the already mentioned were responsible for the White Sox's lead. If a cooling down of Konerko and Rios is what needs to happen for the rest of the team to start playing well, I'm all for it, although I'd like it much more if everyone played their best at the same time. I'd like to report that all the runs for the Sox were Chicago's doing but bad playing and bad pitching by Detroit (particularly by their irregular closer Joel Zumaya) also contributed to the Sox win. That was lucky too.

What's most encouraging is that Detroit didn't look to be having a terribly off day. Sure, there were some errors but I got the sense that Detroit wasn't playing out of the ordinary. Maybe it was the fact that I was watching the game with Detroit fans who weren't objecting, just watching a team be beat by another one. If my girlfriend and her family (all Detroit fans) had been expecting more, they would have been yelling at the t.v. Instead, I was the most surprised at who was winning and who was losing. Hopefully this is the new status quo for the White Sox.

The big takeaway from this game is that both Detroit and Minnesota (demonstrated by the last split series) are beatable but only if the Sox stay sharp or, as Jake Peavy smartly said recently, start playing like "dirtbags":

''We have some guys that are established hitters, done some great things in the big leagues. But as a team, we have to just start playing hardball. That's who we are as a team.''