October 2, 2008 - St. Petersburg, FloridaWhite Sox 4 - Rays 6
Run A. J., run!
The first blow has been struck by the Rays. Mostly by Evan Longoria's two home runs. Javier Vazquez was on fire with the strikeouts but was ineffective in other areas. Clayton Richard came on and shut the Rays down, but the damage was already done by Javy's mistakes.
There were a few blunders by the White Sox veterans. The worst offender was A.J. Pierzynski. Sure, he was one of the most consistent batters, but his baserunning faux pas was just short of Tony Graffanino's Bill Buckner impression of the 2005 ALDS game against the White Sox.
Paul Konerko had his problem with the count during his last at-bat, but I can't fault Pauly for that. He redeemed himself by working the count to over 10 pitches and launching a solo home run to cut the Rays' lead to two.
The good Octavio Dotel showed up on the mound and was very effective after the Rays caught up to Richard. The Sox had their chances and didn't fully capitalize. Take this game in and learn from it.
The good:
DeWayne Wise's three run homer to give the Sox the lead.
Clayton Richard coming on and holding the game for multiple innings.
The bad:
Paul Konerko's brain cramp with the count. He made up for it with his home run.
Jim Thome was largely a dud at the plate.
The ugly:
Javier Vazquez was consistently bad when he wasn't striking the batters out.
A. J. Pierzynski's ill advised stealing attempt with a 0-1 count on the batter.
I'm not sure what was going through A. J.'s when he attempted a steal, but I'm sure he will hear about it tonight. The most interesting thing I found out by listening to the TBS announcers? Both the White Sox and Angels last won the World Series in 2004. Uh... yeah. Let's try to prepare a little more. At least the Angels one was quickly corrected to 2002.
5 comments:
What a great way to start the series! Evan Longoria is the man!
What was up with Cabrera yelling at Balfour?
And yeah, A.J. looked really silly on that steal "attempt".
The TBS announcers weren't as bad as I thought they would be, but I did learn from them that the Rays apparently have a reliever named "C.J. Howell". And I learned that Harold Reynolds had barely paid attention to the Rays this year and fell back on stories about the Mariners 20 years ago whenever his analysis was needed.
They only called them the Devil Rays once, and they stopped saying that they were in Tampa early in the game after all of the great aerial shots of downtown St. Pete. Those aerial shots were great by the way. It's the first time that I've ever seen that during a Rays game. It was great to see what a beautiful day it was outside... made me wish I was there!
Oh yeah, one more thing ... Clayton Richard was really good. I don't want to see him again in this series.
I'm not sure what that was between Cabrera and Balfour. The engaging analysis told me that they must have some kind of "history" together. Brilliant deducing. My three year old niece could have come up with that thought.
It was a good game that could have gone either way until the final out.
You may not want to see him, but the Rays hitters seemed to be catching up to him the second time around.
Well, I'm hoping the Sox take the playoffs. I'd love to see a Chi-Town World Series, but so far it's not looking good for the cubs... The sox can pull it off though!!
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