Well, this was fun one. Forgetting about the top of the 9th inning for a few moments, let’s go over the rest of the game, which was indeed mostly positives for our south siders.

Recap

After jumping out to a quick 1-0 lead off of starter Jake Peavy, the Mariners surrendered the lead when Adam Dunn hit his 36th home run of the season in the bottom of the first inning. Alexei Ramirez tied up the game at 2 in the bottom of the 2nd, before the Sox tacked on five more runs, fueled by two 2-run home runs from Dunn and Ramirez.

Jake Peavy obviously settled down after the first two innings, finishing with yet another quality start as he went 7 inning letting up just the 2 early runs. It was encouraging to see him bounce back and really be able to find his groove after struggling out of the gate. But hey, when you don’t walk anybody (5 K’s, 0 BB), good things can happen. And that was exactly the case for the Jakemeister Friday evening. While Matt Thornton was able to come in and pitch a perfect 8th inning, the Sox 5 run lead was far from safe.
Phil Humber started out the 9th inning by letting up a Jesus Montero home run and then surrendered another run before handing the ball over to Donnie Veal, who also struggled. The game was then put in the hands of rookie closer Addison Reed with just a 2 run lead. Addison then let up 3 more runs (two earned), as the Sox looked to have squandered what should’ve been a sure-fire win, heading to the bottom of the 9th trailing 8-7.
Like I’ve said time and time again since the beginning of the season (May, more realistically), this team has a heck of a lot of fight in ’em. Just when you count them out, they come right back out of nowhere to shut the critics up. That was indeed the case Friday night.
After a Gordon Beckham single and a Dewayne Wise walk, Kevin Youkilis knocked a sharp single back up the middle to tie the game at 8, as the remaining fans at US Cellular Field realized they were in for something special. After Adam Dunn just missed his 3rd home run of the night, “captain” Paul Konerko smashed a drive to right center field that was headed for the warning track. It appeared that the right fielder Eric Thames seemed to have the bead on the ball, center fielder Michael Saunders came sprinting in at full speed, collided with Thames, and knocked the ball loose. The winning run scored from 2nd and the Sox had pulled off a win that you had to describe as both “encouraging” and “strange.”

Putting the Negatives in Perspective

Even when you are able to escape a game in which you surrender a 5 run lead in the 9th inning by winning on a play in which the opponents outfielders collided, your first instinct is to look back and say “ugh, that was ugly.” And yeah, the top of the 9th was ugly. But the fact of the matter is, nothing else really was that ugly, if ugly at all.

The starting pitching was good. The offense was good. For that matter, the offense was also timely, or “clutch.” Thornton bridged the gap to the 9th well. The 9th inning bullpen performance was not good. Bullpens will have bad games; it’s going to happen. While the White Sox could not avoid that ineviatable fate that hurts every team at least once in a while, they were able to walk away with a win on a night when the bullpen was not just bad, but about as disappointing as it can be. Can we have concerns about Phil Humber or even Donnie Veal in the ‘pen? Sure. But them not being too good on one night in which the Sox got a win is nothing to lose sleep over.
Let’s enjoy the fight we saw in this team, as they were able to bounce back immediately to claim the game that they deserved, moving to 31-10 in their last 41 games against the Mariners and widening their small lead in the AL Central.

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