Gavin Floyd threw the White Sox 10th consecutive quality start, but one poor inning was enough make him the 3rd Sox starter of the month to get hung with the dreaded complete game loss. The Sox have thrown 3 complete games this season, all losses, during which the offense has plated a total of 4 runs.

Floyd had no-hit stuff early in the outing Friday night -- He threw about the nastiest changeup I've ever seen in the 4th -- and carried another no-hitter into the 5th inning. But he grooved a first-pitch fastball to Torii Hunter, who promptly gave the ball a one-way ticket to section 159. And then Gavin got wild, really wild.

Mike Napoli walked on 4 pitches. Robb Quinlan hit an innocent enough looking first-pitch single into left field. 5 more pitches to Sean Rodriguez, 4 more balls. Now Floyd was in trouble with the bases loaded and no concept of how to get a pitch into the strike zone.

When Floyd threw the first pitch to Maicer Izturis in the opposite batter's box, AJ pointed to his shoulder to indicate he was flying open. Floyd over-corrected and threw a meat-seeking fastball to plate another run. Since he was no longer able to get the fastball over, AJ called for the slider to Gary Matthews. Mistake. Another HBP, another run.

The inning was ended mercifully by Vlad Guerrero, who swung at the first pitch from a pitcher who walked two and hit two batters with 2 outs. Two of Floyd's previous 13 pitches went for strikes, yet Vlad was hacking first pitch. That's a special kind of stupid in the batter's box, but Vlad's a special kind of batter so he can get away with it.

Floyd would rebound to allow just one baserunner over the last 4 innings, but the offense couldn't get anything started against Joe Saunders after a mild first inning threat. The Sox first two batters of the night reached base (on a walk and bunt hit), but the 3-4-5 hitters repeated their 0-3 w/RISP of Thursday's first inning, minus the sacrifice fly.

As has become habit over the last 10 games the Sox bats fell silent in the middle innings. During that stretch, the Sox have posted the following lines (see table at right), which generally represents the second time through the order. During their 8 game winning streak, they scored just once in those innings. Combine that with tonight's blanking and they've scored 1 run in their last 27 3rd-5th innings. That's a special kind of consistency.

The offense made a charge late, which has also become a habit lately. But it was too little, too late, as Jim Thome and Joe Crede each struck out while representing the game-winning run in the 9th.

I'll reserve making any rash statements about the offense until they get shut down by Jered Weaver again Saturday. Ah what the hell, let's have one shot at the offense. Carlos Zambrano had as many hits as the White Sox Friday night.

I would say that Mark Buehrle and the White Sox just got unlucky on Monday night, but the truth is they had nearly as many cheap hits and extra outs as the Angels but couldn't avoid the rally-killing double plays. In fact, I would argue that double plays --the Sox hit into 4 to the Angels 0-- were the entire difference in the game.

The Sox took an early 3-0 lead in the second after the Angels were unable to turn a double play on Joe Crede, who was somehow credited with a hit on what would prove to be the first of about 4 different questionable scoring decisions. While there are 2 errors listed in the box score --the Anaheim official scorer apparently only hands out errors if the ball leaves the field of play-- I can think of at least 4 more shoulda-been-an-errors off the top of my head. Juan Uribe had two, both of which looked like easy double plays, and Orlando Cabrera added another.

Buehrle didn't get hit hard. Only the Vladamir Guerrero homer, which followed one of Uribe's botched DPs, was really tagged, but poor defense, a number of weak hits, and the aforementioned bizarre scoring makes it look like a terrible outing in the box score. As I mentioned in the gamethread, Buehrle entered the night with the 3rd worst DER (balls in play converted into outs) of any American league pitcher at .652. By my calculations, that defensive efficiency dropped to .636, which would put him within an eyelash of the worst mark in the league. To quote Hawk, he's wearin' it.

In what was a microcosm of the game, the Sox allowed what proved to be the winning runs in a bizarre 6th inning. Buehrle had just come off a rough 5th that saw him give up the Vlad HR after the shoulda-been DP, and a 2-out Garret Anderson RBI triple --Swisher needs to stop coating his throwing hand in non-stick cooking spray between innings-- one batter after Robb Quinlan hit a Baltimore chop infield single. Buehrle struck out the first two batters of the 6th and induced a soft ground ball to third base that a charging Joe Crede threw away. The next 5 batters would reach base, plating 4 runs after what should have been the 3rd out.

Here's how it went down: Buehrle gave up a double before Ehren Wasserman --Did I mention I was worried about Wassermann?-- gave up a rope and nubber, followed by a couple of solid hits off Boone Logan before they could finally record the final out, a strikeout. They struck out the side, but an error, an unfortunate bounce, and some generally poor relief work finally sunk the Sox hopes.

The Sox are just finding ways to lose right now. There was blame to be thrown around to every part of the team once again Monday. So as they sit in third place a game below .500 it's time to ask; unlucky or just plain bad?