It wasn't pretty again Tuesday night in Kansas City, but the White Sox got the job done.
- Jim Thome spent the night on the bench this time nursing back spasms.
- Jermaine Dye spent the night striking out and stranding runners.
- Paul Konerko went 0-fer and came out of the game after being hit by a pitch. -- I'm really worried about his prognosis. He really wasn't holding that arm right when he was rounding the bases.
- Pierzynski, Podsednik, & Uribe were held out of the starting line-up.
Just.Win.
Mark Buehrle took a step in the right direction with 6 solid innings, his first start since mid-June in which he allowed fewer hits than innings pitched. I'll be interested to see what Keith has to say, if he did indeed chart Buehrle's outing. It seemed to me, without having a real baseline to draw from, that he was throwing his curveball more than usual, specifically on the second time through the order.
It looked like more of the same in the first inning, when Tadahito Iguchi couldn't get to what appeared to be a routine play, Buehrle followed with a belt-high batting practice fastball to Reggie Sanders that accounted for all of the runs he would allow.
I'm sure that Ozzie, Buehrle, or some radio host talking head will give Alomar part of the credit for Buehrle's nice outing. Well if Alomar gets credit for Buehrle's fine outing, he gets to share the blame for Matt Thornton's blown save. I have no idea why he called for exactly zero fastballs above the belt to the 5 batters Thornton faced. -- Hawk brought this up when Jenks gave up the bomb to Berroa, but I thought it applied more to Thornton -- Matt has to work up in the zone to be effective. He doesn't really have a good off-speed pitch, so he has to get the batter to chase the high cheese. Jenks, on the other hand, I think, is relying to heavily on the fastball right now.